Team Building Celebration Plan - Perfect for any Time of
Year
by Denise O'Berry
Published on this site: August 11th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
When was your last team celebration? Have you been way too
busy to bother? Sometimes we get so caught up in day-to-day
work that we don't take the time to step back and celebrate
success. Some teams may even consider team celebrations as
"silly."
It's critical to celebrate success if you want your team
to maintain their high performance. Successes are the "motivating
fuel" that keeps all of us pushing toward achieving the
"bigger and better" goals that we set.
What types of team interaction and discussions normally
occur on a day-to-day basis with your team? If you're like
most businesses, it's along the lines of the following:
- What's going wrong with the current project.
- Recovering from changes that impact your product or service
schedule negatively.
- How to satisfy a disgruntled customer.
If all of your team interactions focus on what's wrong with
your business, what happens over time? Team members lose sight
of the positive things they do. This can have a demoralizing
effect on a team and your business.
Team celebrations help a team bond together. This helps the
members maintain focus on their common goals and direction.
And, celebrations often help team members deal with stressful
changes and prevent "burn-out." They provide revitalization
for the team.
Has your team celebrated any successes lately? What did they
celebrate? How did they celebrate? For some teams, it's necessary
to add structure to the celebration process to ensure that
they make the time.
To do this, use our three-step process:
- Identify What To Celebrate
- Determine How To Celebrate
- Create A Celebration Action Plan
1. Identify What To Celebrate
It's important to determine what events or activities the
team should celebrate. These can be major events or events
that help the team reach a milestone. Get your team together
and brainstorm a list. Your list might look like the list
below.
- Identifying and solving a major roadblock (e.g., customer
or quality related issue).
- Taking on added responsibility.
- Adding new team members.
- Dealing with a project crisis.
With the group together, determine the activities your team
wants to celebrate.
2. Determine How To Celebrate
Next, identify how you could celebrate. Again, with your
team together, brainstorm some celebration activities. These
don't have to be major. They could be fun stress relievers
or activities that help make your team more visible to upper
management.
Some ideas are included below:
- Create a presentation for upper management highlighting
the team's achievement. Present with all team members in
attendance.
- Have the entire team meet with a customer during an on-site
visit.
- Invite a senior manager to your team meeting.
- Bring snacks to a team meeting.
- Put congratulatory posters on the wall.
Determine how your team would like to celebrate. Remember,
team celebrations don't have to be expensive, time consuming,
or difficult to plan. Team celebrations can be formal or impromptu.
The key of the team celebration is that it must be sincere.
3. Create A Celebration Action Plan
Create a celebration action plan for the team for (at least)
the next six-month time frame. Once the action plan is created,
have your team plan the first celebration that will occur
in the coming months. This gives them something to look forward
to while accomplishing team objectives.
It will take a little effort on your team's part to complete
this process, but the pay back in productivity will be worth
it. Get going. It's time to celebrate!
Denise O'Berry (aka 'Team Doc') provides tools, tips
and advice to help organizations build better teams. Find
out more at http://www.teambuildingtips.com
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