How to Build Trust with Corporate Team Building in Atlanta & Dallas

If you want to create a high performing team, the foundation of your corporate team building starts with building trust. Business author Stephen R Covey said, “Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people”.

Research reveals that high-performing teams develop a level of trust that makes each of the team members feel safe. This level of trust allows the type of open communication that leads to successful team results. So, what are the benefits of focusing on trust in your team building events?

• Trust builds the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake.
• Trust allows team members to communicate the information that they need to solve problems and to serve your customers.
• Trust will encourage team members to involve their team to solve problems that they can’t solve on their own. This leads to collaboration.
• Being able to create new ideas and take appropriate risks without fear, often leads to solving business problems more quickly.
• Trusting employees to make decisions gives them the power to solve customer issues without the delay of getting approval for every move.

As team workers get to know each other and work together, they develop two types of trust for each other. It starts with knowing that your workmate is a competent salesperson, accountant, coder or writer. You trust that she can do her job—so that you can do yours. Next, when you see that your co-worker is honest and dependable, you know you can trust them as a person. This type of trust develops when your co-worker does what they say they will do. Reliable and honest people are easier to work with because you know they will give you credit for your share of the work.

How Do We Build Trust in Corporate Team Building Events?

There are several ways to build trust in a new team or in a virtual team that usually works from separate remote locations. New team members develop trust as they get to know each other better. Trusting one another in small things can lead to greater trust over time. Since corporate team members may not work together every day, team building activities let us bring the whole team together to build trust and build better communication in a deliberate way.

 Why is Team Building Important to Build Trust?

Corporate team building is important because a healthy, trusting, inter-communicating team will be happier and more productive than a team that lacks trust. Good teams will also be more willing to explore creative solutions to achieving goals. Teamwork fosters a climate of cooperative problem-solving. Happy employees will have a higher job satisfaction, and be more likely to stay for the long term.

Two Levels of Team Building

Informal team activities such as eating together, socials and sporting events allow new team members to get to know each other as the basis for communication. While informal activities should be a regular part of team life, sometimes you need activities with more value. Structured team building events encourage the company culture and the values that you want to create. These structured events deliberately guide team members to interact in a way that brings out trust, communication and collaboration.

Benefits of Team Building Events with Cooking

Team building activities provide a safe environment outside the bounds of the workplace for people to explore their relationships in a new way. These activities can include sporting events, ropes courses, competitions and culinary events.

It can be difficult to select teambuilding activities where every employee will be able to participate equally. The ideal situation for learning could be an activity where everyone brings an equal level of skill. Physical activities like golf or a ropes course may be easy for some employees, while leaving other members of the team frustrated over their lack of athletic skills. This can be a barrier for teams with a mix of older workers and younger workers with a higher fitness level.

We believe that cooking events provide everyone with a level playing field. Everyone in the corporate team can contribute to the effort. This frees the team members to focus on building trust, open communication and problem-solving.

Team members don’t have to be a great cook to learn and benefit from this event. There is something for everybody to do, ranging from chopping onions or smashing garlic to making the event-winning sales presentation for your team. After hundreds of these corporate team events, almost everyone seems to enjoy themselves and become thoroughly engaged.

How Can Corporate Cooking Events Build Trust?

A professional chef will guide your corporate team through a scripted series of events to prepare a delicious meal in a short time frame, while communicating and collaborating to solve problems along the way. Your workplace team members will stretch to communicate with one another, and organize themselves to use their talents in a way that achieves their goal.

We actually have a 10 page script where we guide your group to work together and force the interaction and collaboration. Let’s look at the values fostered in the team building experience and see how they translate into the workplace.

How Team Building Values Translate to the Work Place

• Deadlines: in the Taste of Innovation and Team Building with Taste your event runs roughly 3 hours with 60 minutes for your team to cook your meal. Just like you have deadlines in business, we give you a deadline to help focus your attention. Nothing happens without a deadline.
• Trust your team: in the heat of competition all the team members must choose their portion of the work and rapidly deliver on that commitment.
• Open communication: the team must communicate what they need quickly in order to complete their cooking tasks. Under the time pressure of competition we have seen new junior employees show the confidence to speak up to gain the cooperation of senior leaders.
• Transparency and openness: transparency builds trust and secrets destroy it. Team members rapidly begin to realize that it’s best to publicly own up to mistakes when you make them. Openness allows us to acknowledge our mistakes and find a better way to achieve our goals in the kitchen or in the workplace.
• Feedback: no one is perfect. Throughout our daily work we are continually learning how we can use our skills better, how we can communicate in a more open way and how we can collaborate to better solve problems. Your team will receive feedback on how they performed at the end of the competition.
• Put the success of the team before your own success: in the heat of competition it is easier for team members to go beyond their own talents and achieve more than they could alone. Guided by a professional chef, your team members will be surprised at how well they do. The combined efforts of the team allow everyone to perform their best and gain a wonderful sense of accomplishment at the end.

Trust Building Results from Corporate Cooking Events

Over years of team building training, we have found our commercial kitchen is a great environment to teach the basic value of trust in the workplace. With the foundation of trust your team members will feel free to communicate openly and they will collaborate to solve problems creatively.

Culinary team building activities provide a unique environment for your team to work together, learn cooperation and communication, and troubleshoot any problems that may arise. These new dynamics can easily translate into your office’s environment. At Team Building with Taste, our goal is to help your team learn to set aside their differences and work together.