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What are the differences between teambuilding and teambonding?

  • Ana Petelinšek, voditeljica assessment centra SELECTIO Grupe
  • 26. September 2024.
  • 7 min read

Activities that connect team members boost morale and significantly impact employee productivity and satisfaction. Fostering a strong team dynamic is an important task for team leaders, who must not overlook the challenges that modern environments, strong competition, and tight deadlines place on their teams.

Teambuilding and teambonding: similarities and differences

To understand the importance of teambonding activities, it's essential to differentiate between two terms that often sound similar but have different goals – teambuilding and teambonding. Both play a key role in creating cohesive, engaged, and productive teams but differ in approach and outcomes.

Teambuilding

Teambuilding activities focus on improving collaboration by developing key skills such as communication, problem-solving, leadership, and team dynamics. The goal of teambuilding is to strengthen the team's competencies and achieve more effective collaboration on shared tasks.

Teambuilding can involve structured workshops or tasks designed to align team members towards common goals, help them better understand their roles, and work together to solve complex problems. Through these activities, team members become more aware of their strengths and better understand how these contribute to the success of the entire team. With a common goal in mind, teams are more likely to be engaged in their work when they understand their role.

Teambonding

On the other hand, teambonding focuses on strengthening personal relationships among team members through relaxed and fun activities. While teambuilding is often aimed at developing specific skills, the goal of teambonding is to enhance mutual trust and connection.

Teambonding activities can be simple and informal – a shared lunch, board games, or a nature outing – serving to relieve stress and improve interpersonal relationships within the team. The main objective is to create a sense of unity and partnership, which improves team collaboration in the long run.

What are the benefits of teambuilding?

It helps team members understand their own and others’ strengths and weaknesses

When all team members understand their strengths and weaknesses and share these insights with the team, efficiency increases, and the chances of confusion or failure in future projects decrease.

It strengthens team cohesion

Understanding each member's role and strengths, as well as their weaker points, builds mutual trust within the team. When the team recognizes that not everyone contributes to a common goal in the same way but equally values everyone’s contributions, team spirit and cohesion grow—essential foundations for productive collaboration.

It improves communication among team members

As team members have different strengths and weaknesses, their communication styles may also vary. Raising awareness about the diverse communication styles within the team helps manage expectations and work assignments more effectively. Teambuilding activities are an excellent way to prevent communication breakdowns and enhance collaboration on future team projects.

It helps resolve conflicts

Improved communication enhances the team’s ability to resolve (and even prevent) misunderstandings and conflicts. While misunderstandings are a natural part of team dynamics, their frequency can be reduced, and their impact on task execution minimized.

Good examples of teambuilding activities

Competitive activities and team challenges

Activities in which the team participates collectively or in groups in challenges or competitions strengthen communication and collaboration among team members. Interactive teambuilding activities boost team spirit and help members redefine what effective collaboration means to them. These activities could include creating a model together, working on a creative project, or engaging in various trust-building exercises.

Team sports

Team sports are always a great choice for strengthening team cohesion and fostering collaboration. In addition to traditional team sports, less demanding physical activities that deliver similar benefits for teambonding are also welcome. A bonus is the opportunity to organize the event outdoors changing the environment and hosting a mini excursion can encourage informal connections among team members.

Workshops and skill-development training

Professional training sessions and workshops aimed at developing skills necessary for team success enhance team members' expertise and competence. Workshops on communication skills, managing change and diversity, and building a feedback culture directly strengthen collaboration on future projects. Soft-skills workshops increase effectiveness and productivity, ensuring that team members are agile and adaptable to changes and challenges.

The benefits of teambonding

The benefits of teambonding can vary, but we've highlighted seven of the most important ones:

1. Increased productivity

Teams that are well-connected work together more efficiently. When employees feel connected, they are more motivated and productive.

2. Lower employee turnover

Strong team bonds create a supportive work environment, which can significantly reduce employee turnover rates.

3. Fostering innovation

Teambonding activities can encourage innovative thinking, leading to new (crazy and innovative) ideas and solutions.

4. Better communication and appreciation of diversity

Teams that understand their colleagues' different working styles achieve more open communication, which fosters appreciation of others' perspectives.

5. Positive work atmosphere

Teambonding creates a relaxed and fun atmosphere, increasing employee satisfaction and engagement.

6. Team synchronization

A sense of unity leads to faster work execution and a better understanding of potential challenges.

7. Increased team resilience

When unity prevails within a team, members are more likely to communicate their concerns with others. This increases resilience and helps individuals cope more effectively with challenging situations.

Examples of teambonding activities

Teambonding activities can be varied and tailored to the specific interests of team members, with the shared goal of fostering authentic connections. Of course, certain teams (or parts of a team) may not naturally connect, so sometimes a mediator is needed in the overall teambonding and/or teambuilding process.

Building better relationships with colleagues is possible in various ways, such as:

nature outings – hiking, rafting, or picnics

board games – help to relax and build friendly relationships

volunteering – joint charity work connects teams through positive action

shared lunch or Friday get-togethers – informal after-work activities strengthen teambonds

karaoke or movie nights – fun events that help team members get to know each other in a relaxed environment

Using teambonding and teambuilding together, depending on the team's needs, can significantly boost engagement, productivity, and long-term success in an organization. Research shows that teambuilding and teambonding are essential for a successful organizational culture. When employees develop positive interpersonal relationships, they collaborate better, which leads to greater job satisfaction and improved results.

What is Belbin teambuilding?

Due to the importance of team member connections for all processes within an organization, we have designed teambuilding and teambonding activities based on the Belbin methodology. Belbin represents the global gold standard for understanding team dynamics and provides an excellent foundation for designing teambuilding and teambonding activities through interactive and fun methods. Team activities based on the research of Dr. Meredith Belbin, founder of the Belbin methodology, allow for the building of team spirit, strengthening of communication, and problem-solving. Their main goal is to improve interpersonal relationships and team effectiveness. These activities are tailored to the specific needs of each team and provide long-term results in improving the work atmosphere and productivity.

If you'd like to learn more about the possibilities for teambuilding and teambonding activities based on the Belbin methodology, contact us!

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