wantonness lease: Bread & Butter Teambuilding

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Bread & Butter Teambuilding | rantingscot

As a young child, my mother always insisted the family sit down and eat dinner together. ?3 and a half decades on, there?s still a regular family get together around the dinner table, albeit the table is now much bigger to accommodate the growing number of represented generations!

It?s an opportunity for us all to spend time sharing the day?s experiences and news and she often told me??The family that eats together, stays together?. ?This mantra followed me into my adult life and has extended into my business life too.

Not surprising when you consider the origins of the word??Company?.

The term ?company??was?originally used to describe the breaking and sharing of bread at meal times.

By the 12th century, ?company? had evolved to mean a large group of people or a body of soldiers and this is still used in many organisations to describe such a collection of troops.

As the need for large armies became less and trade became more civilised,??company??became a description of a body which bought and sold; traded and created employment.

Today?s businesses are the modern day army; legions of people working together supposedly toward a common goal or objective.

Seeking to bond teams remains the single biggest challenge for the leaders and managers of these divisions.

Often comprising a diverse range of individuals with very different backgrounds; religious and cultural beliefs; personal goals and aspirations, needs and requirement; finding commonality on which you can foster collaboration, co-operation and co-production, the leader can find the pursuit for cohesion a daily struggle.

Given the etymology of the word??company??(and my mother?s mantra), you could do a lot worse than skipping the corporate away days and team building trials and sit down for a meal together once in a while.

I?m not against physical activities such as climbing trees; building rafts and plodding through muddy puddles but these activities will only ever provide a platform on which further hierarchies will develop.

Psychological and physiological differences will be accentuated and whilst the objective may be achieved, longer term goals such as appreciation of each other are less likely to develop.

Breaking bread and sharing conversation will help you truly understand and connect with your colleagues at a much deeper level; create the kind of understanding that bonds and binds and, to paraphrase my wise old mum ?the team that eats together, stays together?.

They don?t just learn to work as a team or embark on a journey of self discovery, they learn to appreciate each other as individuals and equals; they come to appreciate those in their??company?.

So before you go seeking out the annual corporate away day, consider an activity that will create the kind of bond that lasts regardless of age; background; social or organisational stature.