Times are tough, and as a result, morale can suffer. So what can the leaders of an organization do to help team members feel more confident and at ease? Below are a few simple tips:

1. Give Sincere Compliments: When times are tough, we can easily be distracted (sometimes just trying to stay above water). That is the time that your team members need reassurance, and a sincere compliment can go a long way in helping your team feel more comfortable.  Remember that the team member doesn’t have to be perfect — just improving.
2. Share Information: People fear the unknown a lot more than reality in most cases. If your team knows what’s wrong, they can often help you fix it. Often, leaders will try to protect the team by keeping negative information to himself/herself, which just makes the team wonder what you are hiding. Fear causes people to react aggressively, so share information, and your team will help you.
3. Set a Goal: A shared goal can help the team work together toward a common result. A number of small successes can improve morale dramatically.
4. Brain-Storm: Challenges are often opportunities in disguise. When challenges develop, get your team together and brain-storm solutions.  One big idea can open up additional revenue streams.

Get your team working toward a common goal by praising them and working on tough challenges together. Your team culture will grow, and you will be way ahead of the game when things turn around.

I had the pleasure of working with a dynamic group of women from Galderma Laboratories in Dallas recently as they completed a full day of team building workshops, including Creating a Team Culture and Structures Team Building Event. Founded in 1981 as a joint venture between Nestlé and L’Oréal, Galderma now employs more than 3,200 people around the world. They are one of the world’s leading dermatology companies. This group of women that I had the pleasure of working with provides all of the administrative support to the sales, marketing and production department leaders.

We began the day with Creating a Team Culture, and specifically with taking a look at personality styles. This prompted a very lively discussion as the women grappled with how they have experienced different personality styles in the workplace. They found it very insightful and helpful to learn about typical strengths and weaknesses of each style, and had a passionate discussion.

This led nicely into exercises centered around the four sets of Leadership Principles. We covered the areas of building trust and rapport, managing conflict, gaining cooperation, and building your team. By the end of the Creating a Team Culture portion of our team building day, they were conversing and interacting much more freely than at the start of the day!

The second half of the day was Structures – a wonderful team building workshop that engages the participants in solving a series of puzzles and challenges in order to accumulate the parts needed to build two dollhouses. They must be creative and work very closely together in order to be successful. With the success of the morning workshop, this was easier for them than it otherwise might have been!

The dollhouses were donated to the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas where they will go to be available for children to play with when they are in residence. It added a dimension to the event that reminded everyone that there is a larger picture to keep in mind.

“Ellen did an amazing job with our team! Everyone found the morning session to be eye-opening and extremely helpful as we strive to understand each other better. The afternoon session really cemented it all together for us by giving us the chance to play together. This is a different team now!” — Josie Razo, Galderma Laboratories

Engaging in a full day of team building activities can be a great way to bring your team together. With Creating a Team Culture as a morning classroom-based workshop to address principles, and Structures as a more active team building exercise in the afternoon, it creates the perfect combination!

As part of it’s annual conference in Las Vegas, Symantec included a Build-A-Bike team building event to add energy and fun with a philanthropic component. Symantec has been helping consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world for more than 25 years. With more than 18,500 employees in over 50 countries around the world, they have become one of the largest software companies out there. This annual conference in Las Vegas was for 200 software engineers from around the globe.

Build-A-Bike is a fast-paced, high-energy workshop gives participants the opportunity to interact, compete and ultimately work together to solve a series of challenges. Due to our competitive human nature, there is typically some skepticism at the notion that the teams need to collaborate to solve the challenges more efficiently. But this group was accustomed to working together across lines, and they rose to the challenge!

By the end of the event, they had built 30 bikes! Local kids from the Boys and Girls Club of greater Las Vegas came at the end of the event to receive the bikes. There was not a dry eye to be found! In the midst of all of the opulence and extravagence of Las Vegas, Symantec helped children who don’t have their own bikes to have hope.

“This was an amazing event! Ellen and her team pulled everything together flawlessly. And the children coming in at the end – well, I could barely see through my tears! We’ll definitely do this again!” — Ariana Glinski, Symantec

Everyone likes to give back to the community, especially to kids in need. Including Build-A-Bike in your next conference gives your employees the opportunity to do just that while adding energy, enthusiasm and fun!

When people come together with a common purpose and contribute their individual talents a lot of good things can happen. That was the experience of nearly 200 Wells Fargo employees as they joined together for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in the San Francisco Bay Area (Concord,California). The event was very active and solicited each individual to make contributions to the team effort. The final analysis was 34 bikes were given to a local boys and girls club, each participant was able to contribute to the effort and teamwork was defined as when common purpose collides with individual contributions. It was a fast-paced, fun learning experience that benefited the individual participants as well as the boys and girls clubs and the over 30 recipients of brand new bicycles.

The Wells Fargo employees were separated into 32 groups and each group had activities to participate in. Completion of the activities was only possible by each member making significant contributions to the different projects. For each activity there was a common purpose, whether it was tasks to accomplish or problems to solve, the goal was clear so that each group knew what had to be achieved. The common purpose also highlighted individual contributions. Good team work isn’t when individuality is lost, but rather when each individual is able to contribute their best for the good to the team. The common purpose is the goal of the team work.

That common purpose must collide with the individual efforts and contributions of the team members. Through the activities each person was able to contribute according to their own talents, skills and abilities. Whether a person is artistic, organizational, mechanical, analytical, motivational, etc., whatever is possessed by the individual they were able to contribute to achieving the common purpose. Through the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event every individual was given opportunity to contribute to the overall goal of the program. That was team work at its best.

Thanks so much to Wells Fargo for a great team building experience and for giving back to the community in a very significant way.

Everyone has been a part of or led some type of fun team building game or team activity. What was your favorite? Was an event, an outing, or just a fun game that everyone loved?

Everyone has been a part of or led some type of fun team building game or team activity. What was your favorite? Was an event, an outing, or just a fun game that everyone loved?

80 members of the CUNA Select Leadership Team came together in Dallas, Texas for an Ace Race Golf Team Building Event. The opportunity was a great experience for team building, fun, friendly competition, and to donate food to the Mission Central Food Pantry. Everyone had fun designing a miniature golf hole and then competing to make an “Ace” (hole-in-one) at each hole. The twelve hole course made with mats of felt for the green and non-perishable food items to construct the holes and obstacles provided a challenge and fun to all of the participants. The fun and learning culminated in all of the food items being donated to the Mission Central Food Pantry. There was learning, fun and a great feeling when a representative of the food pantry explained how the food would be used and the tremendous difference it would make in the lives of individuals.

This Golf Team Building event is a fun way to teach some basic team building principles while having fun and giving back to the community. The teams were formed randomly but each team had to use the experience and talents of the members to complete the tasks. Some people are good at the design of the golf holes, others have the ability to put the parts together in a specific order to construct the holes: others have the ability to hit the golf ball and make the critical shot; still others are able to organize the individuals to get the best from each one. The best teams are those that recognize how each individual can contribute to the team and then cheers them on to make significant contributions. One “sentence” that was reiterated was, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

Thanks CUNA for a great event and for making a significant contribution to the Mission Central Food Bank. May the Ace Race experience benefit you as your gracious gift to the food pantry will benefit so many in need.

Over 400 Pfizer employees came together for a quick, one hour, Rescue Bear Team Building Event in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was quite a sight to see when the stuffed animals were collected at the end of the event and lined up on the stage in front of the room. 200 red and blue bags lined the stage each one containing a stuffed animal that will be given to children connected with the Robert Woods Johnson University Hospital. This event with Pfizer was a great team building experience that provided a substantial contribution to children and their families that will sincerely appreciate them.

What can 400 people stuffing animals learn about team building? Each team had to work together as well as learn to work with other teams to finish the project. Each team member was needed to collaborate with each other and then stretch beyond their own team to collaborate with other teams so they could experience completing the animals. The collaborative efforts resulted in effectiveness in execution of the tasks. Effective collaboration leads to efficient execution which means that the goal(s) can be achieved. Collaborate, execute, achieve; these were the bywords for this teambuilding event. Thanks to Pfizer for providing the Rescue Bear Team Building Event that was instructional for the participants and made for a very appreciative children and families connected with one of the top children’s hospital in the greater New York area and across the US.

Walgreen’s brought together over 20 of their district security people to Deerfield, Illinois, for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. The fun, learning experience culminated with 4 new bicycles being built and given to the Union League Boys and Girls Clubs. The event was entertaining and informative, but when the children were introduced at the end of the event there was nothing but smiles on the children’s faces as they received new bikes and pride on the participants faces as they awarded the bikes to the children. The event provided learning value, entertainment value, and philanthropic value; a great combination and a great experience for any afternoon- and a very special one for these Walgreen’s VIPs.

When the group was divided into smaller groups and given tasks to compete there was a certain air of competitiveness that began to grow. It was reiterated several times that nothing in the afternoon was a competition, but the goal of every activity was for every group to complete it to the best of their ability. Having concentrated on that fact, nothing was a competition, you would think that the competitive dealings would have stopped, or slowed- but they didn’t. Whenever a large group is broken down into smaller ones competition will happen. Even if it is stressed that it shouldn’t, it is the nature of teams to be competitive.

Likewise when a company operates different locations, different departments, different divisions, etc… competition will result. Not all competition is destructive. It can be very positive it is brings out the best in every team and the overall efforts of the larger group don’t suffer. Too often the competitive nature becomes destructive because for one group so succeed it means another must not. In other words- if we are the winners there must be losers. But if one segment of a company wins or has successes at the cost of another, then the whole team has really suffered. We often times find ourselves in unwitting competition because of budget restrictions, human resource allocations, time differentials, and what ever else can cause differing segments to compete with each other. Too often information is withheld, solutions are shared, ideas aren’t communicated because if we do we have lost that competitive edge. One group within the organization may win, but the team as a whole has suffered.

Congratulations to Walgreen’s in the Greater Chicago, Illinois area for sponsoring the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event and making a positive difference in the live of 4 children, their families and communities- all the while having fun and learning some important team building lessons.

When the economy is slow, company managers and leaders have to be very cautious with every expense. As a result, we will often put off hiring new employees until more certainty in the marketplace develops. Although natural efficiencies will develop in a downward economy, can team building activities help increase productivity so that we can avoid the expense of adding on new personnel? The answer to that question is… “Well… It depends…”

Don’t Confuse “Morale” with “Productivity”

Team Building is almost a generic term that is used for both “morale building” activities and “productivity building” activities interchangeable, but if you confuse the two activities, you can make some costly mistakes. Morale building activities can include anything from going out to a movie together to an office holiday party to entertainment style activities at annual meetings ans conventions. These activities provide a shared-experience that builds temporary camaraderie and provides a fun relief to the normal day-to-day rat-race. Productivity building activities are training events or innovations that help teams do more with less. Although people will often call both of these types of activities “Team Building”, the activities themselves get totally different results. Both are needed to create a team culture, but quite often, managers and leaders will schedule one type of activity hoping to get the needed result from the other type of activity and be sorely disappointed.

Although productivity will often improve (sometimes dramatically) when morale improves, an increase in morale doesn’t always cause a team to be more productive. For instance, if a manager came into the office and announced that the entire team would get the whole week off and still get paid, morale would skyrocket, but productivity would drop to zero for the week. Morale building activities like team outings and company parties are extremely important, but they can’t entirely replace productivity building events and activities.

Since the team atmosphere created by morale building activities can be temporary, you’ll want to schedule activities like this regularly so that the individual team members get to interact with each other in a more fun way to build camaraderie. Charity team building events at annual meetings or conventions can be a great way to insert a morale building activity. These team building functions are very economical, because the company can generate great public relations without increasing the cost of conducting a convention or annual meeting. For instance, most conventions are going to have some type of entertainment or at least a company outing of some kind. Many companies are replacing these activities with a charity bike build or a team scavenger hunt where team members build gift baskets for soldiers. The investment in each activity is fairly similar, but the results of the charity activities often provide impactful, lasting memories that build great camaraderie between team members.

Build Teams by Training Team Members Together

In addition to morale building activities, a team also needs to develop new skills in order to keep them productive. Many years ago, a mentor of mine told me that “You can’t build a team by training individuals, but you can build a team by training individuals together.” I didn’t really understand the power of this advice until I started my own business, but I understand it more and more as my company grows and grows. For instance, many big companies offer tuition assistance for higher level degrees for their employees, but what often happens is that a company will invest a ton of money into the development of an employee only to have the person leave the company and start working for a competitor. This happens because the individual employees is growing, but the team as a whole is stagnant.

Oddly enough, any skill development activities will work to build the team culture in an organization if the skills developed gives the team a competitive advantage in the marketplace. For instance, Apple decided to eliminate cash registers inside their Apple Stores and replace them with the ability for any employee in the store to be able to use their smartphones to ring-up items for purchases on their smartphones. Because Apple is doing something that no one else is doing, the employees who have been trained in this new technology feel like they are a part of an elite group that is different from other retail stores. Whether they are or not doesn’t really matter, because the team believe that they are ahead of the curve. Customers can find an Apple employee and within seconds create a purchase and have the receipt sent to the customer via email and be on their way. A dramatic increase in productivity and decrease in cost while creating more of a team atmosphere among employees.

“Soft-Skills” Team Building Training is Most Productive

The most effective team training to increase productivity comes from “soft-skills” training, though. While Hard-Skills are ones essential to doing individual jobs within a company — for example hard-skills for an engineer might be calculus and physics — soft-Skills are skills that improve productivity no matter what specific role that a person has within an organization. Soft-skills would include communication skills, presentation skills, the ability to persuade people, the ability to coach and mentor others, etc. If the engineer improves in any or all of these soft-skills, then he or she will likely improve their individual success as well as the overall success of the team.

When teams train together in these soft-skill areas, they automatically develop that same type of team culture that Apple developed with the technology change. Team members know that they are a part of a unique, elite group that is different from most organizations (because most organizations don’t train this way).

For example, a few years ago, I was hired by a commercial construction company to help them deliver high-level sales presentations better. Companies that build skyscrapers or have groups of construction projects often bid out these huge projects in one big contract, so they will often ask for huge proposals and have each qualified contractor come in and do a presentation to narrow down the field. The company that hired me was closing about one out of six of these presentations, but wanted to increase their numbers. So we conducted a series of presentation skills classes with the teams of presenters. Because they trained together, they developed a team culture that showed up when they conducted their presentations. Quite often, at the end of their presentations, the board members who were in the audience would say, “We chose this group because they just seemed to work very well together.” The team culture showed, because the individuals within the group had been trained in soft-skills together, so they saw themselves as having an advantage over other presenters (and they had one.)

Presentation skills, people skills, coaching, mentoring, and other soft-skills training can really help teams become more productive as long as the teams are going through the training as a team. I remember my college football coach telling us, “You don’t fight for records or awards, you fight for the guy who is next to you in the trenches.” When teams train together, they build a rapport that lasts.

Chartis, a global insurance giant, came to Stowe, Vermont, to build a stronger team and give back.  They gave back, by gifting the “Community Connection” with 20 bikes, all part of the Build-A-Bike team building program.  Then, they dug even deeper, and “payed it forward.”  Very patient Chartis employees marked time, waiting for kids delayed by flooded-out roads, by adding a generous surprise to the mix.

When the kids arrived, CEO Peter Hancock, handed the Community Connection director an envelope.  Inside was hope for a recovery from the flooding.  Employees of Chartis, had pulled out their wallets and stuffed the envelope with cash.  The director of the kids program was at a loss for words.  Over two thousand dollars, plus 20 bikes will go a long way toward healing the lives of kids who lost nearly everything to the flood.

This group came to Vermont from all over the world for the team building.  Though all of their home countries differ from one another, they share many commonalities. These folks were competitive, racing through bike construction while collaborating, and using each team’s strengths, laughing while they did it.  They were generous, and self-less, giving back to a community most never dreamed would be hit by a tropical storm.  They even made time for a bike lesson or two.  Everyone went away with a sense that teamwork pays off, and that giving more, means getting more.  Their hearts richer, for all their giving.  Their minds on the futures of these kids, and this community, all the while knowing – they truly made a difference. 

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute. Connie teaches team building event in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and other New England locations.

Engineers and managers came together St. Louis from across the country for 2 days of meetings and team building events. Their time together began with a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in which 6 bicycles were built and donated to the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Clubs. The event was a challenge for the participants which were largely engineers. It stretched them in their comfort zones and challenged them to look at things and do things a little differently than they are used to doing. Besides stretching them, they also got to see one another in a little different circumstance than they are used to. It was a fun activity, with a lot of laughter, and some learning thrown in for good measure.

The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event helps people to see things from a little different perspective than they may be accustomed. We too often do things the way we have done them previously and continue to repeat the process over and over because it has become the routine. There may be better ways, but we can’t see them because of the repetition we have created. In this event one of the dynamics is to try and get a little different perspective so the participants can approach a problem from a different angle and work it through until the bikes are completed. What happens is that things aren’t always as they appear and sometimes we need to step back and get a fresh look. This is a valuable lesson to help us in our team work and leadership.

Thanks to Boeing for a fun learning experience and for giving back to the community by giving 6 new bicycles to children from the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Clubs.

Members of the Sodexo Senior Living Division came together in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to take part in a half day team building event that helped them explore personalities as well as build bikes for children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of  Broward County. The event combined a Personality Traits Team Workshop with a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. The result was learning and laughter as the combination program brought together a classroom style team building event with a philanthropic opportunity. The participants benefited from both activities and putting them together helped reinforce the material covered.

