Team Building for Project Teams

I have had varied experiences with team building, and team building activities. I started dreading the competitive sports versions of team building, since there is always someone who ends up being victimized by the loosing team. To me these sports events are not necessarily the best team building activities. Often at least one team member will feel left out, because they can’t do certain things, or may be unable to. Hence I have been spending a lot of time thinking about team building. I have long been asking myself what team building really is. In several places I worked in, team building was never priority, yet in one company, following the German law, turned into the best team building accidentally. I will explain this further down in the text.Living and working in a culture, where team building and team bonding is often seen as an unnecessary cost and something that is done by an outside provider maybe once a year, it is difficult to bring in a team culture. Hence I have been reflecting on what brought the team closer together in the teams I worked in. Activities that go beyond the average externally facilitated team building event and are simple to do.As project managers we are usually given a team to work with, that may or may not have been working together previously. And from the word “Go” the team is expected to perform together harmoniously whether they have other responsibilities or not. In my environment, there is never even a thought spared to team building / team bonding, leave alone a budget allocated. However since building your team is part and parcel of your resource management plan in project management, we need to become creative and come up with little low-cost things we can do, to shape our team into a cohesive unit that works together and trusts each other.PMBOK Guide has dedicated a whole chapter on developing your team and identified the following stages a project team usually evolves through:
The article has been previously published on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/team-building-project-teams-stephanie-jaeger-pmp-limc/