International Journal of Marketing and Human Resource Management (IJMHRM)

Volume 6, Issue 3, Sep-Dec (2015), pp. 89-97, Article ID: IJMHRM_06_03_010

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ISSN Print: ISSN 0976 – 6421 and ISSN Online: 0976 – 643X
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IMPACT OF TEAM BUILDING

EXERCISES ON TEAM
EFFECTIVENESS
Ms. Neelam Saraswat
Research Scholar, Jagannath University, Jaipur

Dr. Shilpi Khandelwal

Professor, Jagannath University, Jaipur
ABSTRACT
“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains
the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so
rare” This sentence speaks a lot about the importance of Team Work and its
increasing popularity and widely practiced character in industrial and
business world.
Many challenging issues are being experienced in the Team Management
and in ensuring teams give desired results. Prominent among them is that
employees lack the basic team skills of problem solving, dealing with conflict,
conducting effective meetings, and interpersonal communication.
Against these challenges, there is a belief that team building interventions
can break ice amongst team members. Therefore, a research work entitled
“Effect of Team Building Exercises on Team Effectiveness” has been
undertaken to know the real impact which can be derived from team building
exercises.
The present research work is an attempt to study the impact of team
Building Exercises on team effectiveness. Major finding of this research
indicates that team building exercises have positive impact on team
effectiveness.
Key words: Teams, Team Effectiveness, Cohesiveness, Leadership, Conflict,
Etc.
Cite This Article: Ms. Neelam Saraswat and Dr. Shilpi Khandelwal, Impact of
Team Building Exercises on Team Effectiveness. International Journal of
Marketing and Human Resource Management, 6(3), 2015, pp. 89-97.
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 Ms. Neelam Saraswat and Dr. Shilpi Khandelwal

1. INTRODUCATION
Patrick Lencioni in his best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002) has
observed that “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains
the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.” In
today’s business scenario teams have come to be considered as a central element in
the functioning of organizations. The use of teams has been facilitated by a series of
studies reporting the positive relationship between team-based working and the
quality of products and services offered by an organization.
Since Businesses have realized that highly effective teams can positively affect the
company and help them stay competitive; businesses continue to search for ways to
improve teamwork through training and development. A variety of training and
development techniques have been used to enhance work teams. Organizations make
extensive use of teambuilding as part of growing and developing teams. Buller and
Bell (1986) has remarked that“One of the most popular intervention techniques in
organizational development (OD) is teambuilding.”
There is always mixed reaction when it comes to role of team building exercises in
increasing team effectiveness. In order to understand the true state of affairs, the
researcher has undertaken research to examine impact which team building exercises
and such interventions may have on team effectiveness and as to what extent. This
study is first attempt of its kind to be undertaken by the Researcher in Indian Context.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
On studying various research in the field of team, it has emerged that, a team can be
defined as (a) two or more individuals who (b) socially interact (face-to-face or,
increasingly, virtually); (c) possess one or more common goals; (d) are brought
together to perform organizationally relevant tasks; (e) exhibit interdependencies with
respect to workflow, goals, and outcomes; (f) have different roles and responsibilities;
and (g) are together embedded in an encompassing organizational system, with
boundaries and linkages to the broader system context and task environment.
Team building is a new concept used in business circles to stimulate work teams.
Its objective is to build team spirit, team synergy and to consolidate teams. Th terms
ha been defined in many ways. As defined by Dyer, “Team building is an intervention
conducted in a work unit as an action to deal with a condition (or conditions) seen as
needing improvement” (Dyer, 1977, p.41). In the words of Beer, team building is a
process by which members of a group diagnose how they work together and plan
changes which will improve their effectiveness (Beer, 1980, p. 140).
Teambuilding can be defined as “interventions designed to improve effectiveness
in working together by confronting and resolving problems” (Boss 1983: 66).
Hackman and Wageman (2005: 272) refine this improvement of effectiveness to refer
to “productive output”, “social processes” and “well-being of individual team
members”. These three outcomes of teambuilding are enlarged by a fourth dimension,
“organizational alignment” proposed by Thompson (2004: 36).
In the current study, the following definition of teambuilding was used:
Teambuilding is a specific intervention to address issues relating to the
development of the team. It consists of a one (or more) day programme focused on
improvement of interpersonal relations, improved productivity or better alignment of
team goals with organisational goals. These interventions may have emphasis on fun
and enjoyment (such as paintball, river rafting), simulation of workplace dynamics