This unique combination of two events gave a great opportunity to explore personalities, discuss and practice some skills related to personalities, temperaments, and how to improve communication. There was a strong emphasis on leadership skills and learning to build on strengths, be aware of weaknesses, take opportunity to grow and develop and to make sure we don’t become complacent by excusing our own problematic behavior while being judgmental concerning others. Special emphasis was put on becoming a more accepting and understanding listener; and in being able to encourage others by giving strength-centered compliments. These two skills work regardless of an individual’s personality both as the receiver or giver.

Thanks to Sodexo for a great combination of events and for giving back to the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida community through the donation of bicycles through the Build-A-Bike portion of the event.

 Over 25 Wells Fargo Senior Advisers came together in St. Louis, Missouri for a Rescue Bear Team Building Event. This special event included several activities that culminated in 25 stuffed animals being assembled that were given to the Children’s Hospital of the Barnes, Jewish, Children’s Hospital System. The activities of the afternoon included some very fun activities that incorporated valuable lessons on leadership and team building. Amidst the laughter, games and projects the participants were also given time to think over important principles that they can put into practice. Personality types were explored with unique suggestions on improving communications and better understanding of one another.

During the team building event personality and temperament was explored. It was clear that through the activities people understood a little more about how personality and temperament plays into our every day behavior. Often times that behavior can lead us to interact most with people who are most like ourselves. The problem is that when we work in homogeneous units we fail to capitalize on the strengths of others who could be in the group. When we surround ourselves with personalities most like our own we are missing a key ingredient to seeing a total or whole picture. Many teams are formed this way and short-circuit the effectiveness of the team because key ingredients to the whole are missing by the neglect of having a rounded team that includes the various temperament styles.

The Rescue Bear Team Building Event helps expose how silos in the workplace are formed and how to break out of that mold. It was a fun and experiential learning event and there was a great feeling about giving back to such a great community organization as BJC. The 25 stuffed animals made and contributed will make a difference in the lives of hospitalized children just as the event made a difference in the lives of the Wells Fargo Advisers.

New York City’s Staten Island – home of great teachers, and a murderous puzzle they must solve.  Whodoneit?  A Charade murder mystery team building event at its finest. Who murdered the school’s principal, or did she just choke on a cigar and die?  Nope!  It was Murder.  The room abounds with suspects, normally dedicated teachers who think only of children.  But today,  they were the ones in the principal’s office. And she is dead.  Clue by clue, teams of deputized teachers worked through the evidence, questioning suspects to determine who had a motive, the means, and the guts to knock out one of New York’s finest.  (Well, she may have been embezzling, or was that one of the suspects?)

The Leader’s Institute’s® Gum Shoe Crew, headed up the murder mystery team building event that proved once again – teachers have a really difficult job.   Their workload tries their mind, students try their patience, and those same students capture their hearts.

Today, the kids were out, and the teachers got to have recess.  It was much more fun to solve a murder than grade papers, or plan for next week.  Oh, but these teachers were way ahead of next week.  The principal has already decided that next school year’s theme will be “all about America.”  As part of the team building (before the murder) they learned a cool way to help kids remember the original 13 colonies.  Learning really can be fun.  And collaboration, how else would they have solved the crime?  Building a team, sometimes takes a mystery. 

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

UnitedHealthcare brought members of their National Clinical Excellence Team together in New Orleans, Louisiana, for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. One of the end results of the program was 12 new bicycles being given to The Future Leaders of America. Other results were a great amount of fun, laughter and learning. The activities focused on building collaboration, improving communication and understanding each other as co-workers and team mates. The event was action packed and fast-paced and kept the participants moving. The overall result was ton of enjoyment and some important lessons learned and reinforced.

One important aspect of the event was the focus on being one team. Many times when we are placed in groups we become competitive with others. Just like the everyday situation where we work in departments, are separated by locations, or divided into divisions. Often times the result is competition within the organization. Competition can be good if it brings out the best in everyone concerned, but too often competitiveness results in hoarding materials, information and/or resources. In the program individuals experienced the destructive side of competition and how it hurts the overall progress of the team. There was a lot of laughter, and fun, but the points were well made during the experience.

Congratulations to UnitedHealthcare for sponsoring the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event and giving their people an opportunity to have fun while growing in their leadership and team building skills. And for the special opportunity of giving back to the community by donating 12 bicycles to children and families that can really use and will really appreciate them. The communities around New Orleans (including coastal cities in Texas and Mississippi) have really rebounded since Katrina, and we are glad to be a part of the recovery.

Want to jazz up your Christmas Banquet, holiday event, or year end meeting this year? A quality team building activity can add some fun and enthusiasm to the meetings and support a charity in the process. Charity team building events are still a fairly new invention, but these activities are growing in popularity by leaps and bounds every single year. These activities combine fun (and funny) exercises to build camaraderie to either build something or accumulate something that will later be donated to a charity on behalf of the sponsoring company or group.

For example, the grandfather of all of the charity team building events is the world-famous Build-A-Bike® team building event where participants work together to accumulate pieces of bicycles to build brand-new bikes for underprivileged kids in the area. This event is still the most popular, with good reason, because it combines fun and energy with an emotional appeal of helping kids. The big ending for these events is when kids come rushing into the room, and each individual team gets to donate their individual bike to a single kid. This leaves every participant feeling that his/her contribution was important to the success of the activity. Lots of fun!

Golf team building for a cause is the newest charity team building activity, and it is quickly becoming a popular choice because of the new economy that we are working in. This activity has participants accumulate non-perishable food items that are used strategically to design a custom golf-course for the group. Of course, once the course is dismantled, all of the food items are donated to a local food pantry. These food pantries are really struggling to keep up right now, because the number of families coming to them for food each week is increasing while donations are really low because of the economy. So they directors of these pantries are extremely grateful for these big donations (most often over 1000 lbs of food).

Another good choice is to do a scavenger hunt where participants race to accumulate items that are used to create care packages for soldiers who are away from their families. Especially around Christmas time, these care packages are a welcome to soldiers who are stationed in foreign countries.

For information about a charity team building event, call an event specialist at (800) 872-7830.

North of St. Louis, Missouri, the US Bankruptcy Court gathered to learn, strategize, build their team, and some Rescue Bears for Children in trauma.  Volunteer firemen from the New Haven fire house drove up in their shiny ladder truck to accept the animals that were dressed like firemen and rescue workers.  Giving a cuddly animal to a child in distress, can comfort the child and make the fireman’s job a little easier. Firemen train as a team, coming to understand the strengths of individuals and capitalizing on those strengths to become the most effective team possible.

That strategy is the same kind that makes any group stronger. Participants learned how to understand each-others’ temperament, have some fun doing it, and built some bears for some of America’s finest.

We heard first hand, from one of the participants, what it really means to know that when you dial 911 firemen will answer.  Sleeping, she woke to the smell of smoke and in seconds the whole house was in flames.  Firemen got there immediately, but if she had not followed their orders to get out of the house, she would have lost more than material possessions.

These firemen are dedicated.  The captain has been manning the fire hose for 30 years.  All have other jobs, but all answer the call when it comes in, no matter the time, or how much sleep they will miss.  The Rescue Bear team building program brought the group together, in a fun and transformative way.

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

90 members of the Minnesota Power Leadership team came together for two days of meetings and fun which included a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in Minneapolis, MN. The team building activities were fun and fast-paced and had all the participants laughing and learning. The activities culminated with the building of 14 bikes that were given to children from the Twin Falls Boys and Girls Clubs. The children appreciated receiving the bikes and the event participants enjoyed the exercises and assembling the bikes. It was an enjoyable time and along the way some team building principles and skills were reiterated. 

Throughout the team building exercises the group was split into teams. The teams were given various tasks to complete, but in doing so they needed to solicit help from other teams. This isn’t easy to do. Although it was stressed that the activity was not a competition, the split into teams brought out the competitive nature of the groups. With that spirit of competition there comes a lack of cooperation. This slows down and inhibits the overall goal which was to build the bikes. Competition can be god if it brings out the best efforts, but often times hinders the ability to work together and slows progress. One of the goals of the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event is to demonstrate how important it is for people to work together and not make separation by division, locations, departments, or such breed competition that will hinder the corporate processes and growth.

Thanks, Minnesota Power, for a great program and for giving back to the community with this worthwhile event. What a great time-  to have fun, get to know each other better, contribute to children and the communities they live in and to –even by accident- learn something. Thanks for a great Team Building Event.

I saw this ad from American Airlines on TV a few nights ago. It is about a bad team building event, and it cracked me up. Rough week for American Airlines, but this is really funny. I guarantee that our team building events are NOTHING like this one.

About 50 teachers and administrators from the Youth Connection Charter School in Chicago, IL gathered for a Creating a Team Culture team building workshop recently as part of a two-day retreat designed to help them build greater trust and rapport together. YCCS serves at-risk students and high school dropouts in Illinois who are ages 16-21 and who have been under-served and /or disconnected from traditional education. Teachers and administrators working on two campuses came together for team building designed to help them work collaboratively to put forth the best possible programs for their students.

We began the session talking about personality styles and how they affect our communication styles. Looking at the natural strengths and weaknesses of each personality style created lots of dialogue about how and why people react the way they do to many different situations.

We honed in on the sets of Leadership Principles that deal with building trust and rapport, and managing conflict in this abbreviated workshop. Without first addressing these fundamental principles in these two key areas of communication, it is difficult to move forward with a strong team. The material and exercises challenged the group to move out of their comfort zones and interact in a way that had previously been avoided.

By the end of the workshop, the participants had a much better outlook on their ability to work together, and were more open to each other. It did a great job of setting the tone for the remainder of their retreat.

“This was exactly what we needed to get the ball rolling! The conflict between these groups hurt us during the last school year, but now they have tools they can use to move with more solidarity into this new school year. Thank you, Ellen!” – Daisy Lopez, Youth Connection Charter School

Communication difficulties can cause problems in the workplace that extend beyond the workforce and begin to affect our customers in adverse ways. Include Creating a Team Culture team building workshop in your plans to give your employees the tools they need to be more successful together!

Siemens met in Orlando to strengthen its team, and give to the community with a Build-A-Bike team building event.  Participants learned about themselves, each other, how to solve problems and collaborate.  The result of the team event was some shiny new bikes, and a better understanding of group dynamics.  But the best was yet to come.

Under the ever-present shadow of Disney World, many kids’ lives have been walloped by the recession.   Their dreams put on hold.  But Siemens wanted to, and did, make some dreams come true.   As kids from the local Boys’ and Girls’ club walked into the room and were told there was a bike for each of them, there was a collective intake of breath, and a lot of “Oh wows!”  While some adorable kids claimed some shiny new dreams, there was a skip in more than one heart, and watery eyes for many.

They mixed with the kids to say hello, get to know them a bit, make sure seats were the right height, exact a promise to wear helmets, and take a picture or two. One of the participants told me that, this was the best thing they had ever done.  The truth of that, lie in the heart of learning a little and giving back to their community.  The bikes are physical empowerment for these kids, giving them control of at least one thing in their stressful lives.  For the participants – they won the best door prize ever, a bunch of smiling kids, and the heart-felt knowledge, that they made it all possible.

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor & Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

Just because your city has under 20 million people doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be able to schedule one of the best team building events in the world! Because of the size of The Leader’s Institute® Team Building company and because our team building instructors are based in cities across the United States, we can deliver team building events in just about any city in America, Canada, and Europe.

The following is a list of cities where we offer teambuilding programs and team building activities.

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Ann Arbor, Michigan
• Austin, Texas
• Baltimore, Maryland
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Colorado Springs, CO
• Columbus, Ohio
• Denver, Colorado
• El Paso, Texas
• Fresno, California
• Honolulu, Hawaii
• Indianapolis, Indiana
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Long Beach, California
• Louisville, Kentucky
• Memphis, Tennessee
• Mesa, Arizona
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Omaha, Nebraska
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Portland, Oregon
• Raleigh, North Carolina
• Sacramento, California
• San Antonio, Texas
• San Diego, California
• San Jose, California
• Tucson, Arizona
• Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Virginia Beach, VA

We offer over a dozen different programs including philanthropic events, workshops, seminars, and breakout sessions. For details about all of the options that are available in each location above, click the Team Building Events link in the tool bar at the top of the page. We look forward to working with you on your next program!

Boeing Team Building Gives to Back to Community by Giving Away Bikes in Chicago, Illinois. Over 40 employees of Boeing came together at the Allegra Hotel in Chicago for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. The activities were facts-paced and fun as the participants completed challenges that culminated in 6 bikes being given to a local Boys and Girls Club in Chicago. The children were excited to get the bikes just as the Boeing employees were excited about giving them. It was a wonderful event and the sight of the children receiving the bikes to the cheers of the event participants was heart-warming and very rewarding. The event was action packed with many learning experiences and loads of fun and laughter. But the most satisfying part was giving back to the community in a very real way.

More and more responsible companies are realizing they have a debt to the communities they are located in. Boeing was able to recognize this and give back to the community in a very practical way- by giving bikes to children that may never gotten the opportunity without them. When a company works within a certain locale it is very rewarding and beneficial to be a part of that community. It is more important than just being an employer. Boeing understands this and helped solidify their place within Chicago by holding the event a few blocks from their office and giving the bikes to local children. It also brought the employees together in a fun, learning environment in which they could have a good experience together, but also feel great about producing something for the benefit of others. Along with the learning opportunities along the way, a real sense of teamwork and camaraderie is felt when the bikes are completed and given away.

Thanks to Boeing for a great event and for being an important part of Chicago. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a great demonstration of your commitment to your people and the communities you are involved in.

Microsoft conducted a Build-A-Bike workshop with 100 of it’s employees in Seattle recently. Their aim was to bring a unique team building experience to the adults while changing lives of the kids who received the bikes. Microsoft has grown to be an industry leader in software in its more than 30 years in existence. They employ more than 90,000 people around the world. We have partnered with Microsoft to deliver quality team building programs to many of their corporate conferences across the country.

Microsoft held this event at the newly renovated Joel E. Smilow Clubhouse and Teen Center in Seattle. With half of the team being field-based, Microsoft finds it valuable to gather everyone together twice a year, and chose to include Build-A-Bike as a way to inject some fun and energy.

The competition was heated as groups completed challenges and activities one by one. They had a great time getting to know each other better while drawing larger lessons about how we choose to interact in the workplace. In all, they built 16 bikes, and when the kids came through the partition into the gymnasium, their faces lit up!

“This is just a fantastic event. Our group really enjoyed themselves. It was made particularly special by having the kids come at the end to receive the bikes!” — Gina Jackson, Microsoft

Build-A-Bike is a great way to provide fun, high-energy team building experience to your group while connecting to a larger philanthropic commitment to your community.

Over 25 senior marketing advisers for Fidelity Investments came together in Boston for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in Boston, Massachusetts. The end of the event culminated in 4 new bicycles being given to representatives from the Dorchester Boys and Girls Clubs. The quick one hour event was fast-paced and loaded with laughs as the participants completed the tasks necessary to build the bikes. The interaction of the individuals in collecting the items required to assemble the bikes was instrumental to their success. It was a fun activity and a pointed learning experience.

Team building is often left to chance within organizations. People work in units and nothing is ever achieved without a team; but the actual working of teams, and improvements are usually assumed to happen. In team building activities the focus is on how to make and improve the mechanics of how teams work. In this instance part of the focus was on understanding how team members fit into the process, and how they can improve their awareness of that process. Great teams don’t just happen. Individuals learn to interact and depend on each other and the team grows in its effectiveness.

The members of the Fidelity Investment marketing team had a great time and a learning experience while contributing and giving back to the community. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a great success thanks to the participants that laughed and learned while making a vital contribution to deserving boys and girls.

38 work at home professionals from American Express Travel came together from across the Southeast to enjoy a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event at the Las Colinas Four Season Resort and Spa in Irving, Texas (Dallas, Texas). As a result of the fun learning experience 6 bikes were given to deserving children from The Salvation Army. These children were just a few of the many children that benefit from the children’s program at this local Salvation Army. The children that came, as well as the people that participated in the event were very excited when the bikes were presented. The event was filled with laughter and learning experiences, and even a few tears at the conclusion of the event.

The theme of the meeting taking place for the American Express employees is “Transforming to Extraordinary”. Certainly the events of the Build-A-Bike event set the stage for the upcoming conference. Basics were shared and experienced concerning communication, collaboration, and team leadership. These workers were also from different locations and, although they have spoken with each other, many had never met face to face. This event gave them opportunity to put faces with the voices and get to know each other in a much better way.

Often times when working with people over the phone or in virtual situations we come to understand them by the situations we find ourselves in with them. We get to know them and attribute to them certain characteristics that may not be true about them, but rather come about because of the situation shared. The way we come to understand each other is more from the situation than from the actual person. Of course, the fundamental error is that we will attribute their actions to character or personality rather than the circumstances. This event brought the people together in a fun non-threatening way in which they could really come to understand and appreciate each other.

The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a perfect solution to a common problem facing many companies. American Express made a good and beneficial choice that will provide dividends for along time. Along with that 6 children received brand new bicycles. Thanks to American Express and The Salvation Army for making a great event and a great contribution.

A Murderous Good Time in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, All Part of A Charade, All in The Name of Team Building. Charade, or murder?  (Well at least a murder mystery team building.) After all, they all saw the Chief Judge stagger and fall?  Members of the Iowa’s Northern District of the US Bankruptcy Court were determined to find out what happened, and who done it.  While gathering evidence, and questioning suspects, they also learned how to build a stronger team.  In fact they learned how to be better leaders, team mates and individuals.  Could it have prevented the murder? Perhaps.

Their jobs are not easy, as the jobless numbers grow, so does the number of people who just can’t make it, and file for bankruptcy.  These folks process the claims, and meet people in economic trouble almost every day.  Iowa does have one of the lower unemployment rates in the nation. But while their number of cases may be lower…they are still way too high, it takes an emotional toll.  A morning of team building, rejuvenation, and stress relief for today’s economic upheaval that has been heaped on them. And more important thing – figuring out a crime that happened right in front of them was on the docket.

