Team Building - How Do You Create the Ultimate Team From A Group of Average Performers

By Donald Griffith

When building a business and a Team it is extremely important to put people in positions that emphasize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. I know you are thinking of course, but how do you do that?

You assess your personnel using a tool that will evaluate strengths and weaknesses and compare those individuals to a large amount of other people that have taken the same test. Why would you do this?

1) To Create a Success Profile
2) Create a Road Map for Success
3) Create a environment where people maximize their performance.
4) Employees that work in positions that maximize their strengths are less likely to look for another job-

"The Best Prize that Life can offer is a chance to work hard at Work Worth Doing" Teddy Roosevelt

First it gives you a Success Profile for each position. By having data from many people that have taken the test it gives you a baseline for success in each position and what personal attitudes, Emotional Reactions and Mental Capabilities match that position. So out of the pool of talent that you have available you can place your current people in the right positions for them to be successful

Second you have a Road map to success based on the position profile and you can train your employees to change their "BEHAVIOR". Personality is constant but behavior can be changed. Let me be clear it is better to have someone that matches their position profile, however when you are building a team with existing Human Capital you can work with people to change their Behavior. The assessment will need to provide specific suggestions on how each employee can improve to maximize their performance in each position.

Third - People are working in positions that maximize their Personality and their strengths. This brings out natural abilities that you may not have seen when they were in other positions. When I first got out of college I became a programmer at a large organization. I did this because it was a way I could make good money at a large organization. It was a mistake on my part because it did not emphasize the strengths of my personality. It took me years to get into a position that emphasized my strengths and put my career on the right path. You do not want your employees in this position.

Fourth- Back to Teddy Roosevelt's quote - Working hard at work worth doing. Who determines what work is worth doing? The employee. Whatever their natural strengths are, will be what they love to do. So putting people in positions that match their strengths will keep people interested in those positions longer and minimize any unnecessary turnover.

Using the proper Testing tool that evaluates your current and potential personnel will provide with all the information you need to build the ultimate team. Do not rely on what you physically see of your employees each day you may be wasting hidden Talents!

you can also visit information on Team Building at http://www.mindsetbreakthrough.com to sign up now for the FREE Online Personal Evaluation Test, You will also receive 5 Free MindSet Breakthrough Subconscious Training Exercises - You can contact Donald Griffith Speak/ Author at http://DonaldGriffith.com - Donald is Available to speak to your company or group. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Donald_Griffith

Corporate Team Building Activities

By Garry L. Neale

Although team building activities are often the brunt of jokes in the office place, the team building process is important for developing cooperation and teamwork amongst co-workers. Teambuilding helps employees form an effective team and strive toward common goals in the workplace, improving overall productivity.

In an office environment, teams have to work together effectively to get the job done and achieve assigned objectives. Mutual respect and shared motivation are also important. Team building activities are helpful because they're designed to nurture positive teamwork and help each member of the team use their strengths to achieve the set objectives.

Companies are faced with a lot of different human resources issues these days - understaffing, burnout, outsourcing, and other problems are becoming more prevalent. It's more important than ever to incorporate team building into your business practices if you want keep up morale and benefit your company.

Encouraging communication is key to a happy staff, which is the cornerstone of teambuilding. Team building activities encourage improved communication through different methods, but they all share the same purpose - to strengthen the teams that are integral to the successful operation of your business.

Team building exercises help team members practice collaboration, brainstorming, creativity, trust, and feedback. Particular focus areas may include problem solving, organization, and conflict resolution, as well as leadership, interpersonal, presentation, and negotiation skills.

Teambuilding exercises fall into more than one category - for instance, there are team building activities that take place outside and inside the workplace. Some examples of team building activities include rope courses, cooking school, or field days full of different team building games and exercises. Sometimes the teambuilding activities that take place are rather fun, such as car racing and scavenger hunts.

Corporate team building events are sometimes special celebrations planned around holidays. This type of corporate team building is usually organized to encourage goodwill amongst employees. Although team building games can be a lot of fun, some people respond better to community-type team building exercises. Holiday events may include a Halloween costume contest, or a big feast on another fun holiday. Team building exercises that start a company tradition are very effective at bringing people together. Other great ideas: sporting events, potluck meals, team t-shirts, and drawings for interesting prizes. The more you work to bring people together, the easier it will be to form teams that work well and are able to achieve company objectives efficiently and successfully. Team building can be very effective if done right, so it pays to find a company that will set everything up for you.

If your company needs some good team building ideas, research the various team building companies that provide this type of service to a wide range of businesses. They come up with the team building ideas for you so you don't have to be involved in every detail of the planning. This way you can organize and set up team building activities for your company that are sure to improve employee relations and boost morale.

