Team building is one of those management-speak phrases which conjures up images of middle-aged executives struggling to ford a river by building a raft or a rope bridge. But has it any relevance to how you run your childcare setting?
According to both practical experience and theory: yes. Dawn Bowman, joint manager of Inglewood House day nursery near Reading, says, 'Team building creates cohesion, encourages good communication and a sense of well-being, fosters job satisfaction and reduces stresses. A good team recognises everyone's strengths and weakness and makes allowances.'
Angela Baron, adviser for Organisation Resourcing at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, says, 'The theory of management thinking is that people perform better when they are organised along team lines. The nature of work these days is much more about people exchanging information and working together.
'Team building is about developing better working relationships and about enabling people to see how they fit into the team.'
Individuals have different skills and different weaknesses, so a team tends to be stronger than the sum of its aggregate parts. Within a team, the members will look at problems differently, and Angela Baron says a teambuilding exercise can enable people to appreciate that and appreciate what the other members bring to the team.
'At some of these outdoor centres where people are doing things like abseiling or building bridges, they are trying to demonstrate how inter-dependent the members of the team are. If you are abseiling, your life depends upon the person holding the rope and you might well think differently about that person next time you are in a staff meeting with them.'
Dawn Bowman confirms that Inglewood House team building activities involve neither abseiling nor building kites. 'I think these exercises are probably a great challenge for office workers who are stuck behind a desk all day, but a job in a nursery is very diverse. Our staff are able to be artistic and creative at work, so building a kite would not be that different from what they do at work.'
Jane McKeown, manager of the Kids & Co Nursery in Darlington, recently took her team on a weekend to an outdoor centre where they did problem solving exercises such as designing and building a contraption in which to drop an egg from an upstairs window to the ground without it breaking. They enjoyed themselves so much they want to go again next year and undertake much more strenuous activities. The weekend was balanced between fun activities on the Saturday afternoon and a full staff training session on child protection on the Sunday.
'I could see some new friendships and relationships building as people got together to work things out. Since we got back I think there has been much more interaction between the teams.'
The father of team building theory is the academic Dr Meredith Belbin, who has written extensively on his theory that effective teams need people playing different roles, for example as thinkers, doers, questioners or organisers.
Stephanie Nimmo, director of marketing for the Childcare Corporation nursery chain, recently ran a conference for the company's nursery managers as a teambuilding exercise and adopted Dr Belbin's theories.
'You can have a team where, say, everyone is an innovator and full of ideas but no one is a completer-finisher and sees them through. The idea behind Belbin is that you look at people's behaviour and you recognise the weaknesses in your team. You either find someone who has the skills that are missing or you try to attain those skills yourselves. If you lack people who will see an idea through, and there is no one to take on all these wonderful ideas, then you have to agree to focus on implementation and action planning.'
The Belbin method involves the participants completing rapid-response multiple choice questionnaires to identify their team roles. Rosie Pressland, principal of Pocklington Montessori School, Yorkshire, says, 'We recently undertook a mind-mapping exercise. We all filled out a personality questionnaire with 100 questions and then the expert came to see us and mind-mapped us. It showed what a well-balanced team we are and how in each group we had supporters and leaders.'
Angela Baron says the key to a team building exercise is to take people out of their routine to break the working stereotypes and to undertake something which they can see will enable them to do their jobs more easily.
Rosie Pressland encourages teams to gel by undertaking projects together. 'Our after-school club team who have gone on training sessions together are doing their NVQ in playwork together.'
The Childcare Corporation encourages staff to see themselves as members of their work teams and also of the whole team. Stephanie Nimmo explains, 'We are inviting everyone to an event at Christmas where we will stay in a nice hotel for the night. We want the staff from the different nurseries to meet. During the day we will bring in people to demonstrate baby massage and cooking for toddlers.'
Another element of successful team building is to make individuals feel valued. As Rosie Pressland stresses, 'People are far more likely to develop holistically when they are working in a team, that is if they are part of a nurturing team. At the forefront of the team is the individual. We celebrate the individual. Our people are valued and know that everything they do is appreciated. People are allowed to be themselves. We celebrate everybody's birthday.
'We go out for meals or go to the theatre. The school pays for a very big outing once a year. This year we are going to Edinburgh and we will have champagne and cake and a nice meal, and people will have the opportunity to do the tourist bit and do some Christmas shopping. Everyone is invited to go. The school pays for the transport - everything.'
Further information
* Management Teams - Why They Succeed or Fail by Dr Meredith Belbin (Butterworth Heinemann, 16.99).
* The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is the professional body for those involved in the management and development of staff. It runs courses and operates an extensive bookshop at: www.cipd.co.uk
TEAM BUILDING TIPS
* Before undertaking a team building activity, be clear about its aims, so that you can explain to the staff its purpose and likely benefits.
Exercises can be quite simple. The idea is to break the working stereotypes so that people can see and value their colleagues as individuals and not by their work roles.
One way is to pick a problem and organise a two-hour session brainstorming to solve it. Another option is to agree jointly to support a charity and organise a fundraising event that puts people in a different situation where they can look at their colleagues in a different light.
Be consistent, treat everyone equally and ensure the team is inclusive and not an exclusive clique.