At Usher’s Ferry, a historical landmark, dotted with homes-turned-museums, from the last century, they put aside the misery of the economy and had a morning of team-building fun.   The group called in the Leader’s Institute’s “Gum Shoe Crew” to help solve the crime. (No, the judge is not really dead!)  But that did not stop the team from having a lot of fun while figuring out who the bad “girl” was.

Almost no one suspected the “shy one” of a desperate faux crime.  But don’t kid yourself, she did it, and one team figured out why, and how!  By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

170 employees of ACDI VOCA came together for a unique team building experience in Washington, DC. They enjoyed three sessions on Creating a Team Culture and joined that with a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. The participants got the opportunity to get to know each other better, collaborate on several projects, solve problems, learn important leadership and team building principles and build 20 bikes that were given to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington. The children were present to receive the bicycles and it was a heart-warming experience to welcome the children and share their joy in receiving such special gifts. All the activities were entertaining and fun, but were strongly reinforced with learning opportunities.

All the activities brought out an important fundamental that collaboration is key to company success. It doesn’t stop with the immediate team, but we need to be able to collaborate within the team, with others in the company and with the beneficiaries of the services provided. Team work isn’t just the immediate team members we work with from day to day, but also the people with in our company that we can contribute to and receive contributions from. Often times the most effective way to create opportunities is reach beyond existing boundaries to new circles, to gain new insights and perspectives, to acquire information and awareness, to work together in a more functional and with greater acuity.

Thanks to ACDI VOCA and their contributions to a great event combining Creating a Team Culture and Build-A-Bike into a fun growth opportunity for their employees growth and for making a great contribution to boys and girls in the DC area.

Our instructors travel all over the world to conduct team building events for our client companies, and we each have our favorite locations to travel to and lead team building event. This list is not necessarily the “Best Cities” but they are the cities that we most like to travel to and teach in. We hope you agree.

• Las Vegas, Nevada: Las Vegas is still an extremely fun and cost effective location to hold an annual convention or team building event. Hotel expenses are literally a half to a third the expense that you’d invest in other cities, and the huge casinos are like cities in and of themselves. Your team will likely never have to leave the casino and still feel like they have seen “it all.” Also, because the hotels and event planners are well seasoned, planning and delivering a world-class event is very easy and turn-key. More information about team building in Las Vegas.
• Orlando and Miami, Florida: Orlando is probably one of the most popular convention cities in the world because of the great weather and famous attractions. Just like in Las Vegas, a great bonus is that the event planners and hotel staffs are well-seasoned and very easy to work with. Be sure to insert free-time into your agenda so that your participants can enjoy the resort-like atmosphere that most convention hotels in Orlando have. Miami is also very popular for similar reasons, but Miami is a little more tropical and “adult oriented.” Either location will give you a fantastic convention or team building event, but Orlando is a little more family-friendly. More information about Orlando Team Building and Miami Team Building.
• Chicago, Illinois: The Navy Pier, The Magnificent Mile, and a nice compact city center make Chicago a fantastic place to hold your annual convention. In many locations, participants can walk to additional attractions and location, but a short cab-ride is also easy to find. Just like with the Florida location and Vegas, Chicago has a vast pool of great event planners, but because hotel space is a lot more limited in Chicago, your event will take a little more planning. A Cubs game is a nice bonus for visitors as well. The food in Chicago is impeccable as well. Whether you favor a Chicago Dog or Deep Dish Chicago-style pizza or a great steak, Chicago is a great place to gain a few pounds. More Chicago Team Building information.
• San Francisco, California: San Francisco is a great place to hold a convention or annual meeting, but logistically, San Francisco can cause a few transportation challenges. Because of city politics, many of the big convention hotels are located outside of San Francisco proper (and also because of the high concentration of companies south of San Francisco in Silicon Valley. So getting your group from their hotel to some of the attractions can increase your total cost a little, but the hotels are still a great value compared to other major metropolitan areas. Attractions like the Wharf, Alcatraz, and Candlestick Park offer great outings for your group. San Francisco Team Building information.
• Washington, DC: Although it takes a little more planning because of the congestion, Washington, DC is one of the absolute best places to conduct a convention — especially if your group favors a historical perspective. The city has a number of nice convention hotels and attractions galore. The city is easy to get around in via walking or cab rides as well. The major drawback to Washington, DC is the customer service. Unlike cities like Vegas and Orlando where, no matter who at a hotel you communicate with, you will always get a warm and friendly response and immediate service, in Washington, DC, So, you might have to make simple request more than once to get satisfaction, and the service may not be as fast as you might require. Information about Washington DC Team Building.
• New York, NY: New York city is a fabulous place to hold a convention, because it is the center of economic activity and the home of Broadway and Times Square. The sites and sounds of New York can make any convention a memorable event. The city has three major airports and taxi-rides into the city are fairly inexpensive as well. The one major problem with New York as a convention destination, though, is the hotel rules. Most of the staff at the hotels have strict union rules that can cause a few challenges for the uninitiated. For example, the union rules demand that setting up a station at an event generate a minimum of two hours of labor for the waiters/waitresses, so you will often find a waiter standing next to your food or beverage station while you team is on break — not refreshing, but just standing — and then often pack up station early. As long as you know their rules, you will have fewer challenges, but a good, local event planner in New York is really worth it to you. New York Team Building information.

These are just a few of our favorite cites for team building, so this is, by no means, a comprehensive list. For instance, our home base in Dallas, Texas is a great place because of it’s central location and attractions. Atlanta, Georgia is also a great team building city because of it’s airport and great downtown area. Seattle, Washington is probably one of the most overlooked location to do team building, but has a lot of advantages. And, of course, Los Angeles and San Diego are fantastic team building locations.

Whatever location that you choose, make sure and contact one of our team building staff for details about delivering one of out world-famous team building events.

MWH, a leading environmental resources company, hosted a great Build-A-Bike Team Building Event on their property in Broomfield, Colorado, just outside Denver. MWH is an important international company in and this event showed they have a heart for their work, their company and the community. The participants gave part of their annual meeting time to have some fun getting better acquainted with each other and making a difference in the lives of children. Along the way they experienced important lessons in communications, collaboration, team building and facilitation.

The Build-A-Bike gave them time to work together having fun, sharing laughs and solving problems. The first activity had them splitting into teams and tackling asks that they could complete by themselves. The activity is designed to help them work together as a team to solve problems and finish some tasks that rely on recognizing the talents of each other and putting them into practice. In the completion of the task they see each other in a different than usual setting, get to know each other better, and share a lot of laughs with the whole group.

The next activity used strategic methods to get the teams to work with other groups. Reluctant at first, each group recognized the need to solicit help and give helop for each group to be able to finish the assignment- building bikes for children. The first activity called for them to use the talents within their immediate group, the final event caused them to go outside their group to get help from others that had the resources to help them. It also meant they had to be available to help others who needed the resources they had acquired. The final result was that 8 bikes were constructed and given to children form the local agency “A Precious Child”. The children were present at the end of the program to accept the 8 bikes, which made for a great ending to a great Build-A-Bike Event.

Everyone likes to feel like they contribute to their community. For a company, like MWH with Global connections, to bring their people together for an event like this- it not only gives the individuals an opportunity to contribute, but the company as well. This helps the individuals to feel good about the contributions, as well as their company. The individual and the company working together to make a difference for kids, their families and the communities they live in. This event is a win-win-win situation. The individuals benefit, the company benefits, and the receiving children, their families and their community benefit. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event provides a great opportunity for everyone.

EISAI, known best for its creation of drugs like Aricept, to treat alzheimers, gathered in Andover, MA (just a short drive from Boston, Massachusetts) to “Make A Wish” come true. Constantly researching, developing and testing their newly developed drugs, EISAI took a few hours out of their research to engage in a team building event, designed to make them a stronger team. Collaboration, the exploration of each other’s strengths, and communication was the foundation for a Build-A-Bike.

In a world of science that is as important as life itself, this worldwide pharmaceutical research company puts the well-being of patients, and discovering new ways to make life better before all else. Research takes precision teamwork. From the scientists who search for answers to the teams that care for the buildings, equipment and people who work there, better cooperation and collaboration makes things come together more quickly.

They came together to build a stronger team, learn about themselves, each other, let their hair down, and build some bikes for kids who are ill. Kids who have a pained view of the world, still wish for simple thing – like a single bike. Smiles, tears and laughter ruled the day. They got to know each other in a much different way. They knew what each other “did” before today, but not “who” each of them is. Feeling good about learning and giving to some little kids who know how difficult life can already be, made the folks from EISAI ready to go back to research, and relate to each other in a much better way. By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

In Arkansas, teams of Walmart Interns, designed golf holes, sunk the ball, built a stronger team, and gave back to their community.  Tough economic times have doubled the number of hungry in Northwest Arkansas.  After a competitive round of golf, each team trying to make a hole in one, the teams boxed-up “food greens” for the Northwest Arkansas food bank.

These interns got to know each other, collaborated, and took away a keen understanding that The Ace Race golf team building event is more than a great way to spend a few hours.  It builds teams, is a whole lot of fun, and most important – is a powerful weapon to fight poverty.  Lana Harris, spokesperson for the food bank, told the nearly 200 interns that they made the lives of people who depend on the food bank a lot easier.  The vision of the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank is simple; to end hunger in the area through the building of partnerships.  Walmart is one of their biggest sponsors.  The number of children in America who go to bed not knowing if they will have enough to eat the next day is staggering.  One child out of four knows hunger first hand.  Walmart wants to be part of the solution.  Its’ philanthropic ethos, is a guiding force in all of the communities where Walmart does business.

These interns played a little golf on the holes designed by each team, some may even stump Rory McIlroy.  If laughter is a measurement of pleasure – this was a great three hours.  The Ace Race team building event is fun, and maybe a little competitive.  Mostly, it is a “feel good” event designed to strengthen teams and help communities, quite literally, put food on the tables of the hungry.

By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

Over 50 people from 14 countries took part in an afternoon of Team Building that culminated in 8 bikes being built and donated to the Baltimore Police Athletic League. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event is a fun, fast-paced event in which the participants are involved in many fun and worthwhile events that end up making a difference in the lives of children, their families and the communities they live in. The Marriott Inner Harbor Hotel was the gracious site of the event and went out of their way to make sure that Environmental Resource Management and The Leaders Institute had everything they needed for the event to be an great success. 

The activities provide learning as a by-product of the games, situations, problems, and obstacles that are faced during the event. ERM was a great group of creative, fun-loving, growing people that enjoyed the activities and each other. During the event they got to know each other better, see each other in a little different situation than usual, and even display their creative and athletic (even gymnastic) abilities. In the final activity the group made eight bikes that were donated to Police Athletic League that will distribute the bikes to area children.

Team work is often viewed as the simple inter connection and effectiveness of group members. But this event showed how people from 14 different countries can come together to make one event a big success and contribute to the needs of people in the community. ERM was the sponsoring company and invited The Leaders Institute to come facilitate the workshop. The fun was uplifting and making bikes that will be contributed to children added a great feeling to working together to make a difference- what a great lesson.

And the difference, each participant felt it. It was the experience. It was learning (even if by accident) a little about teamwork and leadership, it was giving back, it was hearing the representative from the PAL, it was the feeling of knowing you have done something worthwhile. ERM is focused on sustainable energy resources. Their work makes a difference everyday for people throughout the world. But the Build-A-Bike Event was a nice reminder that making a difference really does make a difference.

Over 400 REI employees and vendors came together at Volunteer Park for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. The park was a beautiful outside venue and the REI people enjoyed the outdoors and the fun activities of the afternoon. When all was said and done they had loads of laughter and even some learning while building 62 bicycles that were donated to a local charity. REI has a mission of care and concern for the outdoors and displayed that through every part of the activity; from planning to the actual program, to the clean up. The over 400 people acted with respect and courtesy to the environment and each other. Having over 400 people involved in a bike building project outside may have had some difficulties, but the REI group was fantastic in enjoying the event and making it a great success.

Team bonding is an important part of teambuilding. Through the activities of the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event the participants were able to get to know each other better, have some fun together and accomplish a goal of building bikes. The activities helped each person to rely on the team members for help and support, and they were able to share a few laughs along the way. By doing so they learned important lessons of team building and also the importance of bonding together. For team to work well they need to understand and value each other. They also need to learn each others strengths and weaknesses so they can capitalize on the strengths and minimize the weaknesses.

Another important lesson was that there can be a big difference between knowing something and applying it to actual situations. Head knowledge and heartfelt expression helps team to grow and bond, and aids in completing the tasks as best possible. REI was a great group and the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a great success because of the success of the individuals that makeup this great company.

Below are a few team building articles and team building tips that we published on the blog in past months. (Sometimes, real good ideas get buried, so here is a review of a few.)

Team Building Game: The Helium Stick

One of my favorite team building games or team icebreaker activities is sometimes called The Helium Stick or even Lighter than Air. The rules are pretty simple. Organize your group into small groups of eight to ten people (you’ll need at least six people per team to make it work, but more than eight or [...]

Do You Really Know How To Motivate Your Team?

Leadership, And Management Skills Are Not Coded Into Our DNA. Do You Really Know How To Motivate Your Team? Leadership and management skills are not coded into our DNA. But you hear people say, “He or she is a born leader.” Well….not really. They may know less about their own team and what motivates it [...]

Free Team Building Activity-Playing Card Shuffle

Here is a free team building activity that can insert a ton of energy into your meeting right as you get started. If you have a big group that you need to organize into smaller teams (or tables), The Playing Card Shuffle is a great way to do it. To setup the room in advance, [...]

More team building tips at http://www.leadersinstituteteambuilding.com/free-tips-videos/free-team-building-tips

Lazard MBA’s Loosen Their Ties to Build A Better Team and Some Bikes For Kids in New York City and New Jersey. At the center of Manhattan’s commerce, beat the heart of team building and Philanthropy. These new Lazard MBA finance wizards put down their forecasts, recommendations, and advice, and took up the tools of team building. They learned about each other, built their team, and some bikes for kids who have none.

It is rarely a team of one that changes the world. Even Warren Buffet, is surrounded by others who are smart, dedicated, and willing to work together. Achieving success is done much faster and more efficiently if teamwork is learned and fostered. As Vince Lombardi said, “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”

Safety inspected and ready to roll, the bikes were presented to some kids who never imagined that New York’s financial world would reach out to them. These kids not only got an introduction to some nice, caring people, they got a birds eye view of Manhattan, and loved the elevator ride up to what seemed like the top of the world.

One child, from Chinatown, asked what people do at Lazard. It will be a while before the kids understand the language of financial advisement, like mergers and acquisitions, strategic matters, restructuring and capital structure, capital raising and corporate finance, but on this day everyone understood the language of giving. For the kids, it meant that someone outside their family cared enough to try and make their lives a little better. For the folks at Lazard, learning about reaching out to help other teams, breaking down the silos before there are erected, solving problems, recognizing each other’s strengths, and making kids smile was a really great day at the office! A couple of the financial wizards shook my hand and said, “This was a great event.” And I was able to say, “You, and Lazard made it happen.”

Goldman Sachs conducted a Build-A-Bike® Team Building Event benefiting 20 children in New York and New Jersey. 120 new hires from Goldman Sachs came together in two different Build-A-Bike Team Building Events to enjoy one another, learn some team building and leadership skills and build bikes for children from the Children’s Aid Society of New York. The event was fast-paced and moved quickly for the three hours which culminated in the building of 10 bikes in the morning session and 10 bikes in the afternoon session. In each case the children receiving the bikes were present at the end of each session to receive their new bikes. It was a moving experience seeing the excited kids come in and claim their prize. The young people, newly hired by Goldman Sachs were in New York city for training and this experience showed them the importance of giving back to the community. The different activities leading up to the bike give-away were fun and insightful, but the children receiving the bikes was extra special to the participants.

One of the great things to witness was how well these young people got along, interacted and helped each other in solving the problems and puzzles they faced. They worked together and called on each others strengths when needed. An important part of team building and team leadership is being able to capitalize on one another’s strength and let each person use their abilities for the good of the group. This synergistic effort was obvious in the participants who, although competitive at times, also overcame the competitive struggle to finish the task of building the bikes. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a lot of fun, but also pointed to the lessons that could be taken away.

Thanks so Goldman Sachs for a great Team Building Event and to the Children’s Aid Society for providing a meaningful end to a great day.

TCU Masters Degree Students use Team Building Event to Build Bears for Grief Stricken Children In Dallas and Ft Worth, Texas. Over 50 people from the Master’s In Accounting program at Texas Christian University came together for a day of meetings which included a Rescue Bear Team Building Event. This special event included several activities that culminated in 25 stuffed animals being assembled that were given to The Warm Place; a unique compassionate organization that help children that have experience the death of a close relative. The activities of the afternoon included some very fun activities that incorporated valuable lessons on leadership and team building. Amidst the laughter, games and projects the participants were also given time to think over important principles that they can put into practice.

During the team building event personality and temperament was explored. It was clear that through the activities people understood a little more about how personality and temperament plays into our every day behavior. Often times that behavior can lead us to interact most with people who are most like ourselves. The problem is that when we work in homogeneous units we fail to capitalize on the strengths of others who could be in the group. When we surround ourselves with personalities most like our own we are missing a key ingredient to seeing a total or whole picture. Many teams are formed this way and short-circuit the effectiveness of the team because key ingredients to the whole are missing by the neglect of having a rounded team that includes the various temperament styles.

