Essential ingredients for a successful team day – and how to bring them together for lasting impact! A great team day can help set the tone for the year, allowing your team to form a deeper connection, and share experiences and ideas.
Unfortunately, many team sessions fail to deliver the required result, beyond a feel-good factor at the end of the day. The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way.
When it comes to running a team day, success often comes from combining few simple ingredients really well.
As an analogy, let’s look at sourdough bread baking. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to attend a sourdough baking workshop at Bread Ahead Bakery & School in London Borough Market. That afternoon, under the tutelage of a skilled French baker, I learned that sourdough magic can happen with just four ingredients – flour, water, salt and a good ‘starter’.
I’m not sure I have ever tasted better bread than the loaf I made that day! However, anyone who has ever tackled sourdough baking knows that it is not simple to bring these four ingredients together. And in fact, how you bring them together and what you do with them matters. A lot. (And if you doubt us, just search the Internet for sourdough bread disasters!)
Just like crafting the perfect sourdough, a successful team day is all about careful preparation, good ingredients, attention to detail, the application of proven techniques, and the ability to read your dough (read ‘team’) on the day.
However, anyone who has ever tackled sourdough baking knows that it is not simple to bring these four ingredients together. And in fact, how you bring them together and what you do with them matters. A lot. (And if you doubt us, just search the Internet for sourdough bread disasters!)
Just like crafting the perfect sourdough, a successful team day is all about careful preparation, good ingredients, attention to detail, the application of proven techniques, and the ability to read your dough (read ‘team’) on the day.
Dive into our 7 essential ingredients if you’d like your next team day to have some of the successful alchemy of great baking …
Ingredient 1: Work out what you want to achieve from the day. It may sound obvious, but this is a critical first step in any team day. Ask yourself questions such as:
- What will success look like for me at the end of the day?
- What important conversations do we need to be having?
- What kind of tone do we want to set for the day?
- What do we want people to be thinking or feeling as they leave at the end of the day?
- What lessons can we take from previous team days we’ve run?
Ingredient 2: Use an external facilitator wherever you can. A facilitator enables everyone in the team to be fully engaged as a participant, rather than trying to juggle multiple roles. A facilitator can help you design a day that is enjoyable and valuable. They can help you achieve the results you want – using tried-and-tested techniques and strategies. Remember that a team event has an opportunity cost due to your team being offline for the day. This can equate to many thousands of dollars. Using an external facilitator will help you maximise your return on this investment.
Ingredient 3: Think co-design. Our experience shows time and again that co-design is imperative for success. As a senior leader or key stakeholder, make time to talk with your facilitator(s) upfront about what you’d like to achieve, the tone you’d like to set, and anything you don’t want from the day. Share what the year has been like so far, any recent challenges, and what tends to work well with the team. These are key conversations that enable success.
Ingredient 4: Create a psychologically safe environment. To help support this, agree guidelines at the start of the day about what you need from each other for a successful day. As a leader, role model being open-minded and curious, invite questions, and use a mix of small and large group discussions on the day to help give everyone a voice. For more on what psychological safety is, and why it matters, read our blog Psychological Safety (How Psychological Safety can help your team reach the stars).
Ingredient 5: Maintain pace and energy throughout the day. Include a good mix of energisers and workshop sessions, as well as opportunities for team members to connect more informally over lunch and coffee breaks. Use a strengths-based approach to keep the tone positive, while allowing time to constructively talk about challenges and areas for improvement. Invite an external speaker to your day or run a short bite-sized training session as part of the day. Using a variety of approaches can help appeal to different interests in the team. For more ideas on team building activities, this recent HBR article is a good place to start. And our final tip on pace: don’t try and pack too much into the day. In our experience, allowing time for quality discussions pays off more than a rushed run through of many topics.
Ingredient 6: Remember that your team’s experience on the day is just as important as any agreed actions you walk away with. Where you do generate ideas for addressing challenges, narrow these down to a smaller number of actions that the team agree will have the most impact and feel achievable. A long list of actions can leave everyone feeling overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. A shorter list of meaningful, achievable actions can leave people feeling energised and motivated.
Ingredient 7: Focus on creating lasting impact. It’s easy to lose that feel good factor after a successful team day by making the day a one-off event that isn’t mentioned again until the next one. To maximise impact, signal to your team that the day has been important by continuing the conversation. Stay focused on any important issues raised on the day, and any actions agreed. For more information on why this follow-up is important, take a read of our blog Feeling Heard | When Listening Is Not Enough.
A great team day can leave your team feeling more connected, more engaged and motivated for the year ahead. We hope this blog has given you food for thought on what to include in your next team day – and how to follow through for even more impact.
Want to find out more?
We provide a range of services around team development, and we love running team days! See our website for more detail or contact Lisa Mayocchi lisamayocchi@yespsychology.com.au or leave a message for the team at YES
Dr Lisa Mayocchi has over 20 years’ experience in the UK and Australia, helping to improve leadership, culture, resilience, wellbeing and engagement in sectors including health, education, justice, and financial regulation. With a Doctorate in Organisational Psychology, Lisa has published on stress and coping, career transitions, transferable skills, and the experience of high-performance athletes.