To learn more about Team Building, check out the Free Consumer Review Web Site. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Garry_L._Neale

Fun Team Building Activities

By Daiv Russell

Janet, a group manager, complained to her human resources consultant, Larry, that her group does not function as a team. Janet's team did not help each other out, didn't care about one another, and didn't want to share information with each other. These were just a few of problems she was having. She and Larry came up with the solution to take this out of the working environment for a couple of days and take their team to a resort to resolve this problem. They put together a plan where they would work on trust, ice-breaking, and brainstorming to better the team in working together.

Only half of Janet's team attended the first day of the offsite, and those members were too tired to actively participate. The other half of the team was frantically working on a project due later that week. Janet's main purpose for the offsite was team building, which left no official business reason for it to occur. While the brainstorming went reasonably well, the members present did not indicate that any action was to occur later. To summarize, the offsite was a waste of time for everyone involved.

You might think this is an exaggeration, but for some people it resembles an offsite they've been a part of. They can't get the team focused on solving a problem, putting a strategy into focus or coming up with a new way of doing things. One of the best things that can come from an offsite, though, is team building. If you do it right, it can bring minds together. If done wrong, people will feel their time is wasted which makes you look like a bad leader.

These simple guidelines will help you to be certain that your offsites are both accomplishing their duties and creating teams that will last.

Have a clear purpose for the offsite - Define some clear business reason for having the offsite. Consider things such as developing strategic goals for the upcoming fiscal year, account planning for strategic customers, or generating solution alternatives for a key business problem. If you make the goal of the offsite "Team Building" then your team is likely to look at the offsite as a waste of time that will have no real business benefit. Do your team building under the guise of solving a problem or defining the future.

Make sure there's enough time to network. There should be plenty of time throughout the experience for everyone to get to know each other and enjoy refreshments. Everyone needs to know each other better in order to have a more cohesive and better working team. Do not plan getting to know each other activities - let the team do this naturally.

You need to make sure that you hold your offsite conference at a time when there isn't a crush of business. An offsite conference is useless if members of the team have to constantly check their email or answer phone calls. While no time is ever perfect for an offsite, you don't want to hold it when your team is distracted or exhausted.

Some of the best offsites I've held were overnight events. It gave it a more fun-filled atmosphere because the team ate dinner together, had some drinks... it made the whole thing feel so much more relaxed. Further, we'd always stay up late brainstorming new , out-of-the-box strategies and working through major business problems. These sessions would prove to be invaluable because the team members put their heads together to address problems and opportunities. Everyone really worked together as a team and, more importantly, the team members built real relationships with each by getting to know each other better. They got to know how the others think and act, which laid the foundation for building a strong team.

In my experience with offsites, one of the things that frustrates me the most is that the great ideas which came from the offsite are never implemented, since there was never any follow-up. We'll need to take action with a follow-up plan to keep the excitement going. This includes dates, tasks and owners to ensure that the ideas we brainstorm will actually get implemented. We have to create and use a follow-up plan so that the team doesn't perceive the whole offsite as a waste of their time.

Daiv Russell is a marketing and management consultant with Envision Consulting in Tampa, Florida. Find more Team Building Ideas, techniques, and exercises or learn more about finding the root cause of your organization's teamwork issues. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daiv_Russell

Our Top Ten Team Building Exercises

By Amy Linley

You've recruited the individual members of your team. You've established your goal. You've developed a plan and a timeline. Now the trick is to get all those unique individuals working together toward the same goal. Given the varied personalities, communication skills and personal agendas individual members bring with them to the team, getting your team to work cooperatively can be a challenge.

In the most productive teams, members are individually and cooperatively focused on reaching the team's goal. Members understand the interdependent nature of the team: that their individual work depends upon and affects the quality of others' work and, ultimately, the ability of the team to reach its goal. Members respect, appreciate and recognize each person's unique contribution to the team's efforts, but place the greatest emphasis on cooperative achievement of the team goal.

Experiential team building was all the rage not long ago. The team would travel offsite for a "fun" day of rope games and unusual problem solving, typically at an outdoor education center. Unfortunately, too often there was little follow-up and any lessons learned never made it back into the workplace. Today, the emphasis has shifted to in-house team building exercises that can be accomplished at the beginning of a meeting.

Follow these key steps to plan a productive team building exercise:

1. Keep it simple. It should be quick and easy to set up in a typical meeting room.
2. It doesn't need to be expensive. You can get a lot of mileage out of basic office supplies or a few items from your kitchen pantry.
3. The exercise should be geared for normal office clothing or team members should be told ahead of time to dress appropriately.
4. People have a hard time relating to large groups, so divide the team into small units of 2 to 4 or 6 people. By breaking down barriers and creating partnerships within these small groups, team members will be better able to relate to the larger team.
5. Instructions must be easy to understand, especially by any non-native English speakers in your group.
6. Limited instructions may be part of the team building exercise. Forcing people to figure out what to do or how to do something helps team members identify skills and abilities in themselves and their peers that can help them define their roles on the team: leader, facilitator, problem-solver, communicator, etc.
7. The exercise should engage all members quickly.
8. It should present a problem that has multiple solutions to allow for creativity, but that can only be solved through collaboration and cooperative action.
9. You can increase the difficulty level of any exercise by adding a complication such as "no talking," or by speeding things up by asking, "How can you do it faster?"
10. At the completion of the exercise, it is crucial that a facilitator, often the team leader, lead the team in reflecting on what happened, the choices made, and how they interacted with each other. Team members should discuss what they would do differently next time. Reflection is critical to identifying and reinforcing learning.

