Teambuilding Starts With The Leader
“Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” –Sam Walton
Just because you have a title doesn’t mean you are a good leader. A good leader is someone who creates a fun and friendly work environment where people come together as a team to accomplish a goal or set of goals. I give workshops on teambuilding. These seminars are designed to help an organization create a fun and friendly environment to bring the employees together. Teambuilding may start at my workshop, but to be effective you must work at keeping the team together everyday. If you create an environment where employees are not happy, fearful of keeping their job, and don’t respect you, the long term results for your company is failure. Some managers/owners think getting everyone together for a pizza party will boost morale. Pizza parties are good if the employee’s are already happy. If morale is down because you don’t treat them with respect no amount of pizza or Krispy Cream donuts are going to be effective. They would rather be eating somewhere else with someone else. I have seen managers systematically try to break each member of their department by threatening them with unwarranted verbal attacks, trumped up accusations all because that department wasn’t doing well. Rather than take the responsibility for its problems they think they can motivate by fear. Motivation by fear may have short term success if at all.
Create a work environment where employees want to be. A proper work environment has trust, respect, fun, humor. If you have these elements in your work environment you will see much more successful results. Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that’s assault, not leadership.”