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3 Team Building Exercises for Camaraderie and Motivation

Here are list of 3 great exercises that can be used to build teams and have a lot of fun.  You may have experienced these in meetings, at corporate picnics, and even at high-dollar retreats.  Most of them can be done in any space with enough room for the people who’re participating to stand in, though.  Even inside the office itself, around the cubicles or on the front lawn.

Storytelling - Get on Google Images or Flickr and randomly pick pictures of any subject and type.  Print them out in large enough format that they can be shown to a group of 3-10 people, one at a time.  Then gather the group and go around in a circle showing a picture to whomever is next and asking them to come up with a sentence to ad to the storyline.  It might help if you have a starter for the group, to illustrate.  If the first picture can be “seeded” to kind of fit with the team’s project, that might help too.  The idea is to get the team working together to build a coherent story out of the pictures being shown to them in random sequence.

Group Juggling - Go to the store and buy some medium-sized, inflated balls or one of those plastic bowling sets.  Have everyone stand in a relatively open area (where things won’t get hurt) and hand each person a bowling pin or ball.  Have them “juggle” by throwing them to one another in any sequence or order they’d like.  As they get the hang of it, have them throw them the “long way” once in a while and tell them that they are not allowed to have more than one object in their hands at any time.  See how fast they can get the juggling going.  This is a lot of fun.

Mine Field - For smaller groups, this is a really fun one.  Scatter objects around a room, on the floor (pillows, pieces of paper, etc.).  Have one person blindfolded and a teammate must guide them through the room using only verbal cues (telling them to walk right or left, forward or backward, etc.) until the person is at the objective point.  It’s a lot harder to do than it sounds.

These are just a few little games you can use to build your team’s coherency.  These team exercises will not only show them how to coordinate together, but will also build camaraderie as they laugh and work together in a fun atmosphere.

How To Stay Motivated and On Track

image via GlennPeb

Most people understand that there is a business cycle: growth, plateaus, slow downs, and more growth.  All those involved in business understand that growth is not endless, though it can be limitless.

Well all know that Bill Gates and his friends started in a garage and ended up multi-billionaires.  In between the startup and the huge (and still growing) success, though, there were setbacks, slow downs, dips in the roller coaster ride to the top.

It’s during those times where your business is not growing, where your efforts don’t appear to be paying off any longer, or where your business appears to be failing that our true mettle is tested.  It’s during those times that we are most at risk of losing heart and slowing down our efforts or quitting altogether.

That’s when we really should be refocusing our efforts and reconsidering our motivators.  Here are some tips to keep you on track and thriving; to help you stay inspired and motivated.

Envision a Better Day

Stay on track in your mind and think about what it will be like after the bad times.  Stay focused on the bright future, the good times to come.  Sit back and envision it and visualize what it will be like.  This helps you focus on the long term and forget the short-term setbacks.

Look For New Opportunity

Every setback or bump in the road can be an opportunity just waiting to be seized.  Take the time to look around you and see what you could be missing before it’s too late to take advantage of the opportunity presented.

Learn From The Mistakes

Every setback, even those primarily caused by outside forces like a down economy or a change in the market place, is still going to include mistakes you might have made.  Better yet, it could also include mistakes your competition has made.  In either case, take the time to look at the errors made and learn from them to better yourself and your enterprise.

Keep Your Perspective

Just as with Envisioning a Better Day, you should also keep that long-term perspective in focus.  Temporary setbacks are just obstacles in the road on the way to that longer-term goal.  When an eagle looks to the water to catch a fish and misses on his swoop, he doesn’t give up.  No, he keeps focused on the meal he’s after and tries again.  Remember the goal and don’t sweat the obstacle.

Overall, the setbacks or slump in your business’ cycle might tend to get you down, but don’t let it keep you there.  Using these tips to stay inspired and motivated, you can keep focused and pull your business out of the slump and back on the road to prosperity.

5 Steps to Motivating a Team

Once your team is in place and you’ve established the building blocks to build your team into something great, you’re faced with the dilemma of keeping them together and motivated.  Motivation is a big deal with long term teams, whether they’re all in the same office or flung across the country or the world.

Traditional management methods for long term motivation can be boiled down to two things: chain them to their seats and be liberal with the whip.

Obviously, this doesn’t work in today’s environment and isn’t healthy-and probably wasn’t healthy then either.  What your team really needs for that motivation that keeps them fired up now, tomorrow, next week, and even next year is true motivational learning.

Simple things like short-term goal setting (and achieving), having non-work-related meetings to allow team members to chat and talk, and giving little pieces of praise and simple rewards for a job well done can do wonders.  In fact, all of these actions can be phrased simply: show appreciation for your team as individual people.

Here are some simple ideas to help you motivate your team for the short and long haul, starting now:

1.      Set simple goals for your project for the team to achieve individually and together. Kindergarten goals are counterproductive for this, but setting realistic goals or maybe bumping a time line a couple of days to give the team something to grab for can do wonders.  Make sure rewards for those goals are clearly spelled out, to incentivize the extra effort.

2.      Reward team members and the whole team at intervals.  Simple rewards like gift certificates for two to a restaurant, catered lunch, cash bonuses, or even just a card to say “you’re doing great!” are all good motivators.  They show appreciation and aren’t too expensive.

3.      Just a note to a team member saying “good job” is often enough to boost them a little.  On an off day, when they aren’t feeling so great about the project, remembering one of those notes can be what makes them perk up.

4.      Give them some time off as a surprise.  When the team makes a goal and accomplishes something early, maybe finishing a task on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, why not give them Friday off as a thank you?  Or send them home early on a Friday afternoon, even. Those little things, as a surprise, can really make the team feel appreciated.

5.      Let them be people.  Instead of structuring everything, sticking directly to the meeting agenda, and getting in and out of a team conference as quickly as possible, why not allow a little extra slack time?  Let the team gather a little early to pour themselves coffee and chat.  Or let them linger after the meeting for a few minutes and talk and have a laugh.  These build team spirit and camaraderie and are as good or better than those getaway seminars the “gurus” hold.

All of these are great motivators and can be used over time to really ad up to some great team motivation and friendship.  A great team is a team that likes one another and an awesome team is one that likes to work together and is highly motivated to get the job done.

Building that kind of team is a lot of dedicated work, but it’s always well worth it and pays off big later.

Team Building For the Long Term

Once you’ve assembled a great group of people, whether it’s in the office, inter-office, or flung around the country or the globe, your next big project will be to take that assembly and turn them into a team.  Of course, natural human interaction between the members of your new team will easily get this started, but that needs to be supplemented to create a true team.

This basic team building boils down to one major thing: leadership.  Your team must have solid leadership.  That doesn’t mean infallible, perfect leadership; it means solid, trustworthy, and honest leadership.

That last sentence should explain the very basic cornerstone of being a good leader to your new team: trustworthy and honest leadership.

Trustworthiness is usually gained over time and will happen naturally as your team members begin to learn that they can trust in you to be a good leader, to be supportive, provide direction, and most importantly that you are open to feedback.  One of the best attributes of a great leader is the ability to bring on people that are smarter than you. A leader cannot do everything and so you must hire or bring together the best people to get that job done and in doing that cultivate the strongest and most beneficial contributions from the individuals in your team. Empowering team members to take charge on their assigned duties and tasks will foster a trust in you and the team that directing and micromanaging can never accomplish.

The second part of good team building comes down to honesty.  If you’re honest with your team, treat them with respect, and openly admit when you’ve been wrong or chosen the wrong path, your team will believe in you.  No one expects anyone else to be perfect.  Your team does expect their leadership to be honest, however, or the team building will never happen because politics, fear, and distrust will get in the way. Part of being honest is recognizing when team members go above and beyond their assigned roles, if you express appreciation and recognize those individuals they will be more apt to go that extra mile again.

A leader must tread carefully with honesty, you do not want to be “brutally” honest but you also do not want to mislead or down play situations that are important to the task and team. Tact and Honesty go hand in hand, if a misstep has been made by you the leader or one of the team members you must address the misstep, but in pointing out the error you must also provide a positive means of redirection or a solution. So be honest but with a goal towards building a positive, productive, and cohesive team in mind.

Once honesty and trustworthiness are established, the rest of team building is pretty simple.  From the beginning, you should be honest.  Then you should establish trust by showing your team that everyone in the team is important and that each contribution is integral to the success of the team.  At the same time, you should consider each team members motivations for the project, their reasons for being there, and their needs to keep them interested and active with the team project. The most successful teams are those where each member has buy in, can see the vision, and takes ownership of the intended goal.

Motivation is a huge subject all to itself, but for this article’s purpose, we’ll just say that motivation can be much more than money and benefits.  Often, simple things like providing coffee at face-to-face team meetings, recognizing every day efforts as well as the outstanding ones, or just allowing time to hang out and talk once in a while, as a group, without business getting in the way will take your team miles. Work is important, getting the job done even more important, but without motivation and a cohesive team structure you will not get to the essentials without quite a few headaches along the way. When team members get to know each other on a more personal level they tend to support one another within the team a bit more, so allow some room for the banter and friendship building it will build a team for the long term.

Above all, make sure that your team building includes participation from all members of the team.  Give the team purpose, some challenge, and personal freedom to allow for responsibility and accomplishment on an individual, group, and team basis. Finally, as we said before, the true center of good team building is establishing trust and being honest with your team.  Do these things and you’ll have a great team in the making!

