Team Building For Students April 29, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: students, team building
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When students take part in team building exercises they benefit from all of the lessons that a well planned event can offer. These include leadership, successful planning and problem solving. There is another significant benefit that can be focused on that could really help them in their future.
When people go for their first job interview it can be difficult for them to promote themsleves in a business significant way. They will have their exam results to show and discuss and some will have been travelling. This is always very useful and can give them something interesting to talk about in a job interview scenario.
One of the benefits of an organised team building experience is that they can also be coached to discuss what it taught them about such areas as leadership and working in a team. To be able to discuss this using business relevant terminology would make them stand out significantly from others in the interview process.
Anyone who has interviewed young people for their early jobs will know that some really struggle to get their personality across in a positive way. The more experiences they have up their sleeve to talk about the more chance they will have of making a good impression. What could be more important?
Fun Team Building Criticism April 23, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: american airlines, team building, vodafone
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Team building activities sometimes come in for criticism. Recently in the UK the company Vodafone published a survey which claimed to show that teambuilding activities are not effective. Various media and bloggers commented on this and, typically, examples of the types of activities used included trust falls (which we don’t recommend for health and safety reasons), massages from colleagues (I’ve not seen that in over 20 years in the business) and lingerie parties (nope, not seen that either).
Some of the adverts that have lampooned team building include this one from American Airlines which is well done and funny but, again, uses clichéd representations of team building activities. Business tends to like provable and measurable activities and it’s not always easy to include such things as fun and relationships in that. However, most managers know that time out and fun are important to get the best out of their teams.
With the Vodafone publicity and a fair amount of negative coverage of team building it’s not been the best start for the industry. However, sales don’t seem to have suffered and there is as much interest in events as last year. Fun events can be an easy target, particularly if people choose to misrepresent it, but most managers can see beyond that and know whether it’s something that their team needs and something that will help them to achieve their goals.
New Team Building Activity April 3, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: model making, new, team building activity
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Animaniacs Team Building Activity
Animaniacs is a new team building activity. The team creates plasticine models with the help of experienced model makers and then films a short animated film in the style of Wallace & Grommit. The film can be random and purely for fun or it can be on a specific theme which can be business linked.
Not only is this great fun but it depersonalises communication and this enables difficult subjects to be addressed in new and creative ways. The activity is overseen by expert model makers who will help the team to come up with a good animation. If business issues are the subject one of our experienced facilitators will work with the team, debriefing and ensuring that they get the maximum benefit from the activity.
Fun Team Building Events In London March 14, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: London
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London is our most regular city location for events. Some events aren’t suited to the busy centre and we have locations just outside London for them. However, there is a wide variety of choices if you want to stay central.
London Treasure Hunts are very popular and the historic capital is the perfect location. We can start and finish at client offices is in one of the many pubs and bars which welcome our events. All of our indoors events are suitable for the centre of the city, including Murder Mysteries, Trial By Jury and Chocolate Making.
When your event is finished we can book you a table or, for larger groups, a private room at one of the many superb restaurants so you can finish off your event with relaxed social team bonding. There are so many options in London that you really don’t have to leave the city for team building.
Photo courtesy of Mike Boss.
Ten Benefits of Effective Team Building March 10, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: team building benefits
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Effective team building activities offer a variety of benefits to both the participants and the organisation. We have chosen our top ten and detailed them below for you to have a look at!
DEVELOP KEY SKILLS Team Building Activities are a great way to develop key skills within a workforce or leadership team in a relaxed, albeit well structured environment. The most effective way to develop specific skills is to choose an activity which can easily be tailored to highlight the skill you are looking to develop (as opposed to trying to tack many skills in a single activity).
New Team Building Ideas February 17, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: command tasks, country sports, ideas, team building, treasure hunts
9 comments
The team building event industry is generally seen to be creative. However, coming up with new ideas is not easy. We tend to have phases where types of events come on to the market, for example the cookery themed events that have become increasingly popular over the last 10 years shadowing the popularity of cooking programmes on the television.
Many of the event themes that make up the fun team building activity industry have not changed in the last 20 years and are based on ideas that are even older; country sports, treasure hunts and command tasks for example. New ways are created to breathe life into these experiences, for example The Parmesan Job which is a high level themed treasure hunt.
Many ideas are described as ‘a version of’ or like something else, for example a board or parlour game. Companies are looking for that new idea that comes out of the blue and redefines the way people think about these experiences.
Successful team building activities need to have the following attributes:-
1. They need to be better solved or experienced as a team than as individuals.
2. They need to be fun and motivating. Tempo is vital, people don’t want to stand around wondering what to do.
3. They shouldn’t be too intellectual. They can have layers and mysteries to solve, but if there are too many instructions it slows the tempo.
4. They need to have a strong finale that leaves people energised and on a high.
5. They need to be portable. People want activities taken to a conference venue rather than having to go somewhere else.
We create two major new events a year and add or refresh half a dozen of the component events in our portfolio, for example new command tasks. We are always looking for that ‘bolt out of the blue’ completely new and ground breaking idea.
Let us know if you have any ideas, it’s potentially a very lucrative market.
Fun Team Building Activities February 13, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: fun photos, team building
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Team Fun
We always loan teams a digital camera so they can take shots of themselves having fun on a team building activity. The photos are then sent on and they make a really good memento of an enjoyable day away from work.
Teams often find fun props to use when they’re staging a shot. In the picture they saw a parked steamroller and couldn’t resist larking around with it. Here is a full list of team building activities, some of which make better photo opportunities than others.
Extreme Creativity February 8, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: mousetrap, ok go, rube goldberg, w heath robinson
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I love the extreme things that OK Go do. They are a band but they work with Rube Goldberg type investions to add an extra level of creativity to their music and the sheer scale of their ambition is remarkable.
Some team building events are Rube Goldberg in style. Essentially this is a machine that does something very simple in a complicated way. The game Mousetrap is a classic example and you may be familiar with W.Heath Robinson’s cartoons depicting mad invention from World War II.
It’s amazing what a group of people can do when they sit down with a load of basic materials and decide to build something. Why build something that amounts to a complicated way of achieving something? Because we can.
Team Building Painting February 3, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: leonardo davinci, painting, team building
17 comments
Team Building Painting
Painting is an excellent activity for team building. The group is divided into teams of three to five people and each is given a canvas. Their objective is to create one large picture with each canvas being a section of a mosaic. Communication is essential if the canvasses are to fit together to make one matching big picture.
We run an event called DaVinci’s Designs which is a tribute to the great creative genius of Leonardo DaVinci. This starts with a selection of themed activities in which teams have to identify and recreate some of his famous inventions, for example a helicopter, a parachute and a self supporting bridge. We have a wooden kit with which teams can reconstruct a DaVinci bridge.
With lots of teams contributing towards one big picture the business metaphor is fairly clear and DaVinci’s Designs is an ideal team building event if facilitation is an objective to gain business insights and advantages from the event.
Team Building Word Cloud January 27, 2012
Posted by James Coakes in team building.Tags: team building, word cloud
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The Benefits Of Team Building
Here’s a word cloud that we put together showing some of the benefits of team building. All of our events are great fun and the team will take away some great shared memories.
There are also business benefits; hard and soft concepts, some measurable but mostly anecdotal. This word cloud captures some of those benefits.