The Rescue Bear Team Building Event helps expose how silos in the workplace are formed and how to break out of that mold. It was a fun and experiential learning event and there was a great feeling about giving back to such a great community organization as The Warm Place. The 25 stuffed animals made and contributed will make a difference in the lives of children dealing with grief as the event made a difference in the lives of these Master’s program students.

One of the most common challenges that event planners or convention organizers encounter is picking the perfect team building event for each group that they represent. We always want to organize something new and fresh, and we often want to have a memorable experience that participants talk about for weeks or months. So how to you determine what the absolute best team building event is for your group? Answer these simple questions, and the options will be narrowed down to just the events that will work for your team.

How Big is Your Group?

The main aspect of your group that will exclude many team building options is the size of the group. If your group is relatively small, many events just won’t work as well, and if your group is too big, other team events will need to be excluded. The general rule of thumb is that the smaller your group is, the better “behavior change” type team building events work, and the larger the event, the more you will want to look at Charity Team Building Events.

Small Groups: For smaller groups, team building skills like communication skills, people skills, conflict resolution, and coaching are a fantastic way to create a team culture for your group. If you have 15, 20, or 30 team members, you can create a real esprit de corps among team members, and team building events like this are really cost effective as well. A half-day event can typically be scheduled for as little as $2,500. So teams can generate great results for a smaller fee.

Middle Sized Groups: If your group size is between 30 and 50 people, experiential non-charity team building is a better fit. Events like outdoor team scavenger hunts or murder mystery events work extremely well for this sized group. If you are organizing a team scavenger hunt, you can organize the team into eight to 12 small groups on the treasure hunt, and they will have a blast. The murder mystery event can be delivered in a similar way. With less than 10 groups, every team is active and having fun. However, if you only have 10 people and you organize either one of these events, you’ll have a competition between, at most, two groups, so a lot of the fun is drained out of the events. If you have 20 or 30 teams all participating in and event like this, it will be confusing and the small groups will be stepping on each others toes — not what you want in team building.

Larger Groups: Once your group gets bigger than 50 people (and even as big as 500 or 5000 people) Charity Team Building Events are a much better choice. The reason why is that a Charity Team Event like a Build-A-Bike Event or Ace Race is extremely high energy team event where big groups of people can interact simultaneously, and the bigger the event, the bigger the impact. If you have a group of 20 people building bikes for kids, four or six bikes is not all that exciting, but if you have 500 people building bikes, and you donate 100 bikes to the Boys and Girls Club, it is a big deal. The bigger the group, the more necessary it is to conduct charity team building.

What is Your Venue

Choose an event that is appropriate to the venue. Often, if the event is at a tropical resort, event organizers will often hear, “Let’s do something outside,” and since the team building event is one of the few things that can be conducted outside, they decide to conduct the event outside even though it may not be practical. For instance, if you organize a scavenger hunt or treasure hunt at a fabulous resort, it won’t be nearly as fun as one in a downtown area. They may get to see the pool, and the cabanas, and the spa, but they will just see them in passing as the move around the resort. In a downtown area, though, they can uncover the history of the city, identify often-overlooked art masterpieces, and more. Often, when you hear the “Can we do something outside,” comments, that is code for, “We are at a fabulous resort, but we don’t get any time to enjoy the location because we are in stinking meetings all day.” So just give the participants a little more free time, and you’ll get better results. One of our favorite events for resort locations is the Ace Race Golf Team Building Event where we have participants build an entire mini-golf course out of non-perishable food items that later get donated to the local food bank.

If you use these guidelines, you’ll pick an awesome team building event for your group!

Over 70 Walgreen’s employees, marketing directors, managers, analysts and support staff came together in Northbrook, IL, outside Chicago to take part in a fun learning experience. The Build-A-Bike Teambuilding Event was a complete success. The group working together, but in 12 teams, completed everything necessary to build bikes that were given to children from a local Boys and Girls Club. The space was small for the event, but the closeness added to the fun as all the team members did a great job completing all the tasks. Along the way they had a lot of fun, enjoy a lot of laughter and even if it were an accident learned something valuable and useful to their responsibilities.

A special lesson experienced by this group during the Build-A-Bike event was that individual contributions play a great part in team success. Throughout the activity there are many challenges the teams face. The skills, talents and even temperaments come out at each contribute what they can to make the individual teams successful in eventually building the bikes. The team completes the tasks, but it is because each individual contributed according to who they are, the strengths they posses, the talents they have, and the skills they have developed. The success of the team is built around bring individuals together to synergize into an accomplished task. The synergy of the team is that they can accomplish more, and achieve it more quickly than if approached individually.

Thanks to Walgreen’s for a great event and for making it a difference in the lives of 12 children from the community. Certainly the participants from Walgreen’s benefited from the Build-a-Bike Team Building Event, but giving the bikes to the children was an added benefit to the participants as well as the children, their families and the community.

What happens when 33 team members of Swedish Match North America get together for team building and fun? 6 children from the San Antonio Boys and Girls Clubs get brand new bikes! Swedish Match held a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in San Antonio Texas that ended with the bikes they built during the activities being given to area children. The event was a lot of fun and this competitive group enjoyed the activities that had them participating in several activities that culminated in 6 bikes being assembled and given away. The Swedish Match people we’re very active and their competitive sides came out as they saw each activity as a real competition and worked hard to win. The fun and laughter were infectious, and they even learned a few lessons along the way. It was a wonderful experience and the Swedish match participants were a great group to work with. 

One of the real lessons was to observe the groups as they learned that competition can be very valuable if it brings out the best in everyone. But often we allow our competitive side to come out when there really isn’t any competition- and that can result in dreadful outcomes. We often work in different departments, different locations, and different divisions; there are many situations that segment a company. So we are often competing with limited personnel, limited HR resources, limited funding, and other resources. When we see our sector as being in competition with others within one company that competition can actually hurt the overall company. In fact, we need to be reminded that it is one company and that hurting one part is hurting the whole. The whole company cannot prosper if one part’s competition hurts another.

In the Build-A-Bike Team Buildingevent the goal was to build the bikes, all six of them. It wasn’t to see which team could get done first, or which team had the fewest defects, but to get all the bikes completed and safety checked. The folks from Swedish Match got it done, to the benefit of the children from the Boys and Girls Clubs. It was a great event, with great results. Thanks Swedish Match!

Over 300 suppliers for Heinz and Heinz employees came together for a memorable Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a very special event. The fast-paced event was held more for fun than instruction and that goal was accomplished. The activities had people laughing, enjoying one another, and getting to know each other better. The end result was that in a very special ceremony 48 bikes were given to children of military personnel from the area. After the bikes were built the participants broke for lunch and then assembled for a general meeting. During the meeting several presentations were made, one by a representative from the Wounded Warriors program, as well as from an actual wounded warrior. A video was shown that also revealed the importance of the work of this organization. These special gatherings ended with a playing of the song “I’m Proud to Be an American” while the children and their parents, many in their military uniforms, escorted their new bikes into the room. It was a very emotional scene as the participants in the event got to see the bikes they had made being guided by the children and families that received them. Heinz also presented a check to Wounded Warriors in Pittsburgh for to help in their fantastic efforts.

Team Building Events, like the Build-A-Bike can be excellent teaching opportunities to gain insight into leadership and team building. But in this case the idea was to bring the participants together for strictly a fun time together. Certainly that mission was accomplished as was evident by the laughter and the interaction by all concerned. But even though not planned, the fun event had plenty of teaching moments. Each activity was a lot of fun, and the ending added a great sense of satisfaction and pride in our armed forces. This Bike Team Building Event was a great and heart-touching event. Thanks Heinz for great event in Pennsylvania, for giving to deserving people, and for giving a great example that other companies should follow.

Team Building Tip-The Entertainment Value of Team Building Events

I’m ashamed to say that in the early part of my speaking career, I totally underestimated the value of entertainment in team building. Don’t get me wrong. I knew from day one that the best way to teach was to do so while people are having fun. Since I came from a teaching background, I learned very early on that people learn faster when they are laughing, so there has always been a focus on making the learning process entertaining. However, in the last ten years or so, a whole new team building industry has come onto the scene, and as a result, the entertainment aspect of training — specifically team building activities and events — has taken on a much bigger prominence.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends invited my family to go to Six Flags for a corporate event that his company throws every year. The company has about 3000 employees, so they rented out the entire theme park for their employees for the whole day, and they have been doing it for years. It was entirely designed as an entertaining reward for their employees, and it was quite fun. Conventions, incentive retreats, special events, and the like have long been a part of the rewards for working with big companies, but in recent years, the “shared experience” has expanded into charity team building events where the entire group actually works together for a common goal. These types of team building experiences have had a fantastically positive effect on corporate cultures and charitable organizations all over the world.

Corporate Team Building Events are More Complicated than Standard Corporate Entertainment Event

Because corporate executives and event planners have been organizing these entertainment packages for decades, they sometimes think that a big team building event should be organized the same way. This common mistake can cause big challenges, though, and the event will often flop.

For example, about once every couple of months, our instructors will receive a request to do a bike building event, but they will specifically ask that the event be just the building process without really having any team building activities. Last week, we got a call from an event planner who wanted 400 people to build 200 bikes as a “day to give back to the community.” After conducting over 3000 Build-A-Bike® team building programs, we’ve learned a lot about the bike building process. One of these truths is that the actual building of the bike is not that fun or exciting in and of itself.

When was the last time you were sitting up on Christmas Eve looking at a box of parts and thinking to yourself, “Man, I can’t wait to put that thing together”? The putting together of parts is not really fun — it’s work. Another problem is that most of the bikes shipped from Huffy or other bike companies come fairly assembled. It might take someone who is a bike novice about 15 to 20 minutes to put assemble one, and maybe 5 minutes for someone who has mechanical experience. So it would take 400 people a maximum of 20 minutes to put all 200 bikes together, and at the conclusion, there wouldn’t really be any type of shared experience created.

Most participants would walk away thinking, “Okay, I did my duty,” but they wouldn’t take a lot of pride in their work. It’s also not something that they would remember as being fun or entertaining.

A Great Team Building Event is Fun and Challenging!

This is where great team building events come in. Just like on a sports team, the fun and teamwork comes from overcoming adversity together. The pride and sense of accomplishment come from achieving something that was challenging. And delivering a challenging activity in a fun and memorable way is an art. The very best team building event facilitators are those who sweep the audience into a fun activity making it appear as though a competition is occurring within the group. Those who can get positive peer pressure working in a way to build up energy along the way and add a little bit of comedy can ensure that the events are effective every time. One of the reasons why charity team building events like Build-A-Bike and The Ace Race are so popular is that while these events are going on, team members are laughing and having fun, and because of the shared challenges that they overcome as a group, they feel a great sense of accomplishment at the end. So when the bikes are donated to cute kids at the end or when tons of food items are donated to the local food bank, the emotional impact is very high at the end.

A nice bonus is that when these activities are conducted at conventions or annual meetings, that feeling of pride and accomplishment tends to spill over and leave the participants thinking of the entire event as a major success.

So schedule a professional team building event for your next convention or annual meeting, and you will entertain as well as instruct your team!

30 people from Jonson Controls, a contracting company with JC Penney, came together in Dallas, Texas for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. The event was help at the JC Penney headquarters training center and children form the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dallas received the bicycles at the end of the program. The team building event was fun and provocative and brought the participants together for several activities during the event. The group was divided into teams and had to accomplish several tasks that were both fun and stimulating. There was a lot of laughter during the event and people got to know each other a little better by seeing one another in a different situation than the regular work routine.

Oftentimes we work with people and even though we get to know them, we rarely consider them out of the framework of work. We may know about their personal lives at some level, but rarely consider that in the context of the working relationship. This activity has an intrinsic value in that it helps each person see their team members in a different than normal situation. That situation helps us to not only get to know each other better, but help us to understand each other better. It helps each individual to transfer the new understanding to each individual that it opens us to further possibilities in the work place. A new team spirit can emerge because we have a great understanding and a greater capacity to value individual contributions. This reality also comes because we also have a greater understanding and a greater capacity to value individual strengths. The Johnson Controls group learned to understand and value each other a little more because of the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event.

Thanks Johnson Controls for a great event. And thanks for the great contribution of 6 bicycles to the children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dallas. It was a fun learning experience and giving back to the community was a special ingredient to the success of the Build-A-Bike event.

Maxim Healthcare Build-A-Bike® Team Building Events Benefit Kids in Chicago, IL, Portland, OR and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Maxim employees from three regions met on three different occasions to experience a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. The meetings were help in Chicago, Portland and Raleigh and as a result a total of 70 new bicycles were given to children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of those areas. The events were fast paced and action filled as the teams in the different cities took part in several different activities that resulted in the building of the bikes. Nearly 500 Maxim employees from across the country took part in the fun construction project. The events were held in consecutive weeks; first in Chicago, Illinois followed by Portland, Oregon and finally in Raleigh, North Carolina. By the final event everyone involved had had a wonderful experience and contributed to the communities where the events were held.

There is a real benefit to having different locations participate in the same activity, like a Build-A-Bike Event. Even though they work in different regions and don’t interact on a regular basis, it gives the entire company a common experience. Now these 500 employees have a common bond that each can share with each other when they work together, or even meet on a passing basis. The common experience helps build the camaraderie in the specific region, but also across the country. Just knowing that company wide, employees have had the same fun and giving activity, helps build a corporate spirit. Not only was the event a fun time, a learning experience, but also a benevolent contribution to children, their families and the communities they live in. This shared company-wide experience has a positive effect that goes beyond the immediate participants, beyond the children, but to an esprit do corps that has long ranging positive repercussions beyond the physical locations.

Congratulations to Maxim for a far reaching event. Their offering of the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a great decision, a great experience and a great company building occasion.

6 top level supervisors from Irdeto, a global leader in IT security, came together from Canada, Europe and the US for a Camaraderie Quest high tech team scavenger hunt at the famous Pier 39 at the Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, California. The tasks included finding answer to questions, taking group pictures and even a couple videos. Although the weather was rainy and cold for the end of June the participants endured and had a lot of fun and enjoyment in this team building scavenger hunt. The competition was tough and hard fought, but in the end the two teams were laughing and enjoying each others’ creativity. The difference in cultures was both an asset and liability in the event, but sensitivity and patience was rewarded with completed assignments.

The Camaraderie Quest Team Building Event can be a great opportunity to get out of the office and do a fun activity together. Even though not in physical proximity our interactions too often can become predictable and repetitious. We get used to seeing each other in certain surrounding, working on similar tasks, doing the same things and in the same environment. We do a good job and it becomes routine, which can be dangerous. That is one reason the group from Irdeto came together- first as a reward for a great year, but also to spurn on excellent continuation of the progress made. When we get out of those surroundings and get to know each other little better we get new insight into each others personalities and a different revelation of what other individuals are like. We also get to expose our selves to others and prosper form being a little more vulnerable. These can produce positive growth in each individual and so foster growth within the team and the entire organization.

The 6 from Irdeto enjoyed one another, got to see and interact with each other in a different environment, had some laughs and ultimately learned some important things about themselves and each other through the hosting the Camaraderie Quest. Thanks, Irdeto, for a great time and a job well done.

Over 70 employees of Big Communications, a leader in marketing in the health care/pharmaceutical industry came together for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in Detroit, Michigan, to build and donate 14 bikes to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southeast Michigan. The event was a lot of fun and this progressive and innovated group was very involved and participative in every aspect of the event. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of joking and even some learning as they joined team and accomplished the tasks given. In the end the participants has fun and the Boys and Girls clubs brought in 7 of the 14 children that would be receiving the bikes. Amidst the fun ands learning was a great feeling that an important contribution to children, their families and communities they live in had been made.

Throughout the Build-A-Bike event there is opportunity for the groups to work together in their particular teams as well with oth4er teams to complete the tasks and build the bikes. Often times the teams try to complete the job without help, but in this case the activities are designed so that to accomplish what needs to be done each team really needs to work with other teams. In the regular work-a-day world this is often the case. We get so busy doing our tasks that we suffer through it even though asking for help may be more expedient.  We are reluctant to ask for help for many reasons and most of the time those reasons aren’t reasonable. Another common occurrence is that we have an answer or solution someone else may need, but we are reluctant to share because it might take time, or we feel threatened or, whatever reason. But the best thing for the company is for each team and each member to ask for help when needed and offer help when available.

Big Communications has a great and innovative team that accomplished the tasks, had fun and worked very well together. The benefit was not only to them in completing the job, but in the great contribution to the Boys and Girls Clubs. Thanks Big Communications for a great Build-A-Bike Team Building Event.

This weekend, my family and I went camping with our neighbors. Keep in mind that, although I’m a country boy from rural Arkansas and spent many-a-weekend in a tent, I’ve become accustomed to king-sized beds and concierge lounges in my recent years. In fact, it was funny when my wife told me about the invitation…

“I know you’re not really the camping type,” she said.

I was offended… “I can skin a buck and run a trot line, I’ll have you know.”

Well, within a few hours I was back in my rustic roots. My neighbor pulled in his camper and expanded the sides to fit the queen beds. I plugged in my portable hotspot and unpacked my iPad. Just the great outdoors and a little Direct TV. (This is way better than I remember when I was a kid.)

Anyway, the point is that my wife and I have known the neighbors for a year or so now, but we got to know them much better throughout the last 48 hours. We talked about different things. We laughed together. It wad nice and relaxing.

It was a shared experience.

One of the reasons that team building events are so valuable is that they create a shared experience for the entire group. It is something that is not work. It’s not the normal stress and pressure at the office. It let’s the group get to know each other on a personal level.

Teams work much better together when the members of the team have strong friendships. Those strong friendships develop from the shared experiences. So when you schedule your next convention or annual meeting, make sure and look for ways to create a fun, shared experience for your team. Good team building events and activities like charity team building events can create that emotional impact in a shared experience.

