Aren’t they the Same Thing?

Team building and Community are different in 4 significant ways: participation, formats, goals and outcomes.

1. Participation

In team building, participation is typically mandatory; in Community building, participation must be voluntary.  Participants must elect to be there because they need to commit to the process.  (More about this here.)

2. Format

Team building involves an afternoon, a day, or a weekend in which employees engage in exercises, activities, games; Community building involves a program that focuses on conversations that forge connections and reveal/reinforce culture.

3. Goals

The goal of team building is to “improve productivity and motivation” according to this article; team building is about strategy.  The goal of Community building is to facilitate relationships among the participants; Community building is about culture.

I don’t need to remind anyone reading this what it is believed the business guru Peter Drucker said: Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast!

4. Outcomes

Team building does build camaraderie, no question about that.  But when the team returns to work, it’s business as usual. Community building transforms the group; when they return to work, work never again feels the same.

When you build a Community in an organization, your members will enjoy a culture where the people are as happy to come to work on Monday morning as they are to leave on Friday afternoon.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash