Editing Team building (section)

{{Short description|Term for activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams}}
[[File:US Navy 040518-N-9693M-015 A squad of Midshipmen work with a log as part of teamwork training during Sea Trials.jpg |250px|thumb|The US military uses lifting a log as a team-building exercise.]]

'''Team building''' is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within [[team]]s, often involving collaborative tasks. It is distinct from team training, which is designed by a combination of business managers, learning and development/OD (Internal or external) and an HR Business Partner (if the role exists) to improve the efficiency, rather than interpersonal relations.
[[File:Monts-merveilles.fr teambuilding.jpg|250px|thumb|These teams have built small ocean-going [[raft]]s as part of a team-building exercise.]]
Many team-building exercises aim to expose and address interpersonal problems within the group.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite journal |author = Salas, E., Diazgranados, D., Klein, C., Burke, C. S., Stagl, K. C., Goodwin, G. F., & Halpin, S. M. |title = Does Team Training Improve Team Performance? A Meta-Analysis |journal = Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society |volume = 50 |issue = 6 |pages = 903–933 |doi = 10.1518/001872008X375009 |pmid = 19292013 |year = 2008 |s2cid = 7213546 }}</ref>

Over time, these activities are intended to improve performance in a team-based environment.<ref>"Creative Team Building Activities and Exercises".  Retrieved 15 May 2012.</ref> Team building is one of the foundations of [[Organization development|organizational development]] that can be applied to groups such as sports teams, school classes, military units or flight crews. The formal definition{{which|date=July 2016}} of team-building includes:
* aligning around goals
* building effective working relationships
* reducing team members' role ambiguity
* finding solutions to team problems

Team building is one of the most widely used group-development activities in organizations.<ref name="Klein et al. 2009">Klein et al. (2009)</ref> A common strategy is to have a "team-building retreat" or "corporate love-in," where team members try to address underlying concerns and build [[Trust (social sciences)|trust]] by engaging in activities that are not part of what they ordinarily do as a team.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Thompson|first=Leigh|title=Making the team : a guide for managers|url=https://archive.org/details/makingteam00leig|isbn=978-0130143631|year=2000|publisher=Prentice Hall |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Of all organizational activities, one study found team-development to have the strongest effect (versus financial measures) for improving organizational performance.<ref>
Macy, B. A., & Izumi, H. (1993). "Organizational change, design and work innovation: A meta-analysis of 131 North American field experiments, 1961–1991", pp. 235–313 in W. Pasmore & R. Woodman (Eds.) ''Research in organizational change and development''. Greenwich, CT: JAI.
</ref> A 2008 meta-analysis found that team-development activities, including team building and team training, improve both a team's objective performance and that team's subjective [[supervisory rating]]s.<ref name="autogenerated1"/> Team building can also be achieved by targeted personal self-disclosure activities.<ref>
Pollack J., Matous P. (2019). "Testing the impact of targeted team building on project team communication using social network analysis", Journal of International Project Management 37, 473–484 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2019.02.005.
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