While it may seem like a no-brainer that teamwork is important for business success, you might be surprised to learn that according to Carlos Valdes-Dapena's study in 2018, teams do not collaborate because of the very qualities that make them so good at their jobs.
Valdes-Dapena's research found that it wasn't the kind of personality or behavioral style that mattered most in successful collaboration—it was the context they worked in. He discovered that what teams needed most were "enabling conditions" like a clear goal and well-defined roles.
This claim is further confirmed by J. Richard Hackman who has spent over 40 years researching team effectiveness, and he found that what matters most is not the personalities or behavioral styles of its members but rather confidence in direction, support structures, and clear expectations.
When Black Pearl organizes team building activities for our clients, we don't just do fun activities. We make sure that through the use of those fun activities, our audience will be able to relate their learnings from those activities and create an achievable action points with follow through. For we believe that it is critical to team success to have a compelling direction, a strong structure and supportive content.
You see, when you're working on a team, there are so many moving parts—so many people working towards a common goal—that if you don't take care of each piece of the puzzle, everything could fall apart.
The way we see it is this: If you want your company's vision to come true and your employees' actions to be aligned with that vision, you need to make sure they know where they're going and how they're going to get there.