Sports as Team Building Exercises

If you’re a business owner or manager, you are probably constantly on the prowl for ways to improve your team and your crew. One of the best things you can do, of course, is improve your teamwork.  How do you go about doing this? The best way is with team building exercises.
 
Most people think that team building exercises are only cliché or silly useless games, but one of the best ways to accomplish team building for your business is with team sports [1]. By creating team sports for your business–be it an intra-business league, or a company squad that plays outside teams–you can teach all of the valuable life lessons in sports, and apply them directly to the workplace. It’s an invaluable way to teach your workers some necessary team building skills, while having a great time in the process.
 
Sports as Team Building Exercises
 
Here are a few reasons why you should try sports as a team building exercise, and a suggestion for what sport to play:
 
Teamwork
Businesses run like sports teams: each individual needs to trust each other individual if he or she wants the team to have any success. In order for a sports team or a business team to excel, an individual needs to not only trust their teammates, but they needs to help the teammates get even better.
 
In sports, multiple players form one cohesive unit in an attempt to accomplish a goal: winning.  Businesses are exactly the same: a large group of people working as one, with a group goal that is greater than any individual.
 
Selflessness
Sports teach us how be selfless, which is a critical trait in a workplace. In football, for instance, a player needs to be just as happy when a teammate scores a goal, as when he or she scores one. What the team was trying to accomplish was a goal, so each individual should be equally happy when it is accomplished. The same is true in the workplace; when employees are as happy for their co-workers successes as they are for their own, the business becomes a true team in every sense of the word, and the company will thrive. Through sports, you build a team that is endlessly rooting for each other, even more than they are rooting for themselves.
 
Group Perseverance
In sports, you or your team may fall behind and start losing. When that happens, you cannot separate and go your own ways; you have to continue playing as a team, and find a way to improve collectively, rather than individually. A business is the same way: there will be tough times, but in order to fix issues and problem solve, you must come together as a team and overcome the obstacles in your way.
 
Best Sport for Team Building: Football
According to an Irish Opinions™ poll of 597 people, football is the most popular sport among Irish men, and also a decently popular sport among Irish women with 12% of women and 30% of men. Football is the ultimate team game: 11 players working together in flawless harmony, acting as one, with the sole purpose of scoring a goal and keeping the opponent from doing so. Football features the requisite teamwork, selflessness, and group perseverance that are so necessary in the workplace.
 
Start a football team at work as a team building exercise, and you’ll instantly see these results; plus, your employees will have a lot of fun! Make sure to have some Tesco vouchers on hand though for all the refreshments you’ll need!
 
“This article has been written by a third party. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Research Now or its Irish Opinions™ panel. The statistics referred to in this article were collected from pre-screener questions directed to members of Research Now’s Irish Opinions panel during July 2013. The information is presented without warranty, express or implied.”
 
1 Social Issues Research Centre, www.sirc.org