Author: Team Building

Give your team a mid-week opportunity to celebrate.

A poll carried out among British workers suggested that we are at our best at precisely 11.33 am on a Tuesday. Mondays are spent recovering from the weekend and coping with the realisation that there is a full working week ahead, but by Tuesday morning most of us are into our stride and raring to go. This can-do attitude reaches its peak at around 11.30am on Tuesday, by which time we’re enthusiastic, organised and feeling in control. Unfortunately this positive performance peak only lasts a day – come Wednesday afternoon the motivational heights have been scaled and we’re on the downward slope to the weekend with most of us easing off on the productivity and intensity of work so that by Friday, we’re ready for the weekend again.

If this sounds familiar, or explains working patterns in your own team throughout the week, there are two ways of dealing with it.

The first is to acknowledge this ebb and flow of energy and productivity as part of the working dynamic of any team, and to plan around it. Avoid scheduling important or lengthy meetings for Monday mornings and Friday afternoons and instead use this time for consolidating – planning for the week ahead or reviewing the week just gone; looking at what has gone well and what we could do more of both to contribute to the team and to help manage our workload. Use the Tuesday-to-Wednesday peak to tackle the more demanding tasks and for reducing the To Do list to more manageable proportions.

The second is to try to build on that Tuesday feeling by motivating the team and keeping energy levels higher for longer. Find an excuse or opportunity for a mid-week celebration and team get-together, whether it’s an informal chat, a review of success to date or a more formal acknowledgement of great performance. Or do something fun together – a picnic lunch, a fun team energiser or watching some comedy to share a laugh. We all know that not every day can be a Friday, but at least they shouldn’t all be Monday mornings.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Team Building.

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This blog is written by Fresh Tracks: Experts in running team building activities and events. For more information about their events click here.

From time to time most teams experience a falling out among team members. If not quickly resolved this can have a significant impact not just on the people in dispute but also on their colleagues.

Here are a few thoughts to help your team to deal with the discord: Continue reading “Ways to Resolve Conflict in Your Team”

Employee’s excitement and motivation is at its peak when first hired. However, it is common that after settling into a routine of the daily grind, the excitement and motivation begins to wane. Before that happens the employer has an opportunity to reverse the trend. Parties everyday is impractical but team building days that happen once, twice or even three times a year can build moral among the entire workforce.

Team-Building is Important to Employee’s Sense of Belonging
Team building is the most important term. The purpose is to include everyone and to encourage those that tend to keep to themselves to join into the activities. Employees learn things about themselves and the ones around them that they never knew before.

• Misunderstandings can dissolve when seen from a different perspective
• Alliances are formed when faced with a dilemma to work through
• Personalities are exposed in new and different ways
• Ideas come to those that free themselves from the “it is how it has always been done” mentality

Team-building days are fun as well as challenging.

There is going to be a Team-Building Day – Now What
It is easy to talk about a team-building day but making it happen may be more challenging. Deciding what to do and where to do it involves making many decisions, consideration of the cost and what would make the greatest impact. Why not let the employees plan the day? The details would be different for a small business compared to a large business of course. A small business may include only a few employees while a larger business could include a hundred or more. The type of business would also make a difference – would outdoor challenges be best or would a cooking class be better?

What is the best Team-Building Event
Team-Building events are often thought of as outdoor challenges like rock climbing and obstacle courses. They may even include a trip to another state or a cruise to an exotic island. While those are great ideas they are not the only way to improve employee motivation. The state of the economy over the past several years has caused many businesses to change their extravagant ways. In some ways that is a good thing because often simple is better. Employees interact with each other instead of their surroundings. Getting to know each other is easier when there are fewer events.

Asking the employees what they would like may be surprising. Special training to improve their positions in the company, working together for a charity or taking hands on cooking class given by a celebrity chef may be exactly the right plan.

Team-Building Days Improve Employee’s View of their Job
Employees that love their jobs appreciate the benefit of a team-building day. Positive events also affect employees that have begun to dread going to work every day. Create a scrapbook to remind each employee and the employer of what is good about where they work now and in the future.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Team Building.

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Written by guest writter Tom Tolladay, event organiser for Chillisauce.

GROUP DEVELOPMENT

Below is an idea for a team building activity focusing on the what happens when new members join a team.

Learning Objectives
1. To experience the process and feelings that arise when a new member joins
an ongoing group with defined tasks and roles;
2. To explore the coping mechanisms adopted by the individual and the group
to deal with entry problems;
3. To examine functional and dysfunctional coping strategies of groups. Continue reading “Free Team Building Activity: Group Development”

I believed I was part of a group of people who had each other’s best interests as a core of operation. This group could best be classified as a Self-Managed Team where there was no distinct team leader, for example a string quartet. The group generally worked well together over a period of time, but there were a number of occasions over the years when I was, actively or accidentally, left on the sidelines when all others in the group were made part of the project at the time. In these instances I took the initiative and asserted myself. At the conclusion of the projects, matters were discussed by all of us and resolved. I always thought the group would perform better as a result.

Until recently, when the same group planned and executed a complete project without my input at all. They were inconsiderate and exclusive, in my opinion. Maybe the problem was me. I thought I was performing well and on further analysis I was. The issue was the group not seeing value in every member. I had made myself a part of the wrong group. I persevered though, and gave chance after chance, adjusted my values and made rationalisations. I reflected on the circumstances for a whole week and concluded that compromising myself like that was unacceptable and led to unhappiness and stress.