Try these team building exercises to get your team off on the right foot.

1. Scrambled Jigsaw. Before the team arrives, place a jigsaw on each table. To manage the time element, use large-piece children's puzzles of 100 pieces or so. Remove 5 pieces from each puzzle and move them to another table. As the team arrives, divide members among the tables. Instruct teams to fully complete their puzzle, by any means, in the shortest amount of time possible. As puzzles are completed and teams realize pieces are missing, they will be forced to negotiate with other teams to complete their puzzle. This exercise promotes flexibility, communication, negotiation and cooperation.
2. Creative Assembly. Purchase 3-D punch-out wood dinosaur puzzle kits. Divide the team into groups of 2 to 4. Without comment or instruction, give each group the unpunched puzzle pieces, one complete puzzle per group. Do not let the group see the boxes, pictures or instructions or in any way identify what you have given them. Instruct each group to assemble its project, telling them they can only use what is in front of them. You'll get some interesting and creative constructions, a lot of laughter and some good natured frustration, particularly with the winged dinosaur kits. When time is up, ask each group to describe its construct. In this exercise, creative thinking, brainstorming, problem-solving, cooperation and consensus will certainly get a workout.
3. Slight of Hand. Divide team into groups of 4 to 6. Hand each group 4 tennis balls. Tell them each person must handle all 4 balls in the shortest time possible. Do this several times, each time asking, "How can you do it faster?" This exercise will progress from the obvious passing of the balls down a line, to around a circle, to some interesting ball drops and hand swiping. Your team will practice cooperation, quick thinking and creative problem solving in this exercise.
4. Going Up. Divide team into groups of 2 to 6. Give each person one 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper and one 5" strip of masking tape. Instruct each team to build the tallest possible free-standing structure. This exercise promotes cooperation, creative thinking, problem-solving, consensus, leadership and division of labor.
5. Gnome Dome. Divide the team into groups of 2. Give each group 20 gumdrops and 12 toothpicks. Instruct each group to build a dome. Problem-solving, creative thinking, cooperation (and possibly snacking) will be practiced during this exercise.
6. Poisonous Web. Stretch a piece of rope across a door frame, securing it to the frame or connecting wall with duct tape. You'll need two pieces of rope, one 3 feet off the ground, the other 4 1/2 feet off the ground. You are creating a "window" 18 inches wide that you describe to the team as a "poisonous spider web." The team must work together to get all members through the opening without touching the ropes. They must go through, not under or over the ropes. If a team member touches either rope, the entire team must go back to the beginning and try again. This exercise builds cooperation, leadership, creativity and problem-solving. It also forces team members to trust and depend on each other.
7. Hang Ups. Hand each person a wire coat hanger. Tell the group they may work individually or create their own groups. Instruct them to make something useful from their coat hanger. Set a time limit of 5 to 15 minutes. Ask each person/group to describe his "tool" and its use. This exercise will indicate which of your team members are natural leaders or born socialites as well as which are more shy and may need to be drawn out when working with the group.
8. In the Picture. This is another puzzle game. Divide the team into groups and give each one a jigsaw puzzle from which you have already removed one piece. Each team will complete a puzzle with one missing piece. Ask each team what this represents in terms of the team. You're aiming for discovery of the importance of each individual to the successful accomplishment of the team's goal, but you may get some interesting responses about proper planning, supply officers and quality control.
9. All Aboard. This is another physical game. Depending on the size of your team, place a 1-foot to 3-foot square of cardboard on the floor, or mark off a square with masking or duct tape. Draw numbers, one for each team member. In order of the numbers drawn, team members must stand in the square. As the number of people in the square increases, members will have to work together and get creative to get everyone aboard. This exercise practices cooperation, problem-solving and leadership.
10. Bridge the Gap. Divide the group into teams of 2 to 4. Give each group a small ball of modeling clay and 12 toothpicks. Instruct them to build the longest cantilever bridge they can. Award points for speed of construction, length of bridge, ability to stand without tipping over and ability to hold weight (to measure this, stack quarters until the bridge tips or breaks). Team members will practice creativity, problem-solving, consensus (and manual dexterity).

To be successful, teamwork must be more than a method of dividing up the work to get the job done. Teamwork must embrace a cooperative attitude of mutual respect, shared responsibility and open communication. Teamwork recognizes each team member's individual contribution to the team in the context of the interdependency of those efforts in cooperative pursuit of the team's goal.

Amy Linley gives practical and usable advice regarding communication and meetings at AccuConference. Find out more about our conference call, web conferencing and video conferencing services from AccuConference. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amy_Linley