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Our new team building event – it’ll really get up your nose

This month it’s been hard to miss the highly polished and celebrity endorsed TV commercials for exotic perfumes.

Scent forms a significant part of all our lives whether we wear perfume or not – our food, washing powders, cleaning products and even hotel lobbys are infused with odours designed to make us feel either calm or energised, happy or nostalgic.

Our latest team building event The Perfume Challenge is…

Large scale team building event – when co-operation is the name of the game

The very nature of team building activities encourages participants to co-operate with their team members to achieve success, but a lot of these activities rely on competition rather than co-operation.

Messages about the importance of co-operation and communication across the whole organisation rather than just within a small team can therefore be missed. With this in mind Fresh Tracks developed a new large scale team building exercise a couple of years ago – The Team Machine – based on a construction exercise that many will recognise from their childhood….

Our New Olympic Team Building Event – The 2012 Office Games

Whether you managed to get tickets or not, and whether you live close to an Olympic venue or not, the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London are going to generate huge amounts of media coverage, visitors and international sporting attention making it nigh on impossible to miss.

As winners step up to the podium we’ll be hearing about the importance of working together as a team and finding the strength and determination to succeed, sometimes against the odds. …

Five Ways to Resolve Conflict in Your Team

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:…

Manners versus Productivity

When I was a boy my dad used to frequently remind me of the adage: “Manners maketh the man”. Now as a parent myself I see why he did this – good manners give a child a distinct advantage over their contemporaries.

Adults are more inclined to listen to the opinions of a well-mannered child, they more readily submit to their requests on hearing a sincere ‘please’ and are more likely to remember the birthday of a child who always sends a thank you note.

Despite our determination to instill these habits into the next generation, many of us seem less inclined to maintain the same degree of good manners in the workplace….

Free Entry To Chocolate Week – Chocolate Unwrapped at Vinopolis

We invented the team building activity The Chocolate Challenge, so we are obviously fans of chocolate.  

For anyone else who is also a fan complete the sentence below in the most inspiring and amusing way and you will win two tickets to the Chocolate Unwrapped show at Vinopolis in London on 15th and 16th October. We will also have gourmet chocolate bars for the runners up.

The Chocolate Challenge team building event by Fresh Tracks is….

Once you have come up with your inspiring or amusing sentence please email us at mail@varndev.co.uk.

For information about Chocolate Unwrapped read below:…

Five things a leader should do to get the best out of their team

In the numerous obituaries that have been published for Steve Jobs, the word visionary seems to be the most quoted adjective in an attempt to define his leadership style.

There’s no doubt that teams need their leader to be clear about what they are aiming for, but it takes more than a vision to get the best from a team in the long term.  So here are five things a leader should do to get the best out of their team:…

Team Briefings – Boring or Brilliant

On 21st October Fresh Tracks hosted a seminar entitled “How to Deliver Tremendous Team Events”. In preparing the programme we’ve talked to several team leaders and one of the greatest areas of concern currently is that regular Team Briefings are lacking and ineffective. This is particularly the case in organisations undergoing change.

In pondering how to add value to Team Briefings in the workplace I couldn’t help but wonder how Martin Johnson approaches the half time team talk he gives the England Team playing in the Rugby World Cup. These short pep-talks can make all the difference as brilliantly illustrated by Al Pacino’s character in the American Football movie: Any Given Sunday (YouTube clip).

Sometimes a pep-talk isn’t appropriate – perhaps an open discussion is a better way for the team to air their feelings; or an energising activity can be used to illustrate an important team behaviour.

Whatever the approach, it’s important that these opportunities for teams to come together aren’t wasted. In a world where most of our conversations happen via a screen we really need to make the most of face to face meetings.

This workshop has now happened so if you are interested in finding out how to deliver tremendous team events do call us on: 01920 822 220.

Feedback for the Facebook Generation

Team performance depends on a number of factors but ultimately people do their best work when they are getting regular feedback

Facebook Story from Rypple on Vimeo.

Ideally a weekly one to one with a line manager should ensure that goals are being met. The challenge in this is organising the conversation so that the right issues are discussed and that recent successes are acknowledged.

As you’d expect from the leaders in social networking, Facebook have found an online solution, see how they do it, click play on the video above.

How to Lead a Happy Committee

Sitting on committees and charity boards is something many of us do out of office hours. Recently we were asked to comment on the dynamics of  boards of not for profit organisations.

So here are a few thoughts :…