Remember the good old days of college? Bonding with friends over late nights filled with coffee, work and stressful deadlines?
Wait… these things probably sound familiar…
There are many parallels between experiences in college and your current job. This is especially true with team bonding in your company, and team bonding in fraternities and sororities. Here are three team building lessons learned from Greek life that you can apply to building stronger bonds today.
United as One
A sorority or fraternity has individual members, but is thought of as a whole. Each member contributes independently, but works together to function effectively.
A business is the same. Marketers need to develop a strategy to promote the product while others control the company’s financial situation. However, both groups need to work together to be successful. Otherwise, you may have overspending or not enough buzz to generate revenue.
Want your team to become closer? Check out over 95 of our fun team building programs and activities that can make sure that your company takes its first step in becoming united.
The Busy Syndrome
In college, everyone seems to have something to do: writing papers, meeting with professors, or midterms to study for. In a business, everyone has his or her own individual to-do list as well.
No one seems to have time for team bonding, and why should they? Well, in order to have a successful company, that success needs to originate from a productive environment.
One way fraternities and sororities accomplish a productive environment is to offer positive incentives for people who participate in team bonding activities. For example, a piece of jewelry is given to the sorority member who goes to the most team bonding events. Team bonding = more collaboration and creativity, which generates productivity.
Another strategy is to make bonding activities fun! An example for sororities is to have a Pinterest night, where the members come together and craft various projects.
This team building lesson could be applied to your business in a variety of ways.
Hold a potluck lunch once a month. Include recipe swaps, make an annual employee cookbook each year or turn the potluck into a taste testing challenge to add some zing to your culinary bonding.
Start a nutrition challenge to kick off Spring. This promotes employee health and team building through a little competition.
Have employees contribute photos for Wordless Wednesday posts on social media. This gets your team engaged and collaborating with each other, and helps promote your company! (Just make sure you provide helpful guidelines for submissions.)
Don’t Focus on Negativity
Some people are known for their negative attitude, and can bring down the spirits of a group. Whether this is on a service project for a fraternity, or negativity on an idea in the corporate world, it can severely affect team morale.
What sororities and fraternities have learned to do is to focus on the positive members. They do this by giving awards and honorary mentions to the people who are positive and strive to better the organization.
For example, a fraternity might have a “Brother of the Week” award, given to a member who went out of his way to benefit the fraternity. By highlighting positive members, negative members learn that positivity is an important part of becoming a recognized member of the team.
Struggling with a naysayer? Take a bite out of that team vampire and take advantage of the team building lessons you’ve learned today.
