Strong teams = strong cultures

Team-building is one critical way to enhance the engagement levels and overall culture of an organisation, writes Dwain Richardson, managing director of Corporate Challenge Events

Strong teams = strong cultures

Team-building is one critical way to enhance the engagement levels and overall culture of an organisation, writes Dwain Richardson, managing director of Corporate Challenge Events

How do employees benefit from team-building events?

Team building is all about understanding, appreciating, and developing the people in your team.

Team-building events provide a time when the focus is purely on these outcomes, with no workplace distractions.

The benefits of team-building events really depend on what the organisation wants to focus on. Some of the main impacts are teamwork, communication, leadership, confidence, trust, responsibility, morale and bonding.

Most of these events are designed to be a combination of fun with a focus on specific outcomes that ultimately provide a boost to workplace culture.

What’s your advice for companies that want to build a positive team culture?

Practising a positive and fun team culture in your workplace requires time and commitment.

We all have many and various tasks to perform in our jobs. Particularly in busy times, the focus can become so heavy on completing tasks, meeting deadlines and getting the job done that we lose sight of enjoying work and operating effectively in teams.

In other words, we get too bogged down in day-to-day operations even though we know the value of a positive team culture. This is similar to exercise in many ways. We all know the benefits of being fit and healthy, yet other tasks often take priority over exercising.

The reality is that if we make the time and a commitment we will reap the rewards.

Undertaking an activity as a team focused on fun and positive outcomes or some training on practising a positive culture is a great place to start.

Why should organisations train with FISH!?

A: FISH! is a training philosophy highly regarded for transforming team cultures around the world since the late ’90s.

From my experience applying the principles of FISH! training, it has had a profound impact in five ways:

  1. FISH! shows that cultural change is the responsibility of everyone in an organisation, not just senior management. Each person is a vital cog for success and can impact others significantly.
  2. The training provides four simple practices that will build trust, teamwork, accountability and appreciation. The practices can be applied by anyone at any moment in any situation.
  3. It improves the culture within an organisation, which will lead to better customer service, resulting in greater customer satisfaction, increased repeat business and more referrals.
  4. Everyone has more appreciation for enjoying their job. Given we spend so much of our adult lives at work, it helps us understand how important and beneficial it can be to spend this time happy and motivated.
  5. FISH! develops leaders who lead, influence and inspire. It shows leaders there is always a choice of how we behave every moment of every day.
FAST FACT: Corporate Challenge Events has delivered more than 7,000 team-building events since 1994. The first event delivered was the RMIT Melbourne Pub Crawl back in the early ’90s.


Dwain Richardson
Managing director
CORPORATE CHALLENGE EVENTS