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 Impact of Team Building Exercises on Team Effectiveness

(such as ropes courses), or problem-solving activities (indoor or outdoor experiential

games), psychometric assessment to ascertain roles and personality (Gmeiner & Van
Wyk 2001), adventure- based interventions as described by Kriek (2006) and Heunis
(1997), and also psychodynamic interventions, notably the Tavistock approach
(Cilliers 2000). Organizations utilizes a variety of types of teambuilding to facilitate
interventions for a variety of purposes, including improving interpersonal
relationships, increasing motivation, aligning with change programmes, increasing
productivity, finding direction and resolving conflict (Kriek 2007).

3. EFFECTIVENESS OF TEAM BUILDING

Views in this area are subject to tremendous diversity. Shandler and Egan’s have
concluded that by applying team building any group can transform itself into a high
performing team. As summarized by Salas et al (1999), in their research “Overall
there was no significant effect of team building on performance.”
In spite of the different types and the prevalence of the application of
teambuilding interventions, no clear answer on the success of team building
interventions is emerging. Some claim success (Mazany, Francis & Sumich 1995),
few others point to the lack of success of teambuilding (Wolff 1988; Woodman &
Sherwood 1980), and some indicate that the results are elusive and inconclusive
(Rushmer 1997). A number of different types of success outcomes have been studied,
which includes processes (for example, communication, coordination, decision-
making), team performance (for example, quality, quantity, efficiency) and affective
outcomes (for example, socialisation and trust). Some of the many different objectives
that can be targeted by team building interventions are improving problem-solving
skills, increasing trust, enhancing leadership skills, and improving communication
(Mazany, Francis, & Sumich, 1995; Williams et al., 2002). Activities that focus on
group cohesion, encourages participants to share responsibility and solve problems as
a group (Glass & Benshoff, 2002).
A number of factors could have possibly influenced the lack of conclusive results
including:
 Difficulty in comparisons across settings and types (Offerman & Spiros 2001)
 Application of experimental rigour not satisfactorily executed (Hardy & Crace 1997;
De Meuse & Liebowitz 1981)
 Methodological issues such as control, reality and certainty, as well as the difficulty
of distinguishing an intervention from t
Much of the research literature indicates that the concept of team building
becomes potentially, a powerful intervention for enhancing organisational
performance through employee development when the circumstances of the specific
team and organisational context are appropriate. (Dyer, 1977; Beer, 1976; De Meuse
and Liebowitz, 1980; Adair, 1986; Woodcock 1989).
The present research work is an attempt to study the impact of team Building
Exercises on team effectiveness. A Questionnaire named “TEAM Assessment
Questionnaire (TAQ)” was developed for the research purpose and the same was sent
to various teams in selected organizations. After collection of data at first stage, team
building exercises were conducted. After one month of conduct of Team Building
Exercises, Participants were again asked to fill “TEAM Assessment Questionnaire”
which was given to them at initial stage.

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 Ms. Neelam Saraswat and Dr. Shilpi Khandelwal

4. HYPOTHESIS OF THE STUDY

Following hypothesis were formulated keeping in mind the objectives, literature
review, observation made during pilot study, and discussions with practicing
managers and academicians.
Null Hypothesis Ho: Team Building exercises will have no significant impact on the
effectiveness of team within companies in service sector in India.
Research Hypothesis H1: Team Building exercises (independent variables) will have
significant impact on team effectiveness within companies of service sector in India
(dependable variables)
Study Design: The pretest-posttest comparison with control group is used in this
study. This design will compare the score of the course participants measured before
the team building exercise, with a score measured after it ends. At the same time,
Score was also 'measured' among the control respondents who were not attending any
team building exercise during the same time period.
Sampling: Three Public Sector Banks were approached for the purpose of the study.
Our sample included team members working in these organizations for more than one
year. For the purpose of study, team members working in Junior, Middle and senior
level and also clerical staff who are very important part of team are selected. The
other set of sampling units was used to select individuals for the control group. For
the study group, the selection of study participants was by one-stage cluster
sampling. Branches in Delhi/NCR whose more than three complaints have been
received from customers in preceding three month about behavioral aspects made up
the clusters. Simple random sampling was then used to select some (n) clusters, all
members of which are selected to be the study sample. For the control group, the
selection was simple random sampling. In selected three organizations, no team
building interventions were applied in past. 60 participants from each organization
were selected for experiment group. Thus in total 180 participants, participated in
team building exercises. Similarly total 180 participants were selected for control
group (60 from each organization). All data were collected anonymously so that no
individual inputs could be identified.
Data needed for this study were obtained through the use of questionnaire called
“TEAM Assessment Questionnaire (TAQ)” which was developed for the purpose of
the study. For the experiment and control group, the distribution of questionnaires was
done through the administrative officer of each organization. The posttest
questionnaires were distributed within one month of commencement of team building
exercises.

