It can be easy to forget an introvert in the room. Those that don’t raise their hands, jump up in protest or appreciation, or carry the charge into the fray. However, physical silence does not correlate to complete silence–the fact is most of your introverts have just as much to say as your extroverts. The great challenge, however, is to find ways to bring your introvert voices into the conversation…
Innovation Management
The practice of creativity and innovation management should be closely linked. But too often they’re not. Too often, organizations create innovation management teams but they don’t empower them with the culture, freedom or confidence to engage in creative play, to experiment and fail. I recently spoke with a client who said his team was hampered by the proof they had to submit, before even engaging in new product ideation. As…
Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone
Why should you step out of your comfort zone? After all, there’s nothing wrong with being comfortable. But usually, to innovate, to change or to grow you’ll have to step out of your comfort zone. Even for creative types like me, it’s not always easy to try something new. It involves risk and triggers fear of failure. Innovative companies know that part of innovating is experimentation. In order to be…
Elite Teams and the Value of Team Building
Below is a guest post from Lawrence Polsky, Co-Founder of Teams Of Distinction. Conventional wisdom holds that weak teams are the ideal candidates for team building exercises and programs. But paradoxically, it is actually exceptional teams that may benefit the most from this. How can that be? Why Elite Teams Reject Team Building, But Are Its Best Candidates Think of two groups of golfers. One is composed of beginners and…
Importance Of Team Building
When potential clients ask me about the importance of team building, I usually answer with a few questions. What is the importance of corporate culture? Is your workforce engaged? Should you care? Yes, you should care about culture and engagement. Members of high performing teams need to feel that their work is important, that their work contributes to a greater whole and that there’s company vision driving the day-to-day work….
Team Building Detroit
Music and the Motor City go hand in hand. So it’s a natural fit when we get to facilitate our team building Detroit program. We recently led the sales team for our client, Logicalis, through an interactive musical program that included two hundred and fifty people sharing ideas to create a song about the work they do. Here’s how it works. Our Client’s Goals Provide an activity that enables everyone…
Team Building With Atlanta’s SunTrust
The second week of 2015 found us headed south for a fun Atlanta Team Building event. We worked with a leadership group from SunTrust commercial real estate. This team of leaders comes together every year to focus, align goals and get charged up for the year ahead. As a As a follow-up to last year’s drumming program, our team building program provided a motivational kick-off in which everyone came together…
Creative Icebreakers and Energizers
We’re tired of the same ole thing…yawn We’re looking for creative icebreakers and energizers… Everyone’s on their smartphones the entire time… Agreed, me too. I’m tired of the dread I feel when I have to attend a conference, praying I won’t be too bored by the speaker. At corporate conferences, every aspect of an agenda is vital since valuable time and resources are spent to help an organization achieve it’s…
How To Be More Creative
Let’s demystify what may seem like a difficult challenge, how to be more creative. First demystification; creativity is not a thing, as in person, place or thing (noun). If my mom’s reading this, and she usually does read my blog posts, then I’m already in trouble. Because technically, ‘creativity’ is a noun. But if you think of being creative as a given thing that you either possess or lack, then…
Successful Team Building Strategies
Just when I begin to think I’m an expert at successful team building strategies, I’ll facilitate a program that reminds me how much I still have to learn. When that happens I’m reminded that I learn more from my failures than from my successes. Failure creates wonderful opportunity to reflect, to strategize and to envision a better future. Conflict, much like failure, can be embraced as a call to action; as…
Large Group Team Building That Works
I got the kind of phone call this morning that I love. A client referred someone to us, saying that our large group team building program actually worked, as if that should be a shock…But I understand why people are surprised. It’s hard to find large group team building activities that engage everyone in a fun and inclusive way. There are two basic choices on how to approach your team…