We all know how team building activities can empower employees to communicate more clearly and effectively and create more cohesive bonds with coworkers. But how can team building activities help CEOs specifically?
Team building activities for CEOs and senior executives should focus on skills that c-suite employees need to hone. Some of the skills CEOs need to hone include soft skills and motivation.
Hone Soft Skills
At c-suite levels, soft skills are more important than technical skills.
Companies hire the right workers to execute executives’ vision, and the role of the CEO is to ensure everything is running smoothly at a high level. Soft skills, such as empathy, communication, organization, and leadership are more important than the day-to-day workings of most employees.
Team building activities to hone soft skills may include communication-builders, empathy-enhancers and leadership activities.
Do your employees trust and respect you? Do they buy into company culture? Are you fostering their development and job satisfaction? Can you keep your department running smoothly with merely your leadership skills?
Less Focus on Teamwork
If you’re a c-level employee, there’s a good chance you didn’t get there alone.
Most CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, etc. already know how to foster a sense of teamwork. These are prerequisites for becoming a c-level employee. And while most team building activities for employees focus on teamwork, c-suite employees should focus more on enhancing their leadership abilities than their teamwork skills.
If you choose an Escape Room or Amazing Race scavenger hunt for executives, make sure to create an event that will help them coach their employees and work with them more effectively.
Before scheduling a team building activity for CEOs, ask yourself what your c-level employees need. The answer might not be teamwork skills.
Learn How to Motivate Employees
C-suite employees’ main concern is how well their department is performing.
And while it’s important for a CMO to understand the day-to-day workings of her department, it’s more important that she understands how to train and motivate her employees so that they have the tools to run seamless departments (and motivate their own employees).
Benefits of Team Building Activities for CEOs
Companies often need justification for removing their employees from their duties for even just a day. What is the ROI on team building activities? Will a day off work be worth it? What are the benefits of these activities?
Just as there are questions about the effectiveness of team building activities for average workers, there are also major concerns about the benefits of team building activities for executives.
Yet, one could argue that it’s even more important for c-suite workers to get these training days. Just some of the benefits of team building activities for CEOs include more effective communication and collaboration, better trust with employees, and enhanced listening skills.
Communicate/Collaborate More Effectively
No matter what your role at a company, c-suite employees need to be able to effectively communicate and collaborate with each other — and their employees.
All the technical knowledge in the world won’t replace (or hide a lack of) this skill.
As a c-suite employee, you need to be able to communicate with other senior executives as well as your employees. And team building activities for senior executives can help with both of these skills.
Even if you don’t think that your c-suite executives need this type of training, you may want to set aside time to focus on communication and collaboration skills.
Create Trust with Employees
We often think about how important it is for our high-level employees to trust those who work for them. But how often do we think about whether or not our employees trust their leadership?
For a department to run effectively, it’s important for employees to trust their leadership. If they don’t, there’s no way your department can succeed.
Enhance Listening Skills
Before you can establish trust, your employees need to feel heard. The better your c-suite employees are able to listen to their employees, the more trust they’ll be able to establish with them.
And we can all be better at listening sometimes, right?
Try to find team building activities for CEOs and senior executives that enhance listening skills. Find out where their blindspots lie when it comes to hearing their employees. Teach your c-level employees how to be better leaders.
Team Building Activities for CEOs
So which team building activities should you book?
Which ones can help enhance leadership skills while fostering trust and empathy with employees? Which ones will help your c-level employees communicate more effectively with their peers and those who work for them?
Leadership Activities
Try to find team-building activities that help your c-suite employees build leadership skills.
Yes, your senior executives should all have some type of leadership skills that got them to where they are today. But these skills need to be constantly developed and flexed over time. The leadership tips and tricks of yesterday don’t always work today.
Leadership team building events for executives might include leadership scenario trivia games, adventure course coaching, or field activity coaching.
Before throwing your executives into the deep end of leadership activities, make sure the event leader offers some tips or instruction on how to most effectively lead these activities.
Communication Activities
Communication is so important in leadership. If your senior executives can’t communicate with each other or their teams, they can’t expect their employees to communicate effectively, either.
Communication activities might include blindfolded obstacle courses (which are also great trust exercises), and “elephant in the room” (which can help foster conversations about tough or taboo subjects).
Trust/Empathy Activities
If your employees don’t trust and empathize with your senior executives, you have a serious problem on your hands.
Your c-suite employees need to initiate building trust and empathy with their employees — not the other way around.
Trust and empathy exercises might include employee trivia (find out who knows the most about their employees’ lives) and call-and-response storytelling (ask an employee to tell a story to an executive and then ask the exec to repeat the story back to the employee).
