Posts for tag: Team Building

Exercises to Support Covey’s 7 Habits

Along with the 15 million people who have bought the book, we love Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. We also firmly believe in experiential learning and so we’ve selected the following 7 training exercises to bring each habit to life and help to turn Covey’s ideas into behaviours. 

If the exercises aren’t familiar to you and you’d like some trainer notes, click here to make a request….

DIY Team Building – 6 Solutions

As budgets tighten and in-house trainers look for more inspiring ways to get their message across, our collection of licensed team and leadership activities are proving popular both at home and abroad.

Spicing up induction programmes and providing new managers with a safe environment in which to practice taking the lead are amongst the many ways in which our exercises are being used.  …

The Case for Experiential Learning – 5 ways we learn better by doing than listening

For years practical activities have been used in team building to help people get to know each other ‘off the job’. In management development case studies and role plays are used to turn theories into experience.

Experiential learning is more acceptable now than at any time in the past as participants have become less fearful of leaving the security of the classroom, relishing the opportunity to take a break from the monotony of the lectures.  …

Short Notice Team Events

January is a time for new beginnings, and many leaders will have scheduled time to review 2012 and talk through the challenges and opportunities for 2013 with their team.

If you haven’t put a date in the diary don’t worry we can provide a venue, facilitator and team activity during the first few weeks of the new year, and we even have some capacity in late December.  …

Domino Effect – a brand new team building exercise

A regular client approached us in September asking for a new team building challenge. 

The participants would be the top 50 managers of a leading food producer. The CEO wanted a novel, intense two hour event that couldn’t be spoilt by the weather, involved everyone, would work across functional boundaries and most importantly encourage cooperation.

Within 48 hours we had submitted three ideas for brand new, never-been-run-before activities. …

Free Team Building Activity – Common Ground

This free team building activity is a light-hearted icebreaker which highlights the importance of communication.

Overview

A great icebreaker activity, this activity is best used at the beginning of the day to get participants communicating and finding out a bit more about each other. You simply ask each team/table to come up with a list as long as possible of things that all team members have in common….

Vodafone Fail to Make the Connection

If you’ve travelled on the London Underground recently you might have seen a series of posters featuring team building exercises.

Vodafone have launched an advertising campaign suggesting that with their service teams can connect without the need to spend time together.

We would challenge this assumption on the basis that whilst it is possible to convey information by phone it’s almost impossible to build trust.

Trust is the single greatest differential between good and bad teams and to build trust takes a combination of time, commitment, shared experience and common values.

Smart phones might be clever but even they have their limitations.

What are your thoughts?

The Language(s) of Love – for Teams

As we celebrate St Valentine’s Day it brings to mind Dr Gary Chapman’s theory that there are five Love Languages.

These are the different ways in which we show and receive appreciation, not just from our nearest and dearest but also from colleagues in our teams and our managers.  Dr Chapman suggests that each of us favours one particular Love Language over the other four and whilst his work is focussed towards married couples, his theory can be applied in part to those leading teams….

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. …

Chocolate – good for he heart, mind and business

Fifteen years ago we created an indoor team building exercise in based on chocolate. Our research at the time found that good quality chocolate contained vitamins, antioxidants and the only edible fat that doesn’t fur the arteries.

This week the BMJ (British Medical Journal) published a comprehensive study (external link to BMJ) suggesting that eating chocolate (in moderation) can reduce the likelihood of heart disease by up to 37%.

So not only does chocolate make you feel good, it can help your heart and if eaten with your colleagues can build your team.

Find out more about our chocolate team building event.