7 Tips for Successful Project Collaboration

In today’s world of home offices, freelancing, outsourcing, and geographically spread teams, collaboration is the buzz word of business.  Many projects are no longer taking place in one office, or even one company.  Often, projects include outside help, inter-corporate collaboration, or teams made up of disparate members at all points of the compass.

Sometime in everyone’s career, they’re likely to become part of a collaborative effort of some kind.  You may even be asked to lead such an effort.  Do you know how to do it and do it well?  These seven tips will help.

1.      Plan: Plan your project so that you know everything you’ll need to get it started and to make it run smoothly.  What kind of resources will you require?  What team members do you absolutely have to have and what team members are alternates or temporary?  What is your schedule, your goal, and your time frame for each task to reach that goal?  Planning is key.

2.      Scheduling: Your list of “must have” team members is based on skills and your list of alternates and temporary members is based on supplemental and backup skill sets.  So scheduling your team to work together becomes the next step and the place where who will be doing what task-or even who will be on the team-will be decided.

3.      Risk Analysis: What happens if your goals are too lofty or your project falls behind schedule? Instead of worrying about who’s to blame, worry more about who will really take the heat and the fall for it.  Liabilities and avoiding time wasted on finger pointing, if pinned down now, could mean the difference between a project falling apart and coming in complete, though late.

4.      Tracking: Who will be in charge of tracking the progress of each part of the overall project? Likely this is you, but that’s not always the case.  Who is in charge of individual portions of the project and who will assign tasks and ensure they’re completed in a timely way?  Knowing who’s assigned what and where authority has been delegated will make sure all involved are secure in their part of the project and know who to go to and where they should be.

5.      People: Who are the people on your team?  Who’s talking to who and what’s to be done if anyone leaves or cannot fulfill their obligations?  Most of all, how is your team working together and what should you be doing to enhance that?  Answer these questions and you’ll know you’ve got a solid team that can get the job done.

6.      Rewards: What are your project’s goals and what are the rewards you’ll all receive for meeting those goals?  What about interim goals and rewards?  If these are spelled out clearly in the beginning, your team will be more motivated and more coherent.  When everyone knows the goals and everyone gets a taste of the rewards when they’re met, everyone is incentivized.

7.      Lead: “If you lead them, they will follow.”  These famous words are very true, even if you’re not the project’s manager.  Lead your team, lead your tasks, lead everything towards the goals you are to achieve and you will get there.  Be strong, work hard, and keep your focus on your objective and you will succeed.  General George S. Patton said “Hit ‘em hard, hit ‘em strong, and hit ‘em fast and you’ll win.”

These are the seven things you’ll need to make sure your next collaboration is a success.  Keep these seven things in mind and you will go far.

Five Great Books for Team Building

These are five essential books for team building in today’s online business climate. All of these are highly recommended and well worth the read.

The One Minute Manager Builds High-Performing Teams (Updated)

Part of the One Minute Manager series by Dr. Ken blanchard, PhD, this book covers the concept of teamwork is integral to today’s work environment. He talks about the four stages of team development, how managers can optimize any group’s efficiency and effectiveness quickly, and how to keep stress in teams at a minimum. Definitely worth the read.

The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team

Written by John C. Maxwell, author of several leadership books, this book receives raving reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and several business magazines. Many of these 17 rules are pretty obvious once you see them… but you have to see them first, that’s the point. A great read that goes very quickly, this book is a great handbook for building leadership skills for you and your team.

X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed

Written by Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman, this book is all about re-engineering an average team into a great team. Through exploration and innovation, the authors show, your team can rise from lackluster to great in very little time. X-Teams will definitely open your mind and make you think about team building and maintenance in a new way.

Teams At Work: 7 Keys to Success

This book is written by Suzanne Zoglio and aims at both managers and team members. It’s an “action guide” for strengthening performance and understanding the key elements of an effective team. Several of the tools in this book demonstrate masterful concepts of teamwork and leadership. This book is Teamwork 101 for many readers.

When Teams Work Best: 6,000 Team Members and Leaders Tell What It Takes to Succeed

This book is the compilation of anecdotes and information from over six thousand teams and collaborative efforts. The authors, Frank M.J. LaFasto and Carl E. Larson, interviewed and studied these thousands of teams and extrapolated the common denominators that made them all succeed. They manage to tell this in a practical and user-friendly way that shows not only what success looks like, but how to collaborate to get your team to it.

All five of these books are must-reads, and are definitely worth the time. Today’s market requires teamwork and only good teamwork will succeed. These books will lay a blueprint to show you the way.