5. METHODOLOGY
Statistical tests of differences are performed to compare the scores of the scales
between or among the different levels of the demographic factors. This will indicate
whether the differences observed are large enough to suggest actual differences in the
population, or are just due to chance. The following dimensions are measured in the
pre-test and posttest: Leadership, Trust & Respect, Reward & Recognition, Customer
Focus, Decision making and Team Work.

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 Impact of Team Building Exercises on Team Effectiveness

6. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PRETEST AND THE

POSTTEST TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
To examine whether a team building exercises has any impact on team effectiveness,
measurements are made at two time points: before the programme starts (pretest, or
Time1), and after it ends (posttest, or Time 2). To be able to attribute the observed
differences to the training intervention, two sets of data are used. The first is the
treatment data, which was collected from participants who actually attended training.
The second dataset is the control data, which was collected from a similar group of
participants during the study period. If the treatment data shows significant changes
between the pretest and the posttest sets, and no changes are shown by the control
data, then the idea that team building exercises impacts Team Effectiveness is
supported. The paired samples t-test is used to test the hypothesis that the mean
differences between the pretest and posttest scores are zero.

7. STATISTICS OF THE TREATMENT AND THE CONTROL

DATA
Below given shows the statistics of the pretest and the posttest scores of the six
subscales of the treatment data. In the rows marked as ' T l ' and 'T2' are the observed
means and standard deviations of the scores of the six TAQ subscales. In the row
marked 'T2-T1 diff.' are the statistics of the differences between the posttest and the
pre-test scores. We observe an increase in the scores of all the subscales.

Table 1 Summary statistics of the treatment TAQ subscales

Leadership Trust& Reward& Customer Decision Team Total
Respect Recognition Focus Making Work
N 180 180 180 180 180 180
T1 X 17.47 21.62 16.70 18.83 17.93 19.20 111.75

S 2.80343 2.53087 2.36100 3.08628 2.92284 3.02946

T2 X 25.21 27.78 26.23 23.87 26.23 30.86
S 1.87216 1.66648 2.35372 1.67265 2.35372 2.15884 155.11

T2- Mean
T1 of 7.74 6.16 9.53 5.04 8.30 11.66 43.36
Diff Diff
The data shows that reported means for the pre-test and posttest are different for
all the dimensions. The total score on the pre-test and posttest showed a marked
increase. The factor that featured at the higher levels in the posttest (highest
meanscore) was teamwork and at the lower levels in the post-test (lowest mean) was
customer focus. This may indicate an improvement in the team effectiveness for all
the dimensions as well as a significant difference between pre-test and posttest scores.
The paired sample t-test was used to determine the significance level. Statistics
from the hypothesis test are presented in below given tables.
Null Hypothesis Ho: Team Building exercises (independent variables) will have no
significant impact on the effectiveness of team within Public Sector Banks
(dependable variables).

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 Ms. Neelam Saraswat and Dr. Shilpi Khandelwal

Research Hypothesis H1: Team Building exercises (independent variables) will have
significant impact on team effectiveness within Public Sector Banks (dependable
variables).
The average score of the posttest Scales is different from the average score of the
pretest scales, suggesting a change in the participants' perceived level of team
effectiveness over the period of training. The observed scores indicate that the change
is positive, an increase from the pretest to the posttest.

Table 2 Paired-sample t-test on the T2-T1 differences of the treatment data.