The White Mountains in Northern New Hampshire was the setting for a great Build-A-Bike event hosted by Freudenberg NOK. The Omni Mount Washington Hotel was a beautiful venue for over 60 of the company’s high achievers to come for special meetings which included this special activity. The event has a great philanthropic twist at the end as Children from the Easter Seals program in New Hampshire provided children to receive the bikes at the end of the event. The three hour event had the participants involved in several fun activities that aided in their teambuilding and leadership skills. From the opening exercise to the giving of the bikes to the children the energy and enthusiasm was high and the laughter contagious.

What can a Build-A-Bike event teach us about teamwork? One simple lesson that is experiences is that teamwork goes beyond the immediate team to involve a larger team. In this instance there were 10 teams given various tasks, but it wasn’t until they learned to work together across team boundaries that the problems were able to be solved. When the smaller teams enlisted the help of others the actual teamwork among teams provided the benefit. Often time companies are divided by location, divisions, departments, etc., but when we work across those boundaries to help each other- progress really occurs. We may compete for limited human resources, time, financial consideration, budgetary appropriations, and any other things, but competition can become detrimental to the overall welfare of the larger company. If one branch succeeds at the cost of another the company at large suffers.

This is just one of the lessons demonstrated by the Build-A-Bike Teambuilding event. The people at Freudenberg NOK did a great job contributing during the event and in making a positive difference in the life do 10 boys and girls, their families and the communities they live in.

Dana Holding hosted a great Build-A-Bike Team Building Event at their offices in Van Buren Township. The participants gave part of their meeting time to have some fun getting better acquainted with each other and making a difference in the lives of children. The group was active and enjoyed being together and solving the problems to build the bikes. The participants were from North, Central and South America. And although English is a second language for many gathered, the fun and lessons were easily absorbed  across country lines.

Everyone likes to feel like they contribute to their community. For a company, like Dana Holding, to bring their people together for an event like this- it not only gives the individuals an opportunity to contribute, but the company as well. This helps the individuals to feel good about the contributions, as well as their company. The individual and the company working together to make a difference for kids, their families and the communities they live in. This event is a win-win-win situation. The individuals benefit, the company benefits, and the receiving children, their families and their community benefit. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event provides a great opportunity for everyone.

At first glance you wouldn’t think building a team is like hiking a mountain.  The last weekend of summer, Labor Day Weekend, I had an opportunity to hike Mt. Audubon in the Roosevelt National Forest with a group of friends.  As much as I enjoy my job I make it a general rule to try not to think about work on the weekend. But listening to and observing my hiking mates I couldn’t help but think about how building a team is like hiking a mountain.

Be clear

Within our group we had a range of physical abilities from those who are accustomed to 10,000 foot elevation to those who are more used to sea level altitude. At the beginning of the hike it was important to be clear about expectations and what success meant for each person – it wasn’t necessarily reaching the 13,233 foot summit for everyone. That same good clear communication is vital in the workplace.  It’s important for organizations to be clear about goals – from sales goals to safety goals.   Building a team environment is enhanced when you celebrate milestones like many companies are doing with philanthropic teambuilding.

Be consistent

I noticed a lot of leap frogging during our five and half hour hike.  Some hikers went in bursts passing us, then later we’d pass them as they were resting, and they’d pass us again after a recharge.  Others took a “slow and steady wins the race” approach with a more even pace to the top.  Like personality styles, there’s not a right or wrong way, it’s neither good nor bad – it’s just different. For example, when our clients learn about personality styles in our teambuilding workshop Rescue Bear, they see that each style adds value to the team.  A Driver is a Driver and an Expressive is pretty consistently an Expressive.  Once you come to understand and appreciate those differences the resulting communication will be consistent.

Be collaborative

Everybody brings something to the table. On our hike there was a person with a map and GPS, another person keeping an eye on the time and any impending weather to ensure we got to the top and back safely.  Even the person with a quick joke to take our minds off how tired our feet are was an important member of the team.  Good leaders realize that when building a team it’s important to draw in people with varied skills for peak collaboration.

When the day is done and you’re rounding the final switchback and the parking lot is in site you have the satisfaction of knowing you accomplished something great together. Every day at work won’t be like climbing a 13,000 foot mountain, but when building a team you can strive to be clear, be consistent and be collaborative to make your workplace a better environment.

This article was written by Colette Peterson. Colette is a Corporate Team Building Consultant with The Leader’s Institute headquartered out of Dallas Texas. You can reach Colette at 800-872-7830.

Philips, came to Boston, Massachusetts from international and US Cities to learn to build teams and give back to the community and Build-A-Bike^® for kids who have none.   Just a few blocks from commerce and pleasure boats, is East Boston, a tough neighborhood.  Kids walk past drug deals on their way to school, and are tempted to act out rather than to achieve.  One team, and one challenge at a time, nearly 200 Philips folks came together to make these kids lives a little better.

22 kids each got a brand new bike built by Philips teams.  When these beautiful children ran into the room you could feel a collective spirit of good will.  The folks from Philips got to understand the kids a bit from someone who knows all too well what East Boston is all about. Father John Nazarro, a guiding force with a gentle hand, intimately knows the pressure and danger that these kids face.  He came back to the streets where he grew up.  His dream complete, he returned to the East Boston’s streets as the Director of The Boys and Girls Club, where he gives his life and guidance to kids who remind him of himself.
“When I was 7 years old.  My mother was hospitalized after a family car crash for about two years.  That night changed my brothers and sisters lives. needless to say.  I practically lived at the Boys & Girls Club those years and never forgot it as a home away from home.  God has blessed me with the opportunity to give back to others for the last 33 years.  Your kindness in thinking of our kids makes me grateful each day that we do live in a world where great things happen.  Our kids need to see that.”
It is hard to say who was touched most by this team building event.  Father John, the 22 kids who got brand new bikes that will empower them to feel like they are “special” and loved; or the folks from Philips who felt that on this day, they made the world a little kinder, and life’s waves a bit less choppy for some kids living near Boston’s historic harbor.  

Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor & Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

Pepsico Team Building Puts Teddy Bears in the Arms Of Kids With Leukemia in Europe. Istanbul, Turkey, where East meets West, where Pepsico executives from around the world met for their annual conference with a heart.  Pepsico is a company that lives its mission statement – give to others.  So while building a better company, they took time out to build a better team.

They created “Rescue Bears” for children who really need rescuing, a gentle hug from a friend with a mask like they must wear.  Kids who are in a fight for their lives, kids with Leukemia. Losev, an international organization with a hospital, school and home, treats the whole family.   Faced with huge medical bills, Losev picks up the tab, providing treatment and care.  They help families cope with their lives turning upside down, with a sympathetic place to stay, and university scholarships for survivors.  The facts of Child Leukemia are staggering.  Without treatment there is no future, with treatment 90% of the children will live to see their grandchildren.

Pepsico gladly reached into its pockets to help.  As one participant put it, “I had to concentrate on my fingernails and shoes to stem the tears.”  Others wept, and pulled out their wallets to buy things the Moms of the sick kids produced.

This was an annual event with a team-building aspect that they will long remember.  Folks from Pepsico saw vast differences between their lives and those who live in a city where its population outpaces most other cities in the world.  Five times a day they heard the Muslim call to prayer, and walked streets where many believe civilization began, when Istanbul was Constantinople, and the world may have been more unified.  Yet when it comes to children and helping those in need, people throughout the world are the same.  The heart of any nation is its people, and its children, the world’s future.  This team building event brought people and nations together in a positive way… that all will remember. 

Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor & Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

Corporate team building is important in a struggling economy. As we all know…These are tough economic times! During tough economic times it is the tendency of most companies to button down the hatches, hunker down, and hopefully wait out the storm. While this may feel like the safest thing to do it is actually the wrong thing to do and can in fact be detrimental. When things turn around…and they WILL turn around…you need to be positioned to take full advantage of the changing winds. During these tough times it has become too easy for employees or even whole departments within a company to feel under-appreciated which in turn leads to under-performance. This is a cancer that can spread quickly through a company and suddenly before you realize it…it shows up in the profit margin or lack thereof. The result can be devastating. There is a fix however, and it is actually quite simple. Invest in your own company.

One of the safest and rewarding investments in your own company is start doing corporate team building. Team building events are a great way to bring your people and departments together in order to help remind them they are all on the same team and it will take total team effort to pull through. It is through corporate team building that you can show your employees the most important part of your company is the people you hire. A team building event is a great way to bring your folks together, build trust, infuse energy, and improve communication. A positive environment, a sense of purpose, and a team culture is what will make the difference between having your company run like a highly tuned well functioning machine or sputtering and on the verge of breaking down.

Building and maintaining a positive team culture and atmosphere is every bit as important as paying the electrical bill. It’s not just something you should think about. It something you need to start on immediately and is crucial to your company coming through these tough economic not just barely hanging on for dear life but charging forward.

Written by Joe Jessop:
Joe is a corporate leadership consultant with The Leader’s Institute® headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The Leader’s Institute provides dynamic and high energy leadership training and corporate team building events for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and universities all over the country.

A fun, interactive Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in Dallas, Texas was sponsored by Astellas Pharmaceuticals with the end result being 14 new bikes donated to children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas. The 7 boys and 7 girls that received the bikes enjoyed the moment along with the 90 people from Astellas Pharma Global Development, Inc. The action packed, fun event had the participants working in team and the teams working together to complete the tasks necessary to complete the bikes. The children received the bikes at the end of the program and when they entered everyone was full of cheers and worked top fit the bikes to each individual child.

After program there were many great comments on the event and how it was a great team building activity, as well as a lot of fun. The fun helped to reinforce the learning, and having the children present for the final part of the event was the icing on the cake. One of the comments was that in usual team building activities the learning is the main course and you don’t really realize the importance of the material until the end. But with this event, there was fun all the way through, and the learning made the event profitable. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event combines the learning aspect along with the fun throughout the program so at the end it has been an enjoyable and profitable experience from beginning to end.

Thanks to Astellas and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas for a great team building and leadership encounter. As one of the participants said after the event, “I’ve been in team building and leadership training fro over 20 years and this is the best I’ve ever experienced.”

The Food Services division of Sodexo cooked up an idea to include a Build-a-Bike ® team building event in their regional meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Tulsa received new bicycles following the event. The regional management team set aside some time for community support in their quarterly meeting. The following video shows all the smiles that resulted.

Sodexo provides fresh, nutritious meals while working within the ethnic, cultural, and nutritional needs of their clients. They promote local, organic, and healthy ingredients grown through sustainable practices to keep their customers and their environment healthy and happy. The Build-a-Bike ® Team Building Event made some children happy as well.

Increasingly businesses are finding that philanthropy is important in team building efforts as a component of their corporate social responsibility.  Initially some may have held these types of workshops as a public relations move or for perception, but the reality is people who participate in philanthropic team building programs not only love it – they remember it along with the team building skills they learned. They get so much more out of it than if they had done an individual recreational activity.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy and USA TODAY released the results of a survey conducted recently to find out find out how much money the 300 largest U.S. corporations give to charity and to which causes.  “Leading CEOs say they are interested in the deep connection between society obstacles and business obstacles, that they are intertwined,” says Margaret Coady, director of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), an international forum of business executives interested in improving corporate philanthropy.

One of the reasons philanthropy in team building is so important is because it is ‘hands on’.  So often when we give to a charity we know it’s doing some good somewhere but we don’t really get to see the results of our giving.  In team building workshops like Build-A-Bike or Rescue Bear, the receiving organization comes in at the end of the workshop. As one participant exclaimed, “It was the best event I’ve attended in my career — the result of having a bike to hand out at the end to the children was just so gratifying!!”

In 2010, Wal-Mart kicked off a five-year, $2 billion pledge to fight hunger in the U.S., which includes 1.7 billion pounds of food donations and $250 million in philanthropic support. According to Wal-Mart’s Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs who also oversees the foundation’s charitable work, “The only way we successfully deliver on these commitments is by engaging all parts of the business, whether it’s our associates who are volunteering their time to local food banks or the heads of each division who are weighing in on the strategy, or our foundation’s checks to our charity partners.” So the Ace Race team building workshop was a perfect tie-in for their summer intern program recently, where boxed and canned food items were donated to a local food bank.

Wal-Mart is not alone when it comes to taking this strategic approach to sharing the message about company values. Many of the nation’s largest companies are using philanthropy in team building as part of their University, much like are Goldman Sachs Deloitte.  It sets the tone immediately with new hires that these companies go beyond saying that they’re making a difference to actually making a difference

Companies are taking their giving efforts more seriously than ever before as a strategic part of their business because they see the impact these efforts are having.  When it comes to social engagement, the question now for companies is, ‘How do you break through?’ What better way than adding philanthropy to your next team building workshop.

This article was written by Colette Peterson. Colette is a Corporate Team Building Consultant with The Leader’s Institute headquartered out of Dallas Texas. You can reach Colette at 800-872-7830.

East Jordan Iron Works brought together 25 of their top leaders for a day of team building, learning and fun. The morning consisted of a Creating a Team Culture team building workshop that focused on building skills in leadership principles. The focus of the morning was sharing concerning different leadership principles with a time of sharing and then an opportunity to participate in an activity that reinforced the learning. It was a fact-paced, action-oriented time with very practical application. The afternoon was a Camaraderie Quest high tech scavenger hunt through the downtown section of Petoskey. Petoskey is a beautiful town on Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan (a good drive away from Detroit, Michigan). The downtown section is full of historical information, quaint shops, and visitor’s sites. The afternoon activity was enjoyed by the East Jordan Iron Works leaders as they had to work together to gather the information, pictures and videos that were requested.

Combining the Creating a Team Culture workshop with the Camaraderie Quest scavenger hunt made a full day of fun and learning. The principles of the morning were easily transferable to the afternoon activities. Things like smile more, remember names and encourage others were all skills they could put into practice to help them gather the clues, pictures and videos for the scavenger hunt. The principles on conflict also helped them work together to solve the problems of finding the different items they were asked to locate. By putting the two programs together East Jordan Iron Works made the most of the day’s activities.

Combining a Creating a Team Culture workshop with the Camaraderie Quest scavenger hunt was a great way to learn important leadership principles, practice leadership skills, and have a great time of fun and laughter reinforcing the material. Thank to EJIW for a great day and a great learning experience.

The Adecco Group met in South Beach Miami, Florida for a Team Building Event to build energy and enthusiasm and bicycles for kids. The meeting was to build company momentum for sales in a tough economy. At the Build-a-Bike Team Building Event ® held after a general session they had an opportunity to demonstrate their energy. As the following video demonstrates there was plenty to go around.

The Adecco Group, based in Zurich, Switzerland, is the world’s leading provider of HR solutions. With over 32,000 FTE employees and more than 5,500 offices, in over 60 countries and territories around the world, Adecco Group offers a wide variety of services, connecting more than 700,000 associates with over 100,000 clients every day. The services offered fall into the broad categories of temporary staffing, permanent placement, outsourcing, consulting and outplacement. The Adecco Group is a Fortune Global 500 company.

The Adecco Group met in South Beach Miami, Florida for a Team Building Event to build energy and enthusiasm and bicycles for kids. The meeting was to build company momentum for sales in a tough economy. At the Build-a-Bike Team Building Event ® held after a general session they had an opportunity to demonstrate their energy. As the following video demonstrates there was plenty to go around.

The Adecco Group, based in Zurich, Switzerland, is the world’s leading provider of HR solutions. With over 32,000 FTE employees and more than 5,500 offices, in over 60 countries and territories around the world, Adecco Group offers a wide variety of services, connecting more than 700,000 associates with over 100,000 clients every day. The services offered fall into the broad categories of temporary staffing, permanent placement, outsourcing, consulting and outplacement. The Adecco Group is a Fortune Global 500 company.

Why team building is an important incentive to retain top talent

A challenge many leaders face is, “How do you attract and retain talent with a workforce that is increasingly plugged in to social networking as a way of life?” Corporations have to adapt both how they recruit and how they work with people once they join to suit a new generation.  More and more decision makers are turning to philanthropic team building workshops as an incentive for intern programs or goals achieved.

Celebrate your success

What better way to celebrate reaching a sales goal or for a manufacturing facility reaching a safety goal than with giving back to the local community? And with many philanthropic team building workshops you get a double bang for your buck – incentive for the achievement plus building team skills. In a recent Wall Street Journal article PricewaterhouseCoopers chairman Dennis Nally was asked how he defines talent. “Having the technical skills is important but that’s almost a given these days.  Having the right softer skills in terms of being able to work in a collaborative environment, teaming with people, good communication skills, good sensitivities to cultural diversity.”

With experiential team building your team goes through activities where good/bad communication or collaboration is demonstrated so any issues rise to the surface. This is a much more effective way to address team building skills than in a lecture format.

Connect employees to the company values

Team building workshops are an important incentive for setting the tone with new employees.  Instead of reading about the company values in the employee handbook, the message is much more powerful when delivered in a team building workshop.  For example, WalMart contacted us recently because they wanted to add a “wow” to their intern program.  Using WalMart brand food that was donated to a local food bank in our Ace Race team building workshop reinforced their Feeding America campaign and connected the interns to this important company value.

Invest in your assets

In most companies the biggest asset is the people who work there.  Like any asset, if you want a return on that asset, you need to invest in it.  Top performers have to be rewarded in order for company results to remain strong.  As the economy slowly improves across various sectors team building as an incentive helps your team feel connected to your company, your culture, your values.

Inspiration is the key. Many businesses see an inspired workforce as key to expanding. Consider adding teambuilding as an incentive to celebrate your success, connect employees to your company values and protect your assets.  Companies have to grow again, and you need an engaged, motivated and retained work force to do that.

