The contemporary workforce demands engagement in ways that require more than just financial compensation. Being part of a team, sharing a sense of purpose, belonging, and shared mission are vital to promoting positive corporate culture and engagement. Employees want to co-create their shared vision of what they do. Believe it or not, I didn’t just make that up. We often hear from business owners who worry about their team lacking…
Every Day Team Building
I’m resistant to change and I don’t like to be told what to do. I don’t think I’m unusual in this way. And so when my wife, Julie, told me I “needed” to move my clothes from bins in our bedroom to a dresser in another room, I resisted and quietly did nothing! About a week later, as I was complaining about not being able to reach my clothes without…
Counter Intuitive Creativity
I almost always find myself in a creative mood when I fly. As much as I travel, there’s still something counter-intuitive to me about being suspended in the air 30,000 feet in a metal machine that weighs tons. This sense of vulnerability brought on by doing something counter-intuitive makes me a little emotional and my emotions are the fuel for my creative thoughts and actions. Knowing that I’m going to…
Objective Creativity
The experience set up a perfect debrief opportunity. We talked about how it feels to be vested in an idea, and how we have to struggle to overcome inertia to change. But we were also able to share the remarkable satisfaction that comes from overcoming that inertia, and remaining objective while being creative.
Hard Rock Hotel and Musical Team Building
It was an aha moment, and I thought to myself, ‘duh’. Why didn’t I think of that? Dianne, the event manager at a recent program I facilitated, introduced me as follows: “When we decided to hold our conference at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, we realized we had to try and find a musical team building program to go with our Hard Rock musical motif. So we thought…
More Than Just A Song
The songwriting process invites participants to take lots of internal information and give voice to it; filling flip charts with ideas, plastering walls with flip charts and then distilling it all – all the cacophony, clutter and chaos into a clear, succinct, pointed, and yes, catchy communication representing the essence of our client’s work – The Song.
Coffee & Creativity
That’s the mystique and challenge of creating. There are no guarantees, no promise of return on investment, only the hope that we’ll stumble upon something magical, or at least something that works quite well!
Building My Team
Today time certainly seems relative to me. I’m back home and my travels of last week seem like a lifetime ago. Isn’t that always the way it is? So much happens when we’re out of town, it seems like a parallel universe, not quite like the one we’re in when at home in our usual routine. And since I’ve already been facilitating in San Diego and speaking in Las Vegas…
Out of the Box Team Building
Michelangelo replied that he simply chiseled away what wasn’t the sculpture to reveal the work inside – in it’s purest sense, getting rid of what blocks our view of the simple solution that already exists.
Real Communication
I had to be ready to interact, engage and react. That’s the way adults learn best…
Get A Coach
The conversation went something like this, “You should find a consultant in Nashville since you’re based in Nashville. That way you can met with him/her easily and have a local connection”. That advice from my friend wasn’t crazy, but it seemed limiting to me in the age of Skype, email, web 2.0 and all the other great communication tools I may be forgetting to remember. So I cast a nationwide…