1. Makinika Afrika Intl
THE POWER OF TEAM BUILDING AND TEAMWORK
By: Amb Steve Mbugua , Director & Founder Makinika Afrika Intl
‘Two heads,’ they say, ‘arebetter than one.’ It is a conventional truth that where team playing is given
priority, productivity rises culminating in further increase in returns. Team building has been explained by
many people including sociologists as pulling all resources of an organization including its human capital
together and relating with one another in a mutually beneficial manner for optimal maximization of the goals
of an organization.
A team is a unit of two or more people who interact and coordinate their work to accomplish a specific goal.
The concept of team implies a sense of shared mission and collective responsibility.
Although a team is a group of people, team and group are not interchangeable. Putting together a group of
people does not necessarily mean you have built a team.
Makinika Afrika International coordinates and help a lot of corporate organizations and institutions to
conduct team building events and activities and the results have always been amazing. Most of the activities
are held during the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility activities. These activities boosts the
employees’ morale in a great way. Where there is Team Work, more is achieved with less energy and time.
Together Each Achieve Much (TEAM).

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The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex
overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Team building is part of a psychological discipline often referred to as organisational psychology. It stimulates
communication among groups of workers through a series of events that are fun and motivational. This
eventually gives workers greater job satisfaction that leads to a hike in productivity.

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Values of team building
Team work involves more people sharing resources, ideas and energy for a common goal. Such teamwork
provides avenue for strengthening the weakness of all parts of the organization especially the leadership.
Team provides an opportunity for a wide spectrum of perspectives on how to meet an objective, thus,
devising numerous options for each situation.

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Again, effective teamwork creates a situation where credits, losses and blames become shared
responsibilities. This in effect, precipitates a climate of understanding and we-feeling; individuals do not see
losses or weaknesses as opportunities for championing their own ulterior whims and caprices.

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Whoseresponsibility?
Human beings have been described as gregarious animals by anthropologists. In almost all spheres of live,
leaders have often been chastised for flaws in organisations vilely upon mere speculations. It is unequivocally
factual that it takes all parts of the human anatomy to make one function well. In the same vein, an
organisation can be described as an entity that works efficiently when all its components execute their
functions in a cohesive manner.
It is indisputably clear here that it takes the collective efforts of both employees and employers to make an
organisation succeed or fail. In other words, team building is a responsibility of both line management and
subordinates.
A chief executive officer or a managing director, whose demeanour in an organisation suggests a master-
servant relation, elicits fear from his/her lieutenants but not without hate, ridicule and ill-wish. This situation
disintegrates rather than integrating the publics of an organisation.
Some people for some self-aggrandizement would want to segregatethemselves from any attempt at an
organisational team building. Peeved, dejected and uncertain they become sociopaths and do things that
obviously affect the team adversely.
Managers must therefore develop sturdy interpersonal knacks so as to induce good working relationship
based on mutual trust, respect and support.
Managing team building
As I have already stated, an organization is a human institution with so many parts all of which areessential
for attaining the organizational goals. As a human institution, it is difficult to have a perfect team building. It
can however, be well managed to achieve the desired results. The following are important in seeking to
achieve teambuilding in your firm:
• Assure a free flow of communication and an exchange of ideas between management and the other
workers encouraging those who don’t participate to actively get involved;
• Define specific targetsand objectives and make known such objectives to the workers:
• Define clearly, what duties are to be accomplished by various departments and if possible, each individual;
• Feedback box is important. It gives workers opportunity to feed management about what facilitates
effective cohesion and what inhibits effectiveness;
• Hold seminars to explain the vision and mission as well as the objectives, to clarify roles and expectations,

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and to build cohesion among the workers.
• Sponsoring informal events such as get-together (including spouses or partners); rewarding hardworking
workers selected by co-workers, or celebrating a worker’s birthday or achievement brings about affection
and oneness in an organisation;
• Management should not take sides in conflict situations;
• Compliment workers in public while correcting them only in private (where possible).
All workers in an organization should first and foremost appreciate the fact that they are not visitors who are
doing the organization a favour by working there. They should realize that it takes their efforts, commitment
and willingness to build a paradise that would eventually affect their own welfare positively.
After all, as Rensis Likert puts it, ‘the greater the loyalty of a group toward the group [or the organisation],
the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the [organization] and greater is
the responsibility that the [organization] will achieve its goals.’
We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
- Benjamin Franklin
We must as workers, appreciate the fact that talent may win games but teamwork and intelligence win
championships.

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It is amazing how much people get done if they do not worry about who gets the credit. Remember,
teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.