How connecting in nature transforms relationships and improves productivity

Team building shouldn’t be considered as something trivial like sharing a hobby, a drink or a meal. In its essence, team building experiences are an investment in the company, to elevate performance and improve productivity.

Throughout history, learning, rooted in nature, has helped individuals and teams improve and grow by overcoming challenges, fostering internal cooperation, building confidence, and creating situations with life-long impact.

Experiential learning and the workforce

Over the last four years, I’ve facilitated hundreds of team building experiences, and two key elements that play a vital role in creating quality bonds is nature and experiential learning.

Experiential learning methodologies are effective because the situations accelerate real life; fear of failure is limited; there is a sense of equality; there is strong engagement; and the meta-learning/reflection can be very compelling.

Experiential learning in nature takes it all to another level. As groups reflect after each activity, surrounded by the rugged forest with the birds chirping and a gentle breeze, the conversations are deeper and the “aha moments” emerge. Experiencing challenges together, sometimes winning and sometimes failing, helps teams learn more about themselves and each other in a safe and nurturing environment.

In the work environments, teams are more fluid and dynamic than ever. Work gets done in cross-functional project teams and committees, which makes it difficult to know colleagues, let alone understand what makes them tick.

With the pandemic, connecting teams has been even more challenging. There has been an absence of casual human interaction in the workplace, which often translates into isolation, mental health issues, and reduced trust. It takes extra effort to schedule a “casual conversation” over Zoom and that evaluation for a promotion keeps getting delayed.

Connecting teams has been even more challenging.

The lack of casual conversations and opportunities for constructive feedback make problems fester and opportunities for growth and development are often lost. Leaders must pay attention to relationships, teams, defining roles and responsibilities and organisation culture as they all impact productivity and the bottom line.

Psychological safety

A worker is 12 times more likely to be fully engaged if they trust their team leader (Hayes, Chumney, Wright & Buckingham, 2019). According to a Harvard study, 89 percent of employees believe that psychological safety in the workplace is essential.

Harvard’s Amy Edmonson coined the term “psychological safety” in a 1999 journal article exploring its relationship to team learning and performance. “Psychological safety means an absence of interpersonal fear. When psychological safety is present, people are able to speak up with work-relevant content.”

A Google survey of what makes a Google team effective found that: “Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.” We are seeing this in action on the Premier League football fields, where having a team of the “best players” in the world doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to play together.

Team building in nature opens teams to play and be themselves.

The Google survey results showed that psychological safety or trust came up as the number one element that impacts the effectiveness of a team.

Discovery

Team building in nature opens teams to play and be themselves, thus nurturing trust and psychological safety. Creative approaches to challenges often emerge from the least likely participants.

We’ve noticed how participants often say that they feel like they are “miles away from civilisation”, while technically being still in the city. They feel “free”, and their smiles become noticeably wider and happier. Connecting in nature relieves stress, transforms relationships, and serves as a stage that allows teams to flow as they approach and conquer the challenges ahead of them.

Add another layer with a psychometric tool such as the Leadership Circle Profile or the Reiss Motivation Profile, and the reflections and conversations just get deeper. The more self-aware we become, the better we can navigate between our conversations, actions, and behaviours, improving both our individual and team performance. Nature is a wonderful stage on which to build self-awareness.

The conversations that arise from involving one another and sharing common experiences with powerful learning outcomes, can help reduce conflict, misunderstandings and humanise those we do not normally see.

Experiential team building in a natural setting is an incredible tool to build trust, connect teams, develop leaders, transform relationships, and ultimately improve productivity.