Team Building
Did anyone else notice that Canadian Tire has a big sale on Livestrong equipment this week?
I’m no marketing strategist, but I can’t imagine that’s a coincidence, what with Livestrong’s founding figure, cyclist Lance Armstrong, officially confessing to the world this week that he doped and lied about it.
I’m trying to figure out the psychology behind this move. Are they trying to sell me a Livestrong treadmill because:
A good salesman can sell anything, right? Car, homes, potato chips, laminating machines, fake office plants.
The bottom line is that a good salesman demonstrates a product has value, and then makes a profit as a result of the ensuing transaction. In which case, this guy is a brilliant saleman of sorts. He "sold" a paperclip for a house. That's profit.
All employees have the occasional bad day, I know I have and I’m sure you have too. But there is a difference between an occasional bad day and when an employee consistently performs poorly. A team is like a set of dominoes all lined up, if one domino falls, they all fall. In a team, if one person performs poorly it affects the entire team. It’s like the person with all the negativity just leaves it in a path behind them and anyone who comes into contact will become negative as well.
We’ve all seen the many suggestion boxes of a company in the corner, covered with dust and graffiti and sometimes the odd piece of gum stuck to the side of it. Come on, it doesn’t require that much thinking, they’re everywhere! Let’s face it, suggestion boxes are useless unless opened and responded to every week. People set up the suggestion box but never check back, so that complaint you wrote a few weeks ago, well it’s probably still in there.
Right off the bat, tell me what your definition of creativity is?
The funny thing is, creativity has no set definition. It can mean a variety of things to a variety of people. When I say, “Let’s get this team using some creativity”, we are left in the dark. Does it mean pull out a paintbrush and paint? Brainstorm project ideas? Put together a funky new outfit? Creativity is limitless, but please, let’s not get too funky with your clothes!
Every business man/woman wants a winning team. I can guarantee that if you go up to the ‘Big Cheese’ at any business and ask, “Do you want a winning team?” they will respond by saying, “Yes! A winning team is a strong team.”
In the article, The Secret Formula the Packers Used to Win, I talked about removing interference in order to reach maximum performance. In order to do that, you need to be a great coach. Here are the four characteristics of a great coach:
1. Great coaches believe in human potential
It is fundamental that a coach believes that everyone has potential. If the coach does not believe that then the learner feels it and their learning is negatively affected.
Just before Christmas, my daughter had her first Christmas pageant, put on by her daycare. While I had my doubts that she would actually stay up on stage with the other children for it, I was pleasantly surprised that she stayed up there for the whole performance of Jingle Bells. While I watched them prance and dance around on the stage, I started to think about teamwork. Well, actually no, I didn’t. I thought of how adorable my daughter was. However, later that night I started to think about teamwork. And how children’s Christmas pageants have a lot to do with teamwork.
This past weekend, we organized a team building activity for a client. On top of a keynote engagement on the Saturday, we created a Mission Impossible challenge on Sunday afternoon that included challenges, riddles and lots of running!
Wondering what using your feet to pull marbles out of a bucket filled with ice or sucking baby food off of life savers to guess their flavor (eww) have to do with teambuilding? Truth is, not much. The important part was that the people doing it had fun with each other. Laughter was the key component.
This past week we were busy preparing for the team building event we were planning. Part of the challenge involved children’s recreations of famous paintings that the teams needed to guess correctly.