The situation is still difficult to talk about and I cannot provide further detail here. Removing the emotion is hard too, but it needs to be done to write about this experience objectively. With respect to teamwork and group dynamics, sometimes you just have to cut a group loose and find your own way!

Within any effectively performing group, members are given the opportunity to raise issues and concerns, contribute knowledge and opinions, and assist in operational decision-making and planning activities. Forums such as team meetings, one-on-one meetings, planning days, performance appraisals, conferences, etc all help people to develop relationships, share information, understand each other’s work and discuss issues related to the achievement of team goals. But when (not if) the group dynamics break down, what then can be done?

Being comfortable and confident in your own abilities provides a solid psychological basis for dealing with a breakdown in positive group dynamics. Knowing where your strengths lie can allow you to explore your own shortcomings more effectively. Learn from your experiences and analyse and reflect upon the feedback you have received in the past. Ensuring you are completely comfortable with your own strengths and limitations reduces the need to completely rely on others within the group for affirmation.

Next, recognise the situations in which you cannot please everybody and simply act with your best judgment – especially if you are leading the group. Any golfer or tennis player will tell you that you have to be able to trust your shot. So, too, a group member or leader has to be able to trust in their own well-informed decisions to be able to move forward. If there are issues affecting group performance, they need to be addressed promptly and directly. Offer or seek out opportunities to improve performance. This indicates to the rest of the group a willingness to work with them to explore solutions.

Despite all of these strategies there will be occasions where a group member simply makes the choice to NOT work with you in the team or with the team as a whole. Recognise this and discuss the choice with them, exploring feelings, reasons and specific examples. This can be quite a confronting exercise but it is worthwhile for peace of mind. If it comes down to it, be prepared to walk away yourself or to let them leave the group, depending on the situation. Sometimes, it’s simply just the best option for you/the group. In my situation from earlier, it was the best option for me.

The final piece of advice is to accept the consequences of your chosen action. Acceptance will eventuate after an initial period of anger or disappointment and then a period of reflection. It is important to work through these thought processes so you can then mentally equip yourself to move on to new opportunities with a renewed sense of determination.

I shall end this article with two quotes:
1. “The well-run group is not a battlefield of egos.” – Lao Tzu, Chinese Taoist philosopher
2. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill, British WWII Prime Minister

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For more resources, see our Library topic Team Building.

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Writen by guest writer Jason Novosel from Novohorizons Management Training

The emergence of the team idea can be traced back to the late 1920s and early 1930s with the now classic Hawthorne Studies.

These involved a series of research activities designed to examine in-depth what happened to a group of workers under various conditions. After much analysis, the researchers agreed that the most significant factor was the building of a sense of group identity, a feeling of social support and cohesion that came with increased worker interaction.

Elton Mayo(1933), one of the original researchers, pointed out certain critical conditions which were:

• The manager had a personal interest in each person’s achievements.
• The manager took pride in the record of the group.
• The manager helped the group work together to set its own conditions of work.
• The manager faithfully posted the feedback on performance.
• The group took pride in its own achievement and had the satisfaction of outsiders showing interest in what they did.
• The group did not feel they were being pressured to change.
• Before changes were made, the group was consulted.
• The group developed a sense of confidence and candour.

These research findings spurred companies to seriously consider the idea of grouping their employees into effective work teams and to this day they are still important considerations for human resource developers.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Team Building.

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This blog is written by Fresh Tracks: Experts in running team building and team development programmes and conference organising.
Website: www.freshtracks.co.uk

There’s been a lot of talk about happiness and general well-being of late. Here we explore the four components of happiness and ask if busy teams can ever achieve a happy state.

Since becoming the Conservative leader and Prime Minister in the UK David Cameron has argued that we should be monitoring GWB (General Well Being) alongside GDP (Gross Domestic Product). This is an idea possibly inspired by the Kingdom of Bhutan’s GNH measure (Gross National Happiness), but Bhutan isn’t facing huge state spending cuts and bailing out neighbouring countries. Continue reading “Want your team to be happy? Here are the 4 components of happiness”

It’s always going to be the case that you find some people easier to work with than others.

Sometimes you can pinpoint the problem immediately (if, for example, your employee is lazy or unresponsive, comes in late and leaves early, shirks responsibility, or constantly questions your authority without cause).

But there are times when your personality just isn’t compatible with those on your team. Unfortunately, you still have work with these people and find a way to motivate them so that the whole team can realize success.

To that end, here are a five simple ways to keep the peace and get everyone working towards the same goal: Continue reading “Five Techniques for Motivating a Team”

So much has been said, written and thought about leadership that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to identify what actually makes a good leader.

So when the BBC announced it was dedicating two thirty minute radio shows to the subject, by asking leaders from politics, business and sport what they believe makes a good leader, we had to tune in. Listen again to the programme here: http://bbc.in/fbhJ5S.

So here are 10 of the attributes listed by the leaders interviewed included: Continue reading “10 Attributes of a Leader”

Group. Project. These are possibly two of the most dreaded words to an Massachusetts Institute of Technology Student, inducing fears of getting stuck with the slacker partner or pulling an all-nighter to throw together a half-effort project.

The biggest of these projects is a semester long research project in a lab class, for which I have so far invested upwards of 20 hours a week, one all-nighter and countless late nights with my two partners. The class has a required team building component, one that we were all contemptuous of at first. Team building? Setting ground rules? Why should we waste our time learning things like that when there was real work to be done? Continue reading “3 steps to forming cohesive teams”