This article was written by Colette Peterson. Colette is a Corporate Team Building Consultant with The Leader’s Institute headquartered out of Dallas Texas. You can reach Colette at 800-872-7830.

Heinz Supports Troops with Build-a-Bike Team Building Workshop in Orlando, Florida. Heinz took advantage of its National Sales & Marketing meeting to donate 100 bicycles to dependents of military families at a Build-a-Bike in Orlando, Florida.  Heinz recently adopted the Wounded Warrior project as its corporate charity.  At a dinner announcing their sponsorship, the company surprised the audience with a presentation of new bicycles to children with parents in the military.  The following video captures the excitement and emotion of the event.

Families from the Army, Marines, National Guard and Air Force were recipients of this generous gift. In addition a large check was presented to the Wounded Warrior Project.

FIS Global emphasized a commitment to community by having a Build-a-Bike team building event® in Orlando, Florida. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida received 46 new bicycles at the event. The following pictures shows the children doing a club cheer and then receiving their bikes.

FIS is one of the world’s top-ranked technology providers to the banking industry. With more than 30,000 experts in 100 countries. FIS delivers a comprehensive range of solutions for the broadest range of financial markets, all with a singular focus: helping their clients succeed. In Orlando they applied this focus on solutions in the community. The Build-a-Bike was conducted by The Leader’s Institute and gave FIS the opportunity to their focus a reality for the forty-six children.

Kim Hesselgrave of FIS said, “We have received some great feedback from our participants.  Thanks or a successful event!”

SunTrust Bank held a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in Atlanta which culminated with the group donating 16 bikes to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Atlanta. Over 90 people participated in the event. The group was divided into 16 smaller groups that each had to participate in several activities, problem solving, and even some math to get the parts to build the bikes. Each team had to work well together, and work together with other teams to complete their projects and get the bikes ready for the children. Once they got all the parts they could assemble the bikes and at the end of the program children from the boys and girls clubs were introduced to receive the bikes. It was a great event, with opportunities for fun and learning, and a great “feel good” ending.

The group from SunTrust came from around the Atlanta area to participate in a day of meetings which culminated in the Build-A-Bike team event. The group participated well and worked with each other showing that SunTrust Bank is a great company with great people.

During the Build-A-Bike there were many opportunities to learn great team building and leadership skills and put them into practice. It is stressed from the start of the program that it is not a competition. The idea is to support and work with one another. It is a hard concept, especially when you’re divided into groups. By dividing into groups competition is almost automatic, even if it is discouraged. The problems that needed to be solved to get the bike parts were most easily solved when working with other teams. The most effective and efficient way to solve many problems is to ask others for help, but it is a hard thing to do, especially if you view it as a competition. But divisions, different locations, branches, departments; any thing that segments one company into many parts, can create unhealthy competition that keeps them from sharing vital information with other groups. Ultimately, the 90+ from SunTrust realized that they were one team, not 16 teams, but one team- made up of 16 groups, with one goal- to build bikes for kids. They did a fantastic job and not only did the 16 children that received the bikes benefit but so did the communities they live in. Thanks SunTrust for a great event.

Below are a few team building tips and team building articles that were publish in the past. (Sometimes, real good ideas get buried in the blog, so here is a review of a few.)

Three Requisites for Corporate Team Building and Motivation

There are three attitudes that need to be present in each team member to make the team a peak performer. Those three are confidence, humility, and commitment. When these three are present in each member of a team then the groundwork is set for an efficient, effective team. Of course a team can be effective [...]

Team Motivation: Teams Learn Faster When They’re Having Fun

Need some Team Motivation? It’s common knowledge that people learn faster and produce more when they are having fun. So why should work be any different? There are several ways to add fun to any project [...]

Improve Your Team Culture with Team Building Activities

Team building activities help build a purposeful team culture within your organization. One of the reasons companies have offsite team meetings is to, not only share and gather information, but also to improve their team culture by giving people “face time”. If you’re planning an offsite meeting, here are some things to keep in mind [...]

More team building tips at http://www.leadersinstituteteambuilding.com/free-tips-videos/free-team-building-tips

Over 30 Nexen employees came from Canada, The United Kingdom and the United States to Dallas, Texas, to take part in 3 days of meetings that included a Build-A-Bike Team Building event®. The event has a great philanthropic twist at the end as Children from the Rockwall County Boys and Girls Clubs provided 6 children to receive the bikes at the end of the event. The three hour event had the participants involved in several fun activities that aided in their teambuilding and leadership skills. From the opening exercise to the giving of the bikes to the children the energy and enthusiasm was high and the laughter contagious.

What can a Build-A-Bike team building event® teach us about teamwork? One simple lesson that is experiences is that teamwork goes beyond the immediate team to involve a larger team. In this instance there were 6 teams given various tasks, but it wasn’t until they learned to work together across team boundaries that the problems were able to be solved. When the smaller teams enlisted the help of others the actual team work among teams provided the benefit. Often time companies are divided by location, divisions, departments, and in this case countries. But when we work across those boundaries to help each other progress really occurs. We may compete for limited human resources, time, financial consideration, budgetary appropriation, and any other things, but competition can become detrimental to the overall welfare of the larger company. If one branch succeeds at the cost of another the company at large suffers.

This is just one of the lessons demonstrated by the Build-A-Bike Teambuilding event®. The people at Nexen did a great job contributing the event and in making a positive difference in the life do six boys and girls, their families and the communities they live in.

Ambassador Rehab used a Build-a-Bike^® Team Building Event to focus on the community by donating new bicycles to The Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida.  Ambassador Rehabilitative Services provides services in 61 skilled nursing and assisted living facilities in Florida, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia.  Their Mission is to, ” provide exemplary rehabilitation services to our residents and community. We foster an environment based on our core values of Compassion, Honesty, Integrity, Respect and Passion.”

At their annual meeting therapy program managers, senior management team, directors and support staff came together for an information-intense three days.  They chose to begin the workshop with a Build-a-Bike^® team building activity to help participants build camaraderie and break down barriers.  The video below shows how successful the plan was.

Proctor and Gamble’s international marketing guru’s came together to share cutting edge ideas, and build a stronger team in Lyon, one of France’s most historic cities.  This group was truly international.  Sounds of Turkish, German, Polish, Spanish, Erdu and Russian hung in the air as the group participated in the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event.  The common language was English and the common sentiment was philanthropy and beauty.  Lyon is dappled with history, and is rich in culture.  Just a few blocks away, however, many neighborhoods are unfortunately rich in poverty.  Unemployment in some pockets of the city is more than 40%.  Yes, nearly half of its people in many neighborhoods have little to do but worry.

For parents of young children, it is a struggle just to put soup on the table.  So, while building a better team through teamwork exercises, Build-A-Bike^® brought Proctor and Gamble and Venissieux Restos du Coeur (a charitable organization) together.  The goal was to make the lives of some kids a whole lot better.  They need food for the tummy and food for the soul.  With a bike firmly in hand, these kids, and their families, were smiling for the first time in a while.  Parents thanked us profusely.  I even got my hand kissed by a couple of adorable eight-year-old boys.  Oh, the French have such classe.

This team’s director, Pawel Krzysztofik, said, “This event brought his team together and set them on a solid path of doing more for others.”  Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor & Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

Travel and Transport, a travel and transport management company, help a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale AZ. The event was a time of fun and learning that ultimately resulted in 12 brand new bicycles being given to children from the local boys and girls clubs. It was an energetic event that kept the participants active and interactive as they participated in team building activities and built bikes. The group of over 70 expressed enjoyment with every part of the program, with the highlight being the children coming in to receive the newly assembled bikes.

During the event there was a lot of laughter and smiles. The people gathered from across the US really enjoyed being together, working on the projects, and completing the activities together. There were several lessons on team work that could be learned, but one of the most important was clearly in place with this special group. They have already learned to enjoy one another and make the workplace something other than drudgery and mundane. It was clear during the activities that this group enjoys their jobs and each other, as well as the responsibilities and service they perform. From the positive attitude of the leadership, to the smiles and warmth evident in all the people participating, this is great and progressive team.

The activity was great and the feeling afterwards was very, very positive. The activity was great, but it started with a great team. Congratulations to Travel and Transport on having a winning Build-A-Bike event, and for having a great company with great individuals and great leadership.

Falconstor Software held a Build-A-Bike Team Building Workshop in Las Vegas, Nevada, that ended with 12 new bicycles being donated to deserving children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Las Vegas. The event had over 60 participants that worked together, had fun, and learned valuable leadership and team building skills. The ultimate goal was to gather the parts to build the 12 bicycles so that the 12 children, 6 girls and 6 boys, could have their very own bicycle. It was touching moment when the children were introduced; over half had never had their very own bicycle. A couple of the children had never ridden a bike and so the wonderful Falconstor people took time to try and help them learn. They also provided funds so that the Boys and Girls Club can buy some training wheels to help out.

It would have been easy to build the bikes, given them to charity and gone on with life. But the Falconstor people showed particular compassion when several unanticipated problems occurred. The first problem was that one bike’s pedals didn’t fit. They were the wrong size and there was no way to make them work. The builders were very concerned for the child who wouldn’t receive a complete bike. The next was a bike whose back tire tube was damaged and wouldn’t hold air. Then there were the kids who received bikes but didn’t know how to ride them. The Falconstor people showed compassion and care to all the kids and especially comforted one child who didn’t have a complete bike. The pedals from the bike with the bad tire were transferred so there was only on bike that was not usable. Then they were concerned as to how the bike would be taken care of, along with the fact that several children needed training wheels. A $100.00 Wal Mart gift card was given to the Clubhouse Director who was very appreciative of the concern and gift to fix the bike and provide the training wheels.

The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a great success for the Falconstor people, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Las Vegas. The Falconstor people showed a great level of teamwork and leadership not just by what they learned and displayed during the teambuilding, but by showing their concern for the team of children that received the bikes. An important lesson of leadership and teamwork is being a cheerleader and encourager to others around you. Falconstor showed this in several ways throughout the program, the least of which was the great display of generosity to the boys and girls.

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Want to get a really big bang for your training dollar? Combine Soft Skills Training and Charity Team Building for a great solution. For years, companies have realized the value of combining fun team building activities with a charitable donation to underprivileged kids or families. In fact, after we invented the Build-A-Bike® Team Building Activity, a whole new industry called philanthropic team building was created. These charity team activities fit really well into conventions or annual meetings, because they add a lot of energy and camaraderie to these annual events. But what happens when you have a smaller group, and you want to achieve some real team oriented behavior change such as conflict resolution, communication skills, or even supervisory skills or management training? Well, we’ve gotten some really good results in combining classroom skill-building sessions with charity team building.

Classroom Skill-Building Team Activities

Classroom training will generate better skill development and retention than the game-type training that usually makes up the bulk of the high energy team activities. However classroom doesn’t have to be boring. Typically, classroom teachers have a habit of lecturing audiences, so although the material might be instructional or informative, retention is low because the audience is bored. A better way to deliver classroom training is to give a little bit of information, and then reinforce it with activity that improve retention and makes the training fun. In fact, one of the techniques that we use is to add some type of “Wow!” activity as well. For instance, in creating a team culture, we show participants how to improve their memory so much that they can remember, pretty much word-for-word, 28 Leadership Principles. Most participants are shocked at how easy it is to remember a huge list of items when they learn this secret.

Add Charity Team Building

So once the group is having fun and surprising themselves with how much they have learned and how easy it was to retain and use the information from the morning session, you can add in a high-energy charity team building event in the afternoon to add real emotion to the day. Charity team building events are compelling because they often reinforce skills from the earlier session. For instance, a Personality Temperament session in the morning might poke fun at the temperaments a little and show how each will react in a stressful situation. Then, if you add an outdoor scavenger hunt in the afternoon and set a time limit, the reactions of each temperament really take over. The “drivers” just want to go while the “analytical” want to form a plan first. The practical application of the classroom session really comes alive in the charity team building session.

When you combine soft-skills training with charity team building, you get a valuable combination of fun activities and real skill development, so you achieve a big bang for your investment.

Building a team or increasing teamwork in an organization can be more challenging in a tough economy, but it is critical that good leaders spend time building a team culture or a team atmosphere when things aren’t going so great. When the economy is booming, many organizations focus on team building activities because leaders want to make sure that they attract and keep the highest quality employees and associates. Often, though, when uncertainty in the economy occurs, leaders often cut back on training and team building investment. This can be a big mistake, though. When morale is down, teambuilding activities can give a team a much needed boost in energy and increase their positive expectations of the future. If you increase the morale, you decrease the fear that many associates will typically experience.

Improve Morale with Team Building Activities

When morale is down, normal communication that is important to the success of an organization decreases as well. When this occurs, mistakes increase and re-work becomes more prevalent as well. An easy way to boost morale very quickly is to invest in a fun, professional team building activity that gets your team to focus on the good that your organization accomplishes every day. Charity team building events can be a fun way to improve morale because each of these types of activities also donate proceeds to charity give a double return. Your team feels good about themselves and the company, the charity receives much-needed proceeds, and your organization might even get a nice bump in positive publicity.

Decrease Fear and Increase Efficiency

In addition, when there is a challenge in the economy, most people, good hard-working people, go into a defensive stance. They want to keep their head down and not make waves. We do this out of self-preservation, but this type of behavior takes away the enthusiasm and creativity that companies, especially young companies, rely on to create those breakthroughs that give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Fear in the workplace makes this creativity go away, so a good team building activity or event can help foster this creativity — at least for a short period of time. One of the important things for leaders to do during these times is to go to their people individually and let each of them know how important that they are to the success of the organization. Encourage them to share their ideas. Great leaders make this dialogue a part of both their normal day-to-day discussions with their people as well as a part of the communication to the organization as a whole at conventions or annual meetings.

Team Work Starts at the Top

The team will always be a reflection of the leaders at the top of the organization, so if the leaders are scared of the future, if the leaders are keeping their heads down, then the team members will follow suit. So any time communication comes from the leadership within an organization, whether the communication is internal documents, press releases, or just communication between executives, that communication needs to reflect optimism and a team culture. Edify your coworkers and your company, and you’ll see morale and teamwork improve very quickly. When you organize conventions and annual events, make sure to focus very specifically on the perception that is created by your speeches, guest speakers, activities, and events. Recently, I was asked to help deliver a team event in Orlando where the company actually rented out the entire Omni Hotel just so that they could really customize the entire event for their team. I was pretty impressed when I was walking around the pool to get to the outdoor restaurant and noticed a huge logo for the client as the centerpiece of the pool. My first impression was, “Wow, this company is doing really well.” In reality, though, that logo printing might have cost about $100 or so to create. Those small additions to your events add a lot to the perception that you are creating.

So when times are tough, make sure and use this as an opportunity to build your team culture by improving morale and decreasing fear. Make a conscious effort to present positive communication to your team, your coworkers, and the general public, and you’ll build a stronger team while your competitors “keep their heads down.”

25 individuals from GE Healthcare came together at the GE Training Center to have some fun and do an exercise in teambuilding that resulted in four brand new bikes being built and donated to children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee. The larger group was divided into four teams that had a lot of fun and laughter completed tasks and solving problems that eventually led to the bicycles being built. This Build-A-Bike team building event was a great way to have fun, enable some learning in a creative way, and to see one another in a little different light than the usual work experience. At times the laughter was explosive and this valuable team was great at enjoying one another.

We all have responsibilities to handle in our jobs everyday. We go about our work and leading and working with team members becomes a routine task we often take for granted. In doing so, we have become slaves of the routine and tend to complete responsibilities and tasks in the same manner over and over. Even if the problems or situations change, our approach remains the same. The hurdles we had to jump for one situation become much like the hurdles in our present situation, so we handle them the same way. We may get frustrated, annoyed, even angry with the circumstances or team members, but unless we make an intentional change we will continue the cycle.

Often times a simple change of perspective can help a leader or team find a better way to approach responsibilities. Try not being critical and complaining about the situation, but rather try to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to express their perspective. By including all the team members and allowing others to voice their opinions freely and without criticism you are able to see a bigger picture and probably a better solution.

A simple team building event like the Build-A-Bike can help teams and leaders over come routines and experience how to make a positive difference in the work place.

Over 150 top level leaders from Avon Products Inc. came together in Irving, Texas for an afternoon of fun and learning while experiencing a Build-A-Bike team building event. The end result was a lot of laughter, a sense of camaraderie and 24 bikes being built and given to local children from Safe Haven of Dallas, Texas. The children being present at the end of the event to receive the bikes added to the pleasure of the evening. The leaders came together for several days of meetings, which included a time to focus on teamwork, while having fun and making a charitable contribution to the community. The group overcame several barriers to work together to accomplish tasks, solve problems and eventually gather the materials assemble the bikes. With the various leadership groups represented everyone had fun and also made some discoveries about themselves as well as others.

Often times because we have been engaged in a conversation we think tat communication has taken place. But real communication is predicated on listening and understanding; much more than just conversing. We often say things we understand but the receiver of the words and body language interprets it completely differently than we meant. Both parties are clear to themselves what they are saying, but don’t take the time and energy to make sure they understand what the person really means. There can be a vast difference between what someone says and what they mean; between what they think they said and how it was understood. Carefully listen means restating and clarify what is heard so to ascertain the correct meaning of the communication. Many times it has been said that we are born with two ears and one mouth meaning that we should listen twice as much as we speak. Good advice, as long as the listening involves making sure we understand, so that we can be sure to be understood. Next time you are involved in an important conversation make sure you listen well, understand completely, and turn your conversation into constructive communication.

Thanks Avon for a great team building event and for making the difference at work, and in the Irving community by enhancing the lives of children.

