When team members develop strong bonds of mutual trust, respect and compassion, they can combine forces more easily and work together with a greater sense of purpose, shared responsibility and camaraderie to achieve common goals. Strong teams can work more efficiently, and typically perform at a higher level, than teams whose members are in constant conflict or lack focus.

How Team Building Exercises Can Reduce Conflict

Facilitating the improvement of interpersonal relationships among team members is an important part of effective leadership. The best team building exercises for nonprofits are ones that can help team members open up, share, and learn more about one another.

Fun and Simple Team Building Exercises 

The following are a few team building activities that can help your nonprofit improve relationships and increase cooperation and collaboration among members of its team.

Socialise on a Regular Basis

In many organisations, meetings tend to be a one-sided conversation where one or more leaders present information to attendees. Everyone else either sits or stands quietly and listens. While leaders may end the meeting by offering to answer any questions, there normally aren’t any.

Team Building Begins with You

One key feature of typical meetings like these is that there really isn’t an exchange of ideas in this format. Many volunteers and staff rightfully feel that this type of meeting can be a bit boring and a waste of everyone’s time. Meetings, however, don’t have to be boring! When done correctly, a meeting can be a great time to gain everyone’s insight into a specific problem. It’s also an activity that can actually be fun for your team! If your NFP’s members don’t look forward to attending your meetings, you are doing something wrong!

Whenever you have a meeting with your team, incorporate asking questions, and active listening, into the format so that you can gain the opinions and advice of others. This turns your meeting into an actual conversation among colleagues who respect one another because they are free to share their thoughts as they work on the problem or issue together.

Encourage Team Members

Don’t just leave the floor open for problem-solving during meetings. Encourage your team members to socialise with one another as individuals during the meeting. There are a number of ways to change up the format of a meeting to one that will encourage greater socialisation. The following are a few ideas on how to do just that!

Encourage Sharing

One way to encourage greater communication and sharing is to start your meetings by going around the room and asking everyone to share something good that has happened to them either during the day or earlier in the week. This puts team members in a positive mood, and opens the door to gratitude. It also paves the way for other members to support and congratulate one another on their accomplishments. Each of these benefits helps members to get to know one another, laying a good foundation for a positive and cordial relationship.

Using Show and Tell to Reveal the Individual

A few days before your team’s next meeting is scheduled, ask members to bring in an item that will show an unexpected side of who they are as an individual. At the meeting, spend about 15 minutes going around the room asking individuals to show the item that they brought and explain why this object has meaning to them.

Each member’s item will be vastly different, which is entirely the point. Some might share their favourite song, poem, photograph, recipe, or book, while others might bring in something else that’s even more surprising; such as a funny hat, or a trophy that they unexpectedly won long ago. Others might bring in an item that specifically relates to their hobby. Really the possibilities are nearly endless.

The point of the exercise is to allow the individual team member to bring something of their own choice that reflects who they are as a person so that each member can get a glimpse into the unique personality of each team member. Allowing others to see a more personal side of someone helps to break down some of the barriers that can hamper communication and collaboration.

It also helps members to become more comfortable with one another and used to the idea of opening up and communicating with one another.

Share a Meal Together

The simple act of gathering around the same table to share a meal can work miracles to improve relationships among team members. While it’s certainly nice if all of the members can go out together to a nice restaurant, or perhaps have the nonprofit pick up the bill for catering, it’s perfectly acceptable to encourage members of your team to bring in their favourite dishes for a team potluck that you share together in the break room.

Schedule time for members to be able to be free of their typical job duties so that they can fully relax, enjoy the meal, and unwind and talk with one another. It’s very difficult to feel indifferent and removed from someone once you’ve shared a meal with them.

Have Fun Together

There are a lot of ideas for fun activities that teams can do that will encourage them to learn how to communicate and cooperate with one another more effectively. Some nonprofits send their teams outside of the organisation to participate in a group activity, such as a group retreat or workshop.

Other teams go on special trips and participate in an activity together that’s outside of what most would consider their ordinary daily routine, such as hang gliding or rock climbing together as a team. Some teams take up a group sport, and form a team outside of the organisation, such as creating a local softball team or going bowling together on a regular basis. Still, others might meet up for a night of cards or board games.

Change the Focus

It is not so much the specific game or activity that matters with team bonding. In order to be effective at strengthening the bonds of respect among members, it must be a game or activity that all of the members are open to join, and all members are likely to enjoy playing. Forcing team members to participate in an activity that is beyond their capability, or that few enjoy beyond a select subgroup of members, will have the exact opposite effect than what is desired.

Whenever the value of team building exercises is questioned, the reason for the failure usually comes down to members being forced to participate in an unwanted activity, or, select members being either covertly or openly excluded from the activity.

Let Your Team Choose

Rather than deciding for your team what games are fun, and what shared activity they will participate in, broach the subject during a meeting and solicit suggestions as to what activities they might want to participate in as a group. Allow members to vote on their top choices. You can help your team build consensus and agreement by offering to periodically switch up the shared activities that they will participate in.

Again, the point is not to force anyone into doing something they will not enjoy, but rather place the emphasis on having fun during a shared activity. Building a strong team is a significant challenge for leaders of all organisations. Encouraging more open and frequent communication among team member can go a long way to strengthening your team and increasing the overall productivity of your organisation as a whole.