EFAMILY TEAM BUILDING AND GET TOGETHERS
Family is the smallest basic unit in the society. Family is a team. The structure of today’s families are varied with so many variants. Each family member has a unique responsibility in its structure and function of that family unit. Each family member’s strengths, talents, traits and personality influence the part of family team. Having quality time together with family is one of, if not the most vital thing that you can do for your children or an extended family.
Team building is usually connected with workplaces only but, they are also it has its own and great benefit to family. It strengthens and keeps family bonds alive.
The Vitality of Family team bonding
As family, spending time together and bonding comes with many health and emotional benefits. Grandparent/parent/child/relatives quality and bonding time lifts self-confidence, self-regulation, lowers risk of behaviour issues, improves mental health, helps children academically, teaches effective conflict resolutions skills, teaches adaptive behaviour, reduces stress, supports physical health and promotes resiliency.
Helps in problem solving/ times of difficulty.
Family offers so much from unconditional love, emotional support, stability and guidance which in most cases is needed in difficult times. Looking into Tuckman’s model of team development, there are five stages – forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning – which can describe a group’s formation and/or applies to a family team facing a challenge. In families we could have issues such as balancing home and work life, chronic arguments, poor communication and others. Therefore, having a family team building creates a sense for teamwork, reconnection of relations and understanding in times of difficulties.
Helps a family move as a team.
When a family comes to play together as team, they always build a dream. Just as in soccer game, a team’s dream is to win the game at the end of 90 plus minutes. For this to be fruitful, every team member plays a role and ensure they coordinate and play as a team. Having a family team building games which involves communication, teamwork, physical activity helps build the family dream. Playing together as a family also encourages good habits, support family bonding and social and mental health.
Helps the family to be together.
When a family carries out team building, it helps the family to learn, practice and build a healthy family bond through coordination, connectedness and family time. These benefits can be achieved by; planning family day together, doing a staycation together, taking a nature walk together, preparing and having mealtimes together, holding regular family meetings, playing board games together, exercising together, having family retreats and team building activities, taking part in outdoor activities and sports as a family and many others.
Enhances development of children’s future skills.
Borrowing from Tuckman’s model, a child’s young life development is crucial. Every family values their children’s development from childhood to adulthood life. To encourage this, a family needs to participate once in a while if not regularly in team building activities. The skills taught in the team building activity improves and enhances their growth for now and future life. By impacting and encouraging teamwork, building confidence, encouraging fair play, building safety and trust, giving attention, working together and ensuring that they feel important, validated and loved gives them a through pass to being great leaders, employers and employees in the future.
Enables the family to think together.
Family team building takes discussion, the ability to plan together, clear communication, trust and the willingness to work as a team into consideration for development. It teaches effective pillars of team building and teamwork such;
- Developing clear expectations and guidelines.
- Fostering strong communication.
- Having a shared vision.
- Building trust between family members.
- Teaching problem solving.
- Celebrating little and major milestones of success.
- Encouraging, mentoring and providing suitable behaviour modelling.
It helps a family feel good.
The success of having a team building as a family lies in having loads of fun, doing things together and open communications. When a family plays together and engage in a variety of team building activities, they benefit in so many ways in physical, social, emotional and mental health. The family members benefit through gaining focus, sleep and relaxation, improved physical fitness and stamina, better nutrition and appetite consumption practices, an increase in work tolerance, better emotional control and the ability to handle and tackle challenges and changes.
Planning regular team building activities can be as simple as putting aside an afternoon, a weekend or even have it once in a month. To plan this family team building, you have to consider few things as discussed below.
Age Set.
This is the first consideration before a family plans for a team building. The age of the group is important as it helps to decide which team building activities are to be administered to ensure full participation and at the end ensure it brings out the fun bit of it. The activities for a group with young children is different from a family with teenagers on the cusp of graduation. Thus finding team building activities that work for all age groups is a must when planning for a family team building exercises. These could include sharing meals, playing games and having conversations.
Professional support or Self-managed.
As a family plans for team building exercise, they have to consider whether the activities will be managed by the family or they will hire a professional support service provider. These depends with the activities that the family would wish to engage in.
At home or Away.
Whenever a family needs to have a team building, they could do a combination of both home activities and outside/away activities to salt up the team building planning. If a family is made up of busy family members, having home activities would work perfectly and might be more relaxing. Conversely, if a family spends a lot of time at home they could opt for an outside environment with a fresh breath of air. It is therapeutic in its own way.
Frequency.
Family team building is not needed to be frequent as taking water. There needs to be a schedule and proper plan of doing things together. It helps strengthen family bonds and trust. As a family you can create easy to follow routines, norms and traditions such as every family member sharing on their good and bad days, meal preparation to eating together and doing dishes as one.
Equality.
The older may naturally want to take lead in the planning of a team building for the family. It is great, but it should be noted that everyone in the family is unique and have opinions to make. Thus there needs to be a democratic approach to planning family bonding time as it teaches fairness and equality from the start. Be the leader and be the good and active listener for a better decision making.
Some of the ideas for family team building activities include;
- Icebreaker games (get to know what your family members.)
- Human knot game.
- Treasure hunt.
- Blindfold game.
- Simon says.
- Red light, Green light.
- Paintballing.
- Jenga.
- Card games.
- Board games.
- Family game night.
In today’s life of a family, everyone gets so busy. Therefore, it is vital to plan in a fun activity for the entire family. This helps to reconnect, improve communication skills, critical thinking skills, teamwork, emotional strengthening, future skills and social skills. Playing part in family team sets the stage for future relations, makes a family member know that they can count on in difficult times, family is a source of affection, guidance and encouragement, nurtures a sense of belonging, family is linked to positive mental health outcomes, it interprets a better academic and job performance and helps teach important values and life lessons. Furthermore, it serves to ensure that the family members have fun memories that cement together the family as a whole.
With these simple tips and ideas, you can schedule meaningful family team-building activities to improve communication, life skills, and family bonds. Getting the entire team involved in fun games, can only produce great results! What is your favorite family team building activity?
Other featured Articles
Starting the year with team building
Team building doesn’t really have to come at the end of the year when everyone is having it. Here’s why.
End of year team building
Why is it that most companies and organizations end their year with team building activities?
Team building ice breakers
Read, learn and enjoy as our facilitators take you through team building icebreakers you can do anywhere and anytime.