Building Bonds Through Bites
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Stronger teams provide better results. But how do you strengthen your teams for better performance? Effective team building activities.
Team bonding over food brings many benefits. We will explore these in this article. Additionally, we will discuss how to incorporate team building activities with food.
Benefits of Team Building Activities with Food
Team building activities, more so specifically, team building activities with food provides an immense number of benefits to teams. These benefits can impact a business’s performance in a positive way.
Let’s explore the benefits of team building in more detail.
1. Stronger Communication
Communication is an area that many teams struggle with. Team building activities with food encourage communication through shared experiences. In a culinary setting, teamwork plays a crucial role, and effective communication is highly valued. In a kitchen, there is no time for “beating around the bush.” Each cook must speak clearly and succinctly.
As the clock starts and the team starts cooking, they assign responsibilities to each member. These teammates must then coordinate their actions and come up with an action plan on the spot. Are they sticking to the recipe? Going off recipe? Bringing one of their “go-to” approaches to the show.
Not only will your team be encouraged to communicate, but they will also have the opportunity to learn and understand each person’s unique communication style. This fosters the development of their leadership skills.
2. Enhanced Creativity
Creativity does not need to mean that you work in a creative environment, such as a graphic designer. Creativity has a broad range of definitions and it tends to be unique to each person. Increasing creativity through team building is important.
In culinary team building, you can creatively compose a plate. Or you can make your pitch to the judges very creative and engaging. Moreover, by delving deeper into this aspect, your team will enhance their creativity by acquiring novel approaches to tackle challenges, thereby sharpening their logical and critical thinking skills.
When your team can solve challenges more effectively, it instantly improves their creativity by allowing them to free up that extra mental capacity to refocus on their work, rather than on problems.
3. Increased Morale
Enhancing morale is a great thing. It helps team members learn to share happiness which increases the morale of everyone around the board.
Let’s talk examples for a moment:
- In the office, John is normally very quiet and keeps his head down.
- But kitchens inspire him and give him confidence. John goes to a team building event and learns new creative skills and improves his leadership skills through strong communication
- John goes back to work the next day and notices his teammates are talking to him more
What happened here?
John spoke up during the culinary activities and learned that he is a natural leader and as a result, his team’s morale was raised because they learned that John is actually really awesome!
The other way that building bonds through bites is so effective at raising morale is that team members get to work together to solve challenges and then they get to share the reward which is a nice, hot and tasty meal.
Food for many is a natural bond builder, it’s just as the old saying goes “break bread together”. Breaking ‘bread’ together here is enjoying a nice meal, in which everyone gets a moment to reflect on what they learned and then share their feedback.
If you’re looking for more information about this benefit, reach out to Team Building with Taste today and we’ll share real examples from our clients.
4. Increased Trust
How well do you know your teammates? Have you truly seen how they perform under rapid stress? Team building in a culinary environment is perfect to learn more about your team’s performance under pressure.
Increased trust is just one of the many benefits that naturally occur in a culinary setting.
Why is that?
Trust is not given, it’s earned. Working together in what many would consider to be stressful can help teammates increase their trust for another by knowing that they have each other’s backs.
If you need that onion chopped in a small dice and you need it now, you have to trust your teammate to get it done for you.
Maybe your teammate is multitasking and they have to run off and check something on the stove. You need to “have their back.” Your trust in your teammate is being assigned by the thought that if the teammate fails, it’s at your delegation and instruction, which as you’d guess it, a failed assignment could mean a bad meal. It can be a little stressful, but also rewarding.
5. Reduced Conflicts
Another benefit of team building activities with food is reduced conflicts.
Reduced conflicts come from the range of team bonding benefits we’ve talked about this far:
- Stronger Communication
- Enhanced Creativity
- Increased Morale
- Increased Trust
If you review the list of items we’ve talked about thus far, it shows very evident that reduced conflict is a given. Teams will learn how to solve problems more effectively by relying on others.
How to Incorporate Team Building Activities with Food in Your Business
From small groups to large groups, building bonds through bites is easy to implement in any business.
Team Building with Taste
The fastest and easiest way (and most cost-effective way) is to use Team Building with Taste. Team Building with Taste is a team building business in Atlanta, GA that provides culinary cooking classes.
Implement your next team’s bond building activity with Team Building with Taste and discover just how beneficial building bonds can be in teams.