Members of Cigna in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, came together for meeting in Dallas for an afternoon of fun and team building. 90 people built 14 bikes during an afternoon of fun, laughter and even a little bit of instruction. Everyone enjoyed the activities that culminated in the bicycles being donated to children from the Boys and Girls clubs of the Greater Dallas Area. The children were present at the end of the program to accept the bikes- much to surprise the bike builders. It was a great feeling when those who had participated in the event got to see the children’s faces and talk with those who were receiving the bikes. It was a very touching moment to end an afternoon of fun and learning.

Often times we get caught up in our own lives. We’re working; we have families, other activities and so many draws on our time. We forget that we also have opportunities to make a positive impact on lives around us if we will just stop and look around. Even in corporate programs it is easy to have meetings and training events, and forget the impact we can have not just within the organization, but within the community. When these special people came together it was to benefit others, not just themselves. They had their necessary meetings, but then they got an opportunity to relax, have fun and make a significant contribution to their community.

Thanks to Cigna 14 children were given some positive reinforcement along with new bikes. What a great time to have fun, learn a little about leadership and teamwork and then benefit the kids and the community. The Build-A-Bike Team Building Event was a hit with Cigna and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas.

The Young Leaders of the State Bar of Texas held meeting on South Padre Island and as part of their meetings hosted a Hero Quest Team Building Event. Hero Quest is a high tech scavenger hunt in which the teams answer problems, take pictures and make videos. It is a fun time of finding the answers and resolving the problems to accomplish the tasks. The web is accessed to get the necessary information to complete the assignments. This event took them through the grounds ad property of the Isla Grand on South Padre Island, Texas. When all the teams were finished it was a lot of laughter and fun as the pictures and videos were reviewed by the entire group. At the end of the event a check for $1000.00 was donated to help ProBAR.

When faced by a problem situation we usually react according to our experience and personality to solve the problem. AS a team, we usually begin by talking over what each individual thinks is the best way. In doing so we become representatives of our own ideas, and thereby often the protector, as well. When teams are sent out on a scavenger hunt, they usually just start solving the problems, and searching for the items they have been assigned. Teams often start tasks the same way, just begin and gather momentum and head toward the solution.

In a scavenger hunt usually as least one person, or one group, will realize it is best to take an overall look at the situation and try to come to an agreement as to the best solution. An important step is to take time to plan. This can save a lot of steps and a lot of backtracking. The SBOT participants did a great job of accomplishing the tasks in the best way possible. They knew to evaluate and plan before acting.

Team building events, such as the Hero Quest, can help the participants understand team dynamics and how they can be more effective in team settings, and in leading teams to ultimate effectiveness. A real joy is when a donation to a very worthy cause is also included.

I just got back from San Diego, California where I conducted one of my favorite team building events, Build-A-Bike, with Henry Schein.  For those of you who don’t know Henry Schein is the largest distributor of healthcare products and services to office-based Dental and Medical practitioners world wide. It is a Fortune 500 company and employs more than 13,500 people in over 200 countries. In this brainy two-hour corporate team building event, the company built and donated ten bikes to ten children from the San Diego Boys and Girls Club.  The group of 60 people had already completed three days of training and as one participant said, “I just wanted to thank you for an amazing event!  To be honest…when I first walked in…exhausted from the weekend already…I wasn’t to sure about all the activity.  Not only was it fun, the fact that we were forced to complete a “team building” task and really work together for success and the end result helping someone else…so touching and rewarding.  You brought great energy to our group!  It has already made an impact here at the office…it’s been a very positive week!”  It’s was a joy to work with Henry Schein and I’m confident they are off to the races with an exciting new year to come!

AFFCU held a great Build-A-Bike Team Building Event in Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday, February 21^st. The 38 teams built bikes that were given to children from an area school that had participated in special events to earn the special reward. The group met for 2 hours to complete tasks, participate in group activities, learn some valuable lessons, and build the bikes. It was a fun event and everyone roared with laughter at some of the situations each was put into. After the event many great comments were made concerning the fun and enjoyment of the event, and how great it was to see the children receive their bikes. All the laughter and fun of the activity was replaced by a very touching moment when the children came in. The participants didn’t know the children would be there, and the children didn’t know (until the last minute) that they had won new bicycles.  You can see their excitement in the following video.

It was great to see the teams come together. Often times in team building situations we’re taught lessons, and given scenarios to try and learn. But in the Build-A-Bike event people are put into situations where they have to lean on their own team and then find out that the different teams have to work together to achieve the goal. In work situations we often have our own team that works to accomplish its tasks and projects, but often times we forget or overlook the fact that one team’s efforts can help another. And likewise we often don’t search for help from other teams that have completed similar tasks, but we “re-invent the wheel,” so to speak, rather than get help and/or advice from others. Team work goes beyond there being one team, to include all the other teams that make up an organization. It isn’t one team functioning well that makes a company successful, but rather all teams functioning well, and functioning together that makes a positive difference.

Thanks to AFFCU for a great event and congratulations to the children that received the bikes. Team work and children benefiting is what the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event is all about.

Looking for a Unique and Fun Team Building Event to Build Teamwork?

When folks call our office looking for a fun team building event, the most often thing that they request is “something different.” We’re always looking for a unique team building event — “one that is better than what we did last year.”

About a decade ago, The Leader’s Institute Team Building revolutionized the industry when we invented the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event®, because it was the first major nation team training program with a charity donation included into the activity. Within the next three years, philanthropic, or charity, team building events became the most requested type of training in the world. (Build-A-Bike alone has given away over $2,000,000 worth of bikes to needy kids in the last five years!)

So what is the Next Big Fun Team Building Event?

Over the last couple of years, we’ve been beta testing our new Ace Race Team Building Event, and we have gotten more positive accolades about this program than any other program that we have ever created. In this event, team compete with each other to create miniature golf course holes in a banquet hall. There are a couple of twists in the activity, though. First, each hole is made out of non-perishable food items like canned goods and boxes of macaroni and cheese, so at the end of the event, the items are donated to a local food bank. The second twist? The competitive nature of the teams (human nature) makes each team want to create elaborate and challenging holes, but the reason that the event is called the “Ace Race” is that each team is playing a scramble to get a hole-in-one on each hole, not to get the lowest score. “Scramble” is a good term, because once teams figure out the real goal of the course, they have to scramble together to alter their hole before time runs out. Participants laugh and cheer throughout the final “competition,” and they have an absolute blast.

Looking for something absolutely different? Something your team has never done before?

We can pretty much guarantee that when your group wakes up the day of your convention that they will not, in any way, think they will be building a miniature golf course. But they will be absolutely glad that they did.

In a resent Ace Race, Pfizer ended up donating almost a half-ton of food to City Meals on Wheels in New York City. The executive director of the charity was extremely grateful for the donation. If you want to get accolades from your group and do something good for your community, the Ace Race is the next big thing in team building!

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Many companies are focusing on building a team with creativity these days.  Why? Creativity pays off in a lot of ways.  Whether you’re building a sales team, expanding product offerings, or encouraging a team atmosphere, put on your creative thinking cap to do business in a different way.

Stimulate your sales team. People who can come up with something different will stand out for the customer. Dr. Lisa Gundry, Professor of Management in the Charles H. Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul University and Director of the Leo V. Ryan Center for Creativity and Innovation at DePaul says, “effective sales performance relies on a series of relationships. Most business competitors already know all the strategies and tactics we use to win business.  Creativity can come up with unconventional ways to sell and bring the unexpected to a sales relationship.  Being able to properly identify what customers really need and finding new ways to solve their problems brings loyalty and satisfaction above and beyond what you are currently doing.” Creativity makes the difference between an audience that snoozes and one that listens.

Generate new product ideas. Even those who don’t think of themselves as creative will surprise themselves – and others – when they are free to work in a creative atmosphere.  The premise behind Rick Highsmith’s Squish Creativity is that the fundamental building blocks to success are easily stifled when managers “squish creativity like a bug”.  According to Highsmith you can foster creativity by allowing open discussion of any and all possible solutions.  “We call this Green-Light thinking. It is the quantity not quality of ideas that is emphasized. There are no wrong answers in this process. Your role is to encourage the freewheeling generation of ideas. If you defer judgment, people will hitch hike a solution on another idea that had little merit. In this atmosphere the magic of creativity flourishes.”  Fostering this type of atmosphere is a critical piece for building a team that consistently comes up with new product ideas.

Cultivate a positive environment. Positive language is itself a creative tool in reshaping thought and building creativity.  Take the case of a major luxury hotel who a few years ago began a positive language campaign.  When asked a question, employees could not imply reply, “OK” or “All right,” but had to respond with an enthusiastic “Great!” or “Happy to do so!”  This simple change in language actually translated into a change in attitude among employees.  That change resulted in new ideas on how to serve customers, which in turn has helped build a strong customer service model.  Small shifts can make a big change. Brainstorming in a relaxed atmosphere helps when building a team with the ability to think not just outside the box, but beyond the box.  Take our newest teambuilding activity, Ace Race Team Building.  If you have a pile of boxed food items and canned goods, the first thing that pops into your mind is probably not, “Oh, a mini golf hole.”  But that’s exactly what your team will build, with a little creative thinking.  One of the values of interactive team building activities is that you get an opportunity to practice and receive immediate feedback on skills you’ve just learned, like creativity.

Everyone is creative, or at least started out that way.  When he was younger one of my nephews could conjure up many different adventures from a large cardboard box.  It’s a race car, a rocket, or a ship depending on his mood.  Somewhere along the line as adults creativity fades, or is squished as Highsmith suggests.  Adults need to create an atmosphere where they can practice creativity and enhance it in themselves.  Like highly creative environments at Facebook and Google, the more inspirational your workplace is, the easier it is to break the creativity block and discover new ideas.

This article was written by Colette Peterson. Colette is a Corporate Team Building Consultant with The Leader’s Institute headquartered out of Dallas Texas. You can reach Colette at 800-872-7830.

Southern Co. invited The Leader’s Institute(R) to conduct a full day of team building in Birmingham, Alabama. The team participated in a Rescue Bear (R) and Build-a-Bike (R). Both events allowed Southern Co. to give back to their local community in Birmingham. Here’s a look at the day’s action:

Southern Company fosters collaborative partnerships to educate children, develop communities, conserve habitat, protect wildlife, provide recreation, and accomplish other services. They also provide leadership and expertise at local meetings, speaking engagements, research support, safety education, and board service, and provide a helping hand for other volunteer activities. They work at all levels from the grass roots in field offices and power plants up through corporate channels at each of our subsidiaries and headquarters to support communities and ecologies within their service territory.

Rick Highsmith
The Leader’s Institute

Folks from General Electric Health Care conducted a bike team building event in Baltimore. Baltimore, like any large city, has a number of inner-city kids, whose lives have been smacked by the recession.  It’s hard for parents to get food on the table, forget what most children dream of – bikes. 

Bike part by bike part, team by team, GE employees solved clues to win a part, and Build-A-Bike.  Voilla!  Ten dreams for ten kids, from The Boys and Girl’s Club.  To get a bike, they had to do something extra, improve attendance, grades, attitude.  And are they well-behaved?  You betcha!  Readying to come into the room, one little boy spoke up, “Girls first.”  And they all quietly fell in line, girls first.

Doors open, ten adorable kids claimed some dreams, and put a lurch in more than one heart, and watery eyes to many GE folks who built the bikes.  They mixed with the kids to say hello, get to know them a bit, make sure seats were the right height, exact a promise to wear helmets, and take a picture or two.

GE folks walked away, with a feeling of doing good, knowledge that they just infused these youngsters’ lives with joy.  The bikes are physical empowerment for these kids, giving them control of at least one thing in lives.  This event sends a clear message,  “Someone other than your family cares about you.  We want you to succeed in life.”  This kind of team-building philantropy is woven deeply into the very fabric of what, and who GE is.

It is sure that the faces, of these little ones, are etched into the minds of all who came together as a team.  More than one participant thanked me for giving them the chance to meet these kids.  What!  My pleasure – they did the work.  By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor & Performance Coach/The Leader’s Institute

Starbucks Partners kicked off the New Year by gathering together at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville.  They built ten new bicycles for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee in a Build-a-Bike Team Building Event.  This team building project was initiated through Starbucks’ “Shared Planet ™” program.

Kim Kaine of Boys and Girls Clubs said, “Some of the children receiving bicycles had never owned one before.  Now, through Starbucks bike team building event, the kids are the proud owners of their own bike.  This donation of their time is greatly appreciated.  Thank you Starbucks!”

Starbucks website explains the “Shared Planet ™” program, “From the neighborhoods where our stores are located, to the ones where our coffee is grown – we believe in being involved in the communities we’re a part of. Bringing people together, inspiring change and making a difference in people’s lives – it’s all part of being a good neighbor. And it’s a commitment rooted in the belief that we can use our scale to be a catalyst for change.”

The following video shows how thrilled the kids are…

Richard Highsmith

A survey by Accountemps indicates Managers spend an average of 18 percent of their time intervening in employee disputes. That is more than seven hours a week or nine weeks per year.   Past Accountemps studies from as far back as 1991 show very similar results.

These survey results show what it is important to be a Strong Boss.  Employees’ personal problems are messy and like a tidal wave of emotion can eat up a lot of time.  The touchy, feely folks at Accountemps offer five tips for minimizing personality conflicts.  I have added my own suggestions.

1.     Know when to step in. You don’t want to interject every time a minor issue arises, but you can’t afford to turn a blind eye to problems that jeopardize the group’s output… Steele says, “Punish all parties involved in the disruption.  This will keep employees from bothering you with their petty problems.”

2.     Don’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch. When friction is clearly stemming from the actions of a single individual, remind that person that the ability to collaborate and treat coworkers with respect is a requirement of the job.  Steele says, “Collaborate?!?  No, Elaborate your dissatisfaction with the employee twice and then fire the troublemaker.”

3.     Help employees get to know each other. Provide opportunities for your staff to interact in non-work activities, such as lunches or volunteer activities; familiarity can breed greater understanding.  Steele says, Oh please!  Strong Bosses don’t get involved in familiarity.  Remember familiarity breed’s contempt.  Keep your distance from employees and don’t waste time on socializing.

4.     Reward positive role models. Dole out praise, promotions and choice assignments to individuals who contribute to a supportive work environment. Recognizing staff for being team players sends a clear message that how they interact with others is as important as their job performance.  Steele says, “You can tell eggheads from Human Resources are involved with this suggestion.  Nothing is as important as job performance.  To suggest that being a team player is the same as being the top producer is just silly!

5. Make good hiring choices from the start. Hiring individuals with excellent interpersonal skills who are a good fit with your organization’s culture will reduce the potential for future conflicts.   Steele says, “It is a big mistake to look for interpersonal skills in hiring.  People like that talk too much and want to be happy.  I think you look for the best talent with the least interpersonal skills.  This way the new employee keeps their mouth shut, head down and focuses on the work in front of them.

Steele Steadiman is a Bosses’ Boss.  After a successful career in the business world, he is committed to showing weak leaders the path to control.  Steele is the author of “Squish Creativity Like a Bug.” He lectures and travels the world helping bring managers and leaders to his level.

About 50 attorneys from Citigroup were surprised by their evening activity. At the end of the first of two days of meetings they joined together in a beautiful setting to take part in a team building exercise. The exercise turned out to be the opportunity to build bikes for at risk third grade children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northern Westchester.      On the schedule was just a time slot entitled “Team Building.” But when they entered the room with tables set around and another table that housed bicycle parts they quickly knew this was more than just a lecture or games. After a brief introduction the teams received their assignment- to build 8 bikes to go to a local charity. It wasn’t as easy as just building the bikes; they encountered some problems along the way that had them working together and seeing each other in a little different light than they might normally. In the end the bikes were completed and the real surprise was when the children who were receiving the bikes were introduced to receive them.

It was an evening of surprises. The attorneys didn’t now they were going to do bike construction; they didn’t know the children would be there to receive the bikes; and even the children weren’t aware that they were getting bikes until they arrived at the facility. One of the thrilling highlights was when Matt, one of the bicycle recipients, presented a thank you plaque to Katie Kessler, the principle organizer of the event.  After the program was over everyone enjoyed meeting the children and spending time reliving the event. There was a fantastic feeling of camaraderie and generosity within the group. I talked to several people, and perhaps one of the third grade girls, wearing her new bicycle helmet summed it up really well. I sat down with her and said, “Wow! Hot chocolate and cookies, a new helmet and a brand new bicycle, a pretty neat night, huh?” Her response choked me up, “This is the best night ever!”

A big thanks to Katie Kessler; the Citigroup committee that chose the Build-A-Bike team building event; and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northern Westchester for making a truly worthwhile and memorable event. And a special thanks to Jill Franco for her help in the logistics of putting the program together Thanks to you all for a wonderful evening and a very special memory.

Johnson and Johnson has long helped Mom dry the tears and cheer up the kids with a little ouch-less help for skinned knees.  But this company is so much more. It is at the forefront of medical breakthroughs, striving to discover new methods to improve our quality of life.  Need a hip replacement?  They have developed it.  Need to know what is going on inside your head, lungs, or heart, Johnson and Johnson is right there.

At a conference in Princeton N.J., the Scientific Affairs Division of Pharmaceuticals looked inward.  To their credo, which calls on them to put the needs and well-being of the people they serve first. They explored the goodness of volunteer efforts of their own people, and their accomplishments were many.

