Team Building Best Practices All the latest tips, tricks, and trends.

When you think of the ASTD 2012 conference, team building songs are probably not the first thing that pops into your mind. Yes, there are the more typical sessions on simulation training, multimedia learning environments etc. But dig a little deeper and you’ll notice their are offerings that relate to team building motivation and how they’re related. No, you won’t find this specific class offered, but you’ll find opportunities to…

A creative life is built upon self-motivation and trust. The motivation part is obvious, but the trust part a bit harder to understand and to accept. It took me years and a bit of success to gain the confidence I needed to trust the cycles of motivation and non-motivation. Or in creative terms, inspiration and lack thereof. After beating myself up this morning for several hours because I wasn’t making…

We build teams with music because music draws us in. When we’re engaged in creative activity we stop standing outside ourselves, we stop judging and second guessing who we are and what we should say. Our authentic selves surface. That’s what happens when we’re in the moment and in a creative state. I’m all about music based team building. It’s the vehicle I use to help companies tell their stories,…

I’ve often shied away from using the term corporate team building. Strategically, I didn’t want to have less appeal to associations and non-profits that don’t fit the typical corporate team building mold. But honestly, corporate culture is where people work together closely, often in teams, with goals and project deadlines. The working relationships require team building so workers stay happy and engaged – engaged not only as individuals but as…

I’m a creative type and as such I’ve always been a little different. As a kid, if you told me to go right, I’d go left. If everyone was doing one thing, I always wanted to do another…off by myself like a typical creative. So I really relate to potential clients who tell me they hate their team building days. I’m not one to embrace a group activity or relish…

“We own it!” Isn’t that another way of saying we’re engaged, we care, we’re all in. When a team feels like they own the work they’re doing, the power of positivity boosts creativity, efficiency and results. I experienced the value of feeling ‘ownership’ myself last night at a team building program I led for Cummins, Inc. This was a small group and before the team building activity this leadership team…

I don’t know about you, but for me opposites really do attract. My wife and I have different skill sets, different strengths and different weaknesses. I don’t think I could live with someone who has the same type of compulsions as I do. I can hardly live with myself, so living with another me would not be fun! Of course the differences between my wife and myself sometimes lead to…

When I mention I’m passionate about team building, the eyes roll or look away. The conversation shifts and the comments usually go something like this: “That was so yesterday, so pre-recession. Talk to me about something with ROI. My boss won’t go for a team building program now. ”But being an undeterred optimist, I take this response as an invitation to enlighten people about why I am passionate about team…

I just read an email from a friend of mine, who while recovering from one kind of cancer found out she had a mass on her kidney and had to undergo additional surgery, fear and pain. The email contained the good news that the kidney mass was benign. But my friend’s description of the anxiety, doubt and physical pain associated with the ordeal was honest, deep and dark. It caught…

I don’t claim to be a superhero, fighting injustice wherever I see it. In fact, most often I’m too slow to react. And then I’m filled with regret for what I might have done, had I only had the wherewithal to step right in and fix things. However, I care deeply about systems, fairness and invitation. By ‘invitation’ I mean, inviting new people into teams, tribes, groups and helping them…

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…