I have run hundreds of team building programs over the past nine years, and in that time, I have observed countless hours of teams doing what teams do – working together towards a common purpose – with, it has to be said, varying results.

As much as there have been consistently good things teams display, there’s been plenty of mistakes. So in the spirit of learning from mistakes, here’s my top eight that I have seen for you to avoid.

1. Not Listening

Communication is as much about listening as it is talking. So many teams have people in them that just don’t do this. Some people do too much/all of the talking, and not enough listening. I know it’s an easy trap to fall into, and most of us are guilty of it from time to time. Have a think about what you do, next time you are communicating within your team, and check yourself. Should you stop talking, and do some listening?

2. Not Talking

What are the three ‘Cs’ of teamwork? Communication, communication, communication. Too often teams are not communicating – with each other and also outside the team. This can be poisonous, leading to misinterpretation, silos and barriers of misunderstanding. There has to be a constant conversation taking place. This can be a fault of the team as a whole, but also this applies to some individuals, especially the quieter introvert types. Too often I have seen a team working to solve a problem, and as a disconnected observer, I have seen that one quiet person in the team begin to ‘get it’ and try to tell the rest of the group that they have the answer, but because they are quiet or shy or junior or new, and because the more dominant, senior or vocal members of the team aren’t listening, they give up. They eventually get to the solution later, but could have got there so much quicker if (a) there was better listening, but also (b) if that person had spoken up.

3. No Planning

Most team building activities begin with a brief from the facilitator which includes some advice to spend time planning. This is sound advice for any team activity. OK you may not have much time but to fail to plan is to plan to fail, right? Common mistake #3 is for teams to just get straight into the task. As soon as you have done that, you have lost the opportunity to have an objective look at the big picture and make a plan of how you are going to go about it. It’s a classic failure, as people are naturally competitive and every team has someone or some people who are very task focused and they naturally just want to get on with the job. How much more successful could they have been had they just spent a few minutes planning what they are going to do?

4. Leadership Failure

This is a massive topic and not one to get into in a big way here. I have written more about leadership on this post if you are interested). The leader is the linchpin of the team in so many ways and if there’s ever any one individual who makes or breaks a team, the leader is it. Too often I have seen them be responsible for some form of team failure.

Here’s one example for you. I ran a sports Olympics style event once and the leader showed up, chatting and socialising with the teams before it began. Good start, but then whilst all his employees were competing in the activities, he sat by the pool at the hotel we were working at, not even watching them play, let alone taking part. They worked hard (in the heat – it was a hot day here in Dubai) and when they were doing their final obstacle course activity, he decided to show up and stand on the sideline, laughing whilst throwing footballs at the participants as they were crawling under some cargo netting. Epic fail. Leaders – earn your corn by getting your job right, and stop throwing footballs!

5. Falling into the Competition Trap

Some team building activities are designed to have a need for teams to collaborate with other teams in order for the whole group to succeed. This is a great lesson as cross team collaboration is often so important to real success where they actually do their work.

Even when the instruction is very clear to the teams that they can only succeed if they collaborate with other teams, it takes too long for them to get it, if at all. It’s partly going back to #1 on the list – lack of listening skills as they don’t listen to the instruction and are just jumping straight into the activity being presented to them (mistake #3) but they revert to the human instinct which is to compete. This comes from the survival gene within us, and is so strong it takes over our conscious thought sometimes. We have to override this outdated instinct sometimes and spot the requirement and opportunity to collaborate in order to succeed.

6. Not Focusing on the Goal

Sometimes when we are in the middle of running the team building activity, I stop the teams and ask them a question like ‘when will you know when you have succeeded?’ or ‘what does success look like?’ and too often, they either don’t know or take a while to really answer the question. Despite clear instruction at the beginning, they lose sight of the goal and get so stuck in the task they forget to lift their heads up now and again and realign their focus on what’s important. Also teams often focus on the big shiny thing which they think is the most important goal, and neglect the more subtle or less overt goal which isn’t sitting right in front of them. Teams need to understand what truer success looks like, and keep focused on leading themselves to that ending.

7. Fearing Change

Another tactic I like to use in the middle of a team building exercise tests the teams’ attitude towards change. We ask teams to nominate someone in their team who is their best worker at that task, ostensibly to give them recognition for work well done, but then we ask those nominees to switch to another team. People revert to their gut feeling which is to fear this sudden and unexpected change – for a deep seated fear of the unknown. They don’t want to lose their strongest asset, and they resist the incoming stranger. I get why this happens, from the 99% of human existence where the unknown was more likely to represent threat rather than opportunity and the natural response was the three Fs – fight, flight or freeze.

This is now a redundant tactic in the workplace, where the unknown is no longer dangerous (for most of us – I leave soldiers out of that comment). We should be embracing change and looking for the opportunity it brings to our team. The correct response is to thank the departing team member for what they have contributed and wish them well, and look to learn from the new member – after all, they came to us because they were the best elsewhere, which must count for something.

8. Not Being Present

There are so many distractions in the world today that mean people are often not present in the moment when they are most needed. Examples like phones, apps and the Internet constantly distract people, as they do all day and every day. We are only asking people to concentrate for an hour or two on the team building activity we are running but they still can’t leave their phone alone. This is something we are all guilty of to some degree or another and putting our devices down to be present in the moment is a discipline we should all get into. There’s nothing more frustrating when in a team interaction (e.g. a meeting) to see people not being present because they are in the room but on their phone. People need to make a conscious choice to focus and not get distracted.