Build-A_Bike. At the core of their credo is to give back to the community, and today they got down to the nuts and bolts of giving to kids in their community.  Learning how to build a stronger team, they learned how to They built a stronger Johnson&Johnson team, by solving a puzzle to earn a wheel, or handle bar, to build bikes for kids who have none.  When all the nuts were tightened, seats adjusted, tires pumped and checked for safety, 36 smiling kids claimed them, amid tears of joy from those who tightened the nuts, and pumped up the tires.  It was a tangible, and heart-felt lesson in how giving back, rewards the giver.  by Connie Timpson/Regional Instructor/Performance Coach

By Colette Peterson

Team building initiatives can help foster team development within your organization. It’s common knowledge that people learn faster by doing than by hearing, but teams also become much more productive when they are having fun as well. So why should work be any different? Here are some ways to use active participation in your meeting, activities, or just day-to-day workload to build teamwork and make learning more memorable.

1. Learn faster with active engagement. When you sit in a workshop and hear a lecture about trust and communication, it seems to make sense but you’re not getting an opportunity to apply that learning. It’s like learning to play tennis. You can watch a video and read a book, but only when you put the racket in your hand and get out on the court do you really know what you’ve learned. The same is true for team skills like effective communication. Clients often say they want to improve communication. What does that mean? How will you know when it’s improved? If I walked into your office on Monday morning and you were communicating better, what would that look and sound like? Team building initiatives gives participants the practice and the clarity they need.
2. Produce greater results by interacting. People often learn faster and produce more when they are interacting with others. Think about running a 5k marathon with a group of people versus running the same distance by yourself. What might be challenging by yourself tends to be a lot more fun when you are surrounded by a group of people working toward the same goal. People feed off the energy and enthusiasm of all the other participants. Once your team experiences that dynamic, it naturally spills over into the workplace.
3. Acting together stretches creativity. There’s an old Japanese Proverb “None of us are as smart as all of us”. Bringing people together with professionally instructed team initiatives helps participants see challenges in a different light and overcome problems by interacting. We provided our Build-A-Bike workshop for a client in New York last month where participants started seeing their small group as separate from the whole team, simulating the “silo effect”. Our team initiatives are designed to make sure the teams have to interact with each other, and thus breaking down those silos. This enhanced their team development back at the office when they were able to dissolve silos and share ideas there as well.

In today’s economy everybody has to learn to do more with less. Using team initiatives helps your group learn to work together faster and produce greater results, all while having fun!

This article was written by Colette Peterson. Colette is a Corporate Team Building Consultant with The Leader’s Institute headquartered out of Dallas Texas. You can reach Colette at 800-872-7830.

By Colette Peterson

Team building initiatives can help foster team development within your organization. It’s common knowledge that people learn faster by doing than by hearing, but teams also become much more productive when they are having fun as well. So why should work be any different? Here are some ways to use active participation in your meeting, activities, or just day-to-day workload to build teamwork and make learning more memorable.

1. Learn faster with active engagement. When you sit in a workshop and hear a lecture about trust and communication, it seems to make sense but you’re not getting an opportunity to apply that learning. It’s like learning to play tennis. You can watch a video and read a book, but only when you put the racket in your hand and get out on the court do you really know what you’ve learned. The same is true for team skills like effective communication. Clients often say they want to improve communication. What does that mean? How will you know when it’s improved? If I walked into your office on Monday morning and you were communicating better, what would that look and sound like? Team building initiatives gives participants the practice and the clarity they need.
2. Produce greater results by interacting. People often learn faster and produce more when they are interacting with others. Think about running a 5k marathon with a group of people versus running the same distance by yourself. What might be challenging by yourself tends to be a lot more fun when you are surrounded by a group of people working toward the same goal. People feed off the energy and enthusiasm of all the other participants. Once your team experiences that dynamic, it naturally spills over into the workplace.
3. Acting together stretches creativity. There’s an old Japanese Proverb “None of us are as smart as all of us”. Bringing people together with professionally instructed team initiatives helps participants see challenges in a different light and overcome problems by interacting. We provided our Build-A-Bike workshop for a client in New York last month where participants started seeing their small group as separate from the whole team, simulating the “silo effect”. Our team initiatives are designed to make sure the teams have to interact with each other, and thus breaking down those silos. This enhanced their team development back at the office when they were able to dissolve silos and share ideas there as well.

In today’s economy everybody has to learn to do more with less. Using team initiatives helps your group learn to work together faster and produce greater results, all while having fun!

This article was written by Colette Peterson. Colette is a Corporate Team Building Consultant with The Leader’s Institute headquartered out of Dallas Texas. You can reach Colette at 800-872-7830.

Over 100 people from SXC Health Solutions came together in Chicago for a Build-A-Bike Team Building Event. After hours of fun, laughter, and teamwork 16 bikes were completely assembled and given to children from the Union League Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago. River West Meetings planned the event for SXC and their employees were excited to participate and contributed to the success of the event, and when the children were brought in at the close of the event to receive the bikes- it was a very moving moment. In the end, SXC had a great time and made a life changing difference in the lives of 16 children and in the communities that they live.

SXC has a goal of making their customers, clients for life. To do so they focus on three strategic areas: customer focus, operational excellence and employee fulfillments. in the Build-A-Bike event these areas were addressed in creative ways and ideas were expressed and experienced that will guide toward the goal. Often times when workers are in different locations, or branches, and now with more and more people having home offices- that separation can lead to silos where one, or small groups work together without the benefit of a larger group. After time that individual, or small group, can become totally dependent upon themselves and not see how they are connected to a larger group. Through the Build-A-Bike event the participants learned that often the best way to solve a problem, reach a goal, or overcome an obstacle is to break down the silo and get help and aid form other sources and resources.

It was a fun afternoon, values were reiterated, mission was underlined, and vision was reinforced. And beyond just that everyone had fun and contributed to help at risk children and the community at large. What a great team member enhancement, child and community development, and team building event.

Over 20 people from IKEA Indirect and Material Services in Philadelphia came together for a Rescue Bear team building event in which the end product was building stuffed animals that were given to the Lower Macungie Ambulance Service in Macungie, PA. The group gathered at the Bear Creek Mountain Resort in Macungie, PA, for this special time of team building, group meetings. Throughout the event there was plenty of fun and laughter as games were played, memories expanded, values reinforced, and personalities explored. Overall it was a great time to experience the company of co-workers in a little different atmosphere than usual.

The basic lesson surrounding the event dealt with how talent is often time a determinant in filling positions, but then those people filling similar positions, all having similar talents and temperaments become a team, but somehow aren’t very effective. The talent pool is there, but with similar attitudes it can be hard for the team to be work in the most efficient manner. Personality clashes are too often the result of like personalities having different ideas on a matter. Resolving the problem is more difficult than if the team members have complimentary personalities. When dominant personalities are team members the work is complicated by people wanting to lead and no one willing to follow. The more expressive personalities are more concerned with enjoying the journey and having fun so they are easily distracted from the task for a more cheerful and entertaining activity. The amiable person on a team is so concerned with consensus that the work can suffer trying to get everyone to agree unanimously on the process. If all members are analytical then the concern will be getting enough information and making sure it is accurate that the actual work may be delayed.

The best functioning teams make sure they have a cross section of personalities so that they compliment and add to each other. The best and most effective and efficient teams are not made up of the most talented people, but rather those that can work together in such a way that the talent pool is augmented. That is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When designing teams and assigning responsibilities, look beyond just talent and make sure that the personalities and temperaments of the teammates are complimentary to each other. Building Bears that are donated to area first responders is a great way of building teams and experiencing the lessons of personality developments.

JC Penney’s held a Hero Quest Team Building Event in Dallas, Texas, for their Children’s Design and Development Department. As a result they donated a big check to the Dallas USO, located at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. The Hero Quest is a high tech scavenger hunt in which cell phones with internet access and cameras are used to make discoveries in a predetermined area. The JC Penney group met at their headquarters in Plano for some fun introductions to the days event and then moved to the uptown area surrounding McKinney and Hall street for the scavenger hunt.  The fifty participants laughed their way from the headquarters, to uptown and through the streets. Everyone had a fun time while completing the tasks of solving problems, taking group pictures and making team videos. The last part of the event was reviewing the answers to the questions and viewing the pictures and videos. There was a lot of laughter and people got to have some fun and see their co-workers in a different environment.

When change is introduced it can often come with fear and trepidation, especially for those who are not introducing the change but are having the change brought to them. An important ingredient of making change successful is to have a high level of trust and the leadership maintaining a high level of integrity. JC Penney has been successfully navigating the waters of change by being open and honest about expectations. When people can approach change with an open attitude and not be negative in speculating about the future of the change, then it can be visualized as a positive step which can be a learning and company enhancing move. This team is remarkable in their adaptability and their care for another. They would be a great example to others of how to approach change in the workplace.

Thanks, JC Penney, for a great Hero Quest event; for the opportunity to work with your great people. And thank you for your generous donation to the very worthwhile organization; The USO of Dallas. The Hero Quest was a fun and enjoyable experience with a great benefit to our service heroes.

Team Building Events (and specifically how to choose the best, most appropriate, team building event) for your group or situation can be extremely difficult because of… Hello?! Team Building Event Companies! If you Google “Team Building Events,” you will get results from every type of activity from classroom team training, to charity team building events, to outdoor scavenger hunts, to ropes courses. You will also get results from non-team building activities but fantastic shared-experiences that can be a fun way for teams to spend time together and can be a fun memorable event, but these types of activities are not really team building events — meaning that the results of the activity will be fun and memorable, but will not actually build teamwork unless the team atmosphere is already pretty high.

So how do you choose the best corporate team building activity?

There are three different, main, genres of team building activities or team events. I have listed them below along with the situations that each will be most appropriate.

1. Small Group Shared Experience Team Activities: These types of activities include any type of shared-experience whose primary purpose is to just let the group have fun with each other. As long as you have a small group and a pretty good atmosphere within the group, these types of activities are fun and very inexpensive. You are only limited by your creativity here, so you can do the old standbys like go bowling play golf (or miniature golf). There are neat places like Dave and Busters where your team can have dinner and play pool or arcade games, etc. You could take a day off and go to a theme park or dinner and a show. Pretty much, any type of fun activity will work here. There are lots of “non-team building” organizations who specialize in these types of events. (When I say “non-team building,” I really just mean that these organizations primarily do some other service as their main revenue stream, and team building is just a side revenue stream for them.) Organizations that specialize in these types of activities include big resort hotels, cooking schools, race tracks (racing schools), theme parks, bowling alleys, etc. Once your group size increases to more than 20 people or so, or if you have a specific challenge within your group that you want to improve like communication challenges, a new team leader, groups that have merged together, or other team issues, these type of team activities can actually be counter productive — so be careful unless you have a small group and a pretty strong team atmosphere already.
2. Classroom Team Building: Many people think classroom=boring, because for most of our lives, if we are in a classroom, we are being bored to death. However, good team building companies and team building facilitators are enthusiastic and fun. Teams who have professional team building facilitators come in and lead these classroom events can really improve a lot of team building activities in a very short period of time. Since participants learn faster when they are having fun, a group can really get fantastic results and feel like the activities were time well spent. This type of corporate team building event is best for groups where a specific team result is trying to be reached such as if an organization merges with another company, and the leaders are trying to create a new team culture or if leadership has changed and the new leaders want to start fresh. If you are having quarterly meetings or annual meetings at your office or if you have breakout sessions at you annual convention, then these types of events work really well in those types of time slots. You can also have these facilitators come out and do keynote speeches that are fun and funny if you have an open slot at your convention or meeting. Unlike the shared-experience team building events, very few companies specialize in classroom team building, so they are harder to find. Be careful, because if the company specializes in big events and not seminars or workshops, you can end up with a bunch of rah-rah activities that don’t get you the best results. Try entering “classroom team building” or “classroom team building seminars” into Google, and you should get a nice shortlist of qualified companies.
3. Big Group Shared Experience Team Building Events: This type of event is very similar to the small group team events above, however they are much, much, much more challenging to pull off. For instance, if you have eight people in your group, you can go to a bowling alley and rent two lanes or have two foursomes at a golf course, and everyone will be active the entire time. However, if you have 100 people, or 1000 people, if you try the same activities, at any given time, a ton of people will be standing around watching (doing nothing and getting bored) unless the facilitators really know what they are doing. So if you have a big group and you want your team to have fun and stay active, this is where you really want to invest in a professional team building company. (Especially if your reputation is on the line.) DO NOT leave this decision to your event planner, by the way. Event planners are very good at getting great deals on hotel rooms, organizing complex events, making sure the food works for the group, etc., but many of them will do whatever it takes to please the customer (you). So if you ask them for a specific team building activity, they will give it to you, even if the event or activity is not the best result for your group. You will get a MUCH better result if you contact the professional team building company yourself, because these professionals will help you pick the absolute most appropriate event for your team. If you are making a mistake, the team building facilitators will tell you, however if you have an event planner as a go-between, and you are making a mistake, the team building facilitator will tell the event planner.  The event planner, because he/she wants to please you, will likely just find another company who will do what you want. Typically, you will end up with a group from category number one above. So be very careful when you have a lot on the line with a really big group.

The key to picking the best event for your group is to ask two main questions. Question number one is (1) Are you looking for a specific behavior change? If so, hire a team building company who specializes in classroom team training or hire a good team oriented keynote speaker. The second question is (2) Do you have a big group or a small group? If the group is small and you just want the group to have fun, some money and take everyone bowling. If you have a large group and you just want them to have fun, hire a company that specializes in big charity team building events or fun corporate team building activities.

Employees from CVS Caremark had a fun and energetic time when they participated in the Ace Race Teambuilding Event. This entertaining program involves several activities that culminate in each team building a miniature golf hole. The items used in the construction include non perishable food items. Once each team has designed their hole then they have to make a hole in one. Each team member rotates until one person has made the ace. Once you have made your own hole and aced it, then you move throughout the rest of the course taking shots at making a hole in one at each hole. You cannot continue to the next hole until a player on your team has made an ace. As each team progresses through the course each team must rotate who takes the shots. The game is finished when one team has completed all the holes. At the close of the event the food items are donated to a local food pantry.

The participants from CVS Caremark were very creative in building their holes and each of the 6 teams enjoyed not only creating the holes but the race to make an ace at each hole. The actual team building took place while designing the holes and then passing the golf club form one member to the other. Building the hole took communication and reliance on people who had some experience, while the golf shot took some skill, as well as teaching those without any golf experience how to make the shots. Of course, on of the basics of good teamwork was the sharing of information, not just within the immediate team, but with other teams to help them accomplish the task at hand. Often times we find ourselves in competition within one company. We are in different locations, or division, or departments, or… and as a result we compete for limited resources, limited budgets, limited human resources and… Competition within a company can be good if it is creative and brings out the best in the teams without bringing discouragement. But if teams find themselves competing in a highly competitive fashion it can hurt the overall company. In actuality, all the teams within a company are on the same team, in fact, they make up one team. And if one team prospers at the sake of another, then the overall team has suffered. Part of team work is seeing how the smaller teams fit into the larger picture and making sure that the main team is the winner.

Thanks to CVS Caremark for a fun learning opportunity and making this Ace Race Team Building Event a great success.

Folks from Union Bank converged on San Diego, California, to strengthen their team, recognize each others’ strengths, and use those strengths to solve some puzzles, Build-A-Bike team building event, and make some kids smile.  Throw away the notion that bankers are always serious – these folks had some serious fun!

Creative, of yes, Charlie’s Angel’s move aside, there is a new team in town. They laughed, clowned around, and together cracked some codes to get some bike parts, see who could Build-a-Bike the quickest.  They collaborated, asked for help, helped others, and learned that no, does not always mean what it implies. There was a little head scratching, a bit of frustration. (Oh…..just like life and work.) Yes, there was a winner – a group of kids whose families have been hit the hardest by the recession.  All of the Union Bank people won as well.

Angels they were, wanting little more than to make some kids smile.  And their efforts were rewarded.  Kids from the local Boys and Girls’ Club shyly smiled, got some riding lessons, and said thanks.   This is the first bike many of these kids have owned, and certainly the first new bike.  They were excited to ride, and they rolled away feeling like someone other than their immediate family cared about their journey in life .  Union Bank built a stronger team, while giving back to the local community.  It was an emotional win, for everyone.        By Connie Timpson/Sr. Instructor/Performance Coach/Leader’s Institute

70 salespeople and members of leadership from Rimage Corporation in Minneapolis, MN, came together for an evening of fun and learning while experiencing a Build-A-Bike team building event. There were several activities, and a high energy pace that kept the participants moving and creatively coming up with ways to complete the tasks and solve the problems. There was even a time of emphasizing the core values of the company. The end result was a lot of laughter, a sense of camaraderie and 12 bikes being built and given to local children form the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Minneapolis, Minnesota. The children being present at the end of the event to receive the bikes added to the pleasure of the evening.

The representatives at the company were gathered from Europe, the Pacific Rim, Australia, and the US. The international group overcame language and cultural barriers to work together to accomplish tasks, solve problems ands eventually gather the materials assemble the bikes. With the varied cultures represented everyone had fun and also made some discoveries about themselves as well as others.

Often times because we have been engaged in a conversation we think tat communication has taken place. But real communication is predicated on listening and understanding; much more than just conversing. We often say things we understand but the receiver of the words and body language interprets it completely differently than we meant. Both parties are clear to themselves what they are saying, but don’t take the time and energy to make sure they understand what the person really means. There can be a vast difference between what someone says and what they mean; between what they think they said and how it was understood. Carefully listen means restating and clarify what is heard so to ascertain the correct meaning of the communication.

Many times it has been said that we are born with two ears and one mouth meaning that we should listen twice as much as we speak. Good advice, as long as the listening involves making sure we understand, so that we can be sure to be understood. Next time you are involved in an important conversation make sure you listen well, understand completely, and turn your conversation into constructive communication.

Thanks Rimage for a great team building event and for making the difference at work, and in Minneapolis community by enhancing the lives of children.