What is team building all about? Read some literature and you find accounts stuffed full of clichés, for example forming, storming, norming and performing. You will also find that a lot is written without reaching any point at all; so here is a no-nonsense guide to the essentials.

For a business team to work smoothly in this day and age, the members need to be able to communicate clearly with each other and with people outside of the team. So any team building exercise must include tasks that focus on this skill. Communication includes both are listening and talking, plus body language in face to face situations, so you should look closely at what activities your team building supplier offers and check that they include all aspects of communication.

The members of an effective team must be able to trust each other. This is why early team building involved many activities in the great outdoors in which team members had to put their trust and reliance in others. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but there are more sophisticated ways of developing trust and reliance these days. It is best to avoid this type of activity these days as it is not something that appeals to everyone. Early workers in the field of team development believed that people learnt best under stress. This is actually not the case, they learn best in a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere. So unless you have a team which really enjoys that sort of thing, choose something that is more likely to be universally appealing. For example, an overweight town dweller whose idea of an exciting holiday is to go to a different beach resort than the one that they have visited for the last twenty years is unlikely to find this type of challenge attractive!

Team members need to be problem solvers - this also was realised very early on, hence the development of 'plank, tyre and milk crate' types of exercise. Such activities can actually be done indoors or outdoors or according to the weather which was an improvement on the 'dump the team in mid-Wales in the rain' style of activity. Inevitably, with exercises such as this, only a few of the team are ever involved at any one time and therefore only a small proportion of your team will actually be developing their problem solving skills. The rest are passengers.

The team members need to be able to co-ordinate their actions. They must each be able to play their part at the right time if the overall goal is to be met. This gave rise to activities such as the parachute where the whole team must co-ordinate their physical actions to make a circular parachute flap up and down and do their bidding. At least this involves everyone but this traditional method is rather one dimensional and involves just a physical co-ordination rather than taking a more holistic approach. In my experience, if this lasts for more than a few minutes, people become bored. You might as well have your staff do the Mexican wave each morning in the workplace - it involves exactly the same skills (and is about as interesting).

Finally, a team needs to be able to follow instructions; that is where traditional team building falls down. There were no instructions with most traditional activities as they tended to be based on problems within an open framework. The only instruction was the goal of the task.

So to sum up ... look for a company who provides more creative team building methods in order to make your team more successful. Make sure are that your supplier provides activities that include all team members all of the time thus developing get a wide range of workplace skills in an interesting way that promotes communication and reliance on others. Spending a little time researching the activities will ensure that you receive value for money.