Disappointed That Team Members Won’t Join In On Team Trip

I have a team of twenty one people in the Call Center (Inbound Department). I am happy with their performance — they are punctual, good in attendance and achieving their targets. Recently I had arranged a team building trip to keep them relaxed and happy but I was really shocked to see that only ten team members were willing to go, so I have postponed this activity. Please guide me in what rewards or activity I can arrange for my team to keep them motivated and devoted toward work.

The Team Doc Says…

Kudos to you for trying to do the right thing. I know it’s disappointing when you set out to do good things for your team members and it seems it’s not appreciated. I’m working on assumptions here, so correct me if I’m wrong.

It sounds like you planned this team building trip without asking for input from your team. That’s an all too common problem encountered by many team leaders. We plan something we would like to do, not necessarily what our team members like to do.

You don’t indicate whether this was during working hours or time off, but that may be a big factor. A lot of team members just plain like to leave work at work. If this must be an after hours event, you’ll never get one hundred percent participation and that’s okay.

Since you postponed the team building trip because of slim attendance, start over by getting your team together. Tell them you want to have an outing to show your appreciation for their dedication and hard work and you’d like some ideas. Expect there will be lots of diverse opinions here. Whittle the list of ideas down to two or three and have the team members indicate which they would be most likely to attend. Then take the idea with the best possible attendance and run with it.