Leadership Trust& Reward& Customer Decision Team
Respect Recognition Focus Making Work
T 31.663 27.306 39.476 20.545 28.572 42.228
Df 179 179 179 179 179 179
P Value .001 .002 .007 .001 .001 .000
A significant difference was indicated in the all the dimensions. After examining
the results of the paired sample t- test, it was clear that all the six dependent variables
(dimensions), differed significantly statistically.
The same examination is carried out on the control data. Since the control
respondents did not attend any training over the study period, there are no pretest and
posttest learning scores in the actual sense. However, data was collected twice, at time
points T l and T2, to mimic the pretest and the posttest among the study (treatment)
respondents. However, for the whole of control data, a single T l to T2 period of one
month was used. The results of the paired samples t-test in below given table show no
evidence of significant differences between the scores of the two time points of any of
the six TAQ sub Scales among the control respondents. This finding implies that the
scores of the Six TAQ subscales do not change from time 1 to time 2. This supports
the idea that the scores of SIX TAQ Sub Scale do not change among those who are not
attending any training.

Table 3 Summary statistics of the Control TAQ subscales

Leadership Trust & Reward & Customer Decision Team
Respect Recognition Focus Making Work
n 120 120 120 120 120 120
T1 X 16.5500 21.7667 17.0667 18.1500 17.2167 18.0083
S 3.31498 1.99156 1.87103 2.08301 2.18790 2.62021
T2 x 16.5667 21.7583 17.0583 18.2500 17.0250 18.3167
s 3.34245 2.01145 1.88641 2.09301 2.81929 2.71909
T2- Mean
T1 of .0167 .00833 -.0084 .1000 .1917 .3064
Diff Diff
Table 4 Paired-sample t-test on the T2-T1 differences of the Control Data

Leadership Trust & Reward & Customer Decision Team

Respect Recognition Focus Making Work
T 1.00 1.00 .976 .975 1.861 1.742
Df 119 119 119 119 119 119
P Value .319 .319 .190 .201 .095 .083

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 Impact of Team Building Exercises on Team Effectiveness

Since significance level is above the cut-off value we have set (0.05) in all the
dimensions, we fail to reject the null hypothesis and cannot accept the alternative
hypothesis. There is no statistically significant difference between means of pre and
post-test data of control group participants on Six Dimensions of team effectiveness.
The results of the paired samples t-test in Table show no evidence of significant
differences between the scores of the two time points of any of the Six TAQ subscales
among the control respondents. This finding implies that the scores of all Six TAQ
subscales do not change from time 1 to time 2. This supports the idea that the scores
of Team Effectiveness do not change among those who are not attending any training.

8. CONCLUSION& RECOMMENDATIONS
Analyses on the treatment data have shown evidence that all Six of TAQ subscales,
have different means for time 1 (pretest) and time 2 (posttest). These findings seem to
suggest that Team Building Exercises do have an impact on the scores of the all Six
TAQ Sub Scales. In other words, there is an association between attending team
building exercises and team effectiveness. Analyses on the control data show no
significant differences between the time 1 and the time 2 scores of any of the TAQ
subscales. These results support the idea that changes in the scores of TAQ Sub
Scaled that we observe among the training participants can be attributed to the team
building intervention they attended. Looking at the observed values, it may also be
suggested that Team Building Intervention is successful in increasing Team
Effectiveness.
Below given are few recommendations related to conduct of Team Building Exercises
and use of Team Building Exercise sessions:
1. Team building exercises must be used only for developmental purpose. It should
not be linked with any punishment for not active participation in the exercises.
2. To make team building activity live up to its true potential and to fetch maximum
result out of it, it is necessary to integrate the team building with real-time work
goals.
3. It is necessary to make the good feelings and the outcomes from the team
building activity last beyond the final team building exercise. For this
organizations must work upon their policies on the basis of feedback received
from TAQ assessment.
4. The likely long-term effectiveness of a team building event is enhanced when
organizations incorporate annual team building events into an overall
company structure.
5. Proper designing of team building intervention and also its proper conduct is
necessary. Poorly designed team building exercises may lead on failure of team
building interventions and also team structure.
6. After team building exercises, there are likely chances that people will go back to
their old ways of doing things once they go back to the office. Teams need
support to build their strength gradually to change deep-rooted systems
effectively.
7. After the onetime event, there should be follow up workshops. To have a
successful team building process, the workshops should be well planned.
8. Team building should result in actionable ideas to help the team and the
organization achieve their goals. Continued learning and reinforcement are
necessities.

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 Ms. Neelam Saraswat and Dr. Shilpi Khandelwal

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