Be The Ceo The How To Guide at Amazon
|
Team Building may be a very effective system for heightening team cohesion and boosting business performance, however, it takes time and conservatively planning to invent desired results. Here are a few simple guidelines that will primarily heighten the success of team building. 1. Clarify your objectives. It is primary that you be clear regarding the reasons you want a team building. Do you want to generate solutions to pressing business issues? Are you attempting to foster “out of the box thinking” in the members of your team? Is there a conflict that requires resolution? Be specific with regards to what you are attempting to achieve and articulate this distinctly to the person who will be obtaining quotes from suppliers on your behalf. When companies contact me for information, I always ask regarding objectives. That is when confusedness becomes evident. Far too often, the person who has been tasked with making the calls doesn’t have a clue. Once source of confusedness has to do with the word “team building” The terms “team recreation” and “team building” are oftentimes misapplied and treated as if they are interchangeable. They are not. TEAM RECREATION Team recreation is intended to get your team involved in an action or experience just for the fun of it. There are no specific business goals intended to be attained or outcomes. TEAM BUILDING Team building seeks to heighten team cohesiveness and performance to improve business results. Many team building sessions implicate recreation, however, recreation is a means to an end, not the end. Team building may be delivered on-site, off-site as a day session or at a hotel or resort involving for the length of one night stays, locally or at a alien destination The phases of effective team building are:
2. Clarify your decision-making criteria, process, and timing. Be prepared to make a decision 1 or 2 weeks after receiving a quote. Delays may increase costs and reduce the likelihood that preferent venues, dates and airline space will be available. 3. Match your time frame and your objectives. Failing to allocate sufficient time for your desired goals intended to be attained is one of the main reasons that team building fails. Here is a road map to timing based on your objectives: Half day:
1 Day: Appropriate for:
2 days:
2 1/2 to 3 days:
3 1/2 to 4 days:
4. Don’t pack the agenda and don’t fail to build in buffers. Allow plenteous time for transportation delays and for humans to settle into the venue, in particular for the duration of the winter or if you are leaving the country. Remember, a late night arrival and early start out is effective but it’s bound to develop resentment and generate. Make allowances for a lot of down time even if it means adding half a day. One of the worst things you may do is take your team to a gorgeous emplacement and give them no time to relax and take delight in it. 5. Start planning well in advance and before you lock in your final dates. Ideally, you ought to be contacting suppliers at least 8 to 12 weeks prior to your session for something local. (For alien travel, 3 – 6 months is best particularly if the destination is popular.) Allow when it comes to a week for quotes. Make sure that your dates aren’t carved in stone until there has been an chance to determine the availability of suitable venues. 6. Brief your assistant fully. Be sure that the person to whom you delegate the task of obtaining quotes from suppliers is clear about:
7. Delegate fact finding but never decision making. As the decision maker, you must ALWAYS have a speech with the senior facilitator or event planner from the firm with whom you are thinking of doing business. This will assure that all pertinent info has been communicated and provided. Unless your session is rigorously recreational, decision-making by committee will have to be avoided. A committee is outstanding for exploring choices and giving input but an executive must always make the final decision based on what is best for the business. 8. Don’t fall into a rut. Try something new. For example, use your team building session to give your team a new perspective. This will foster “out of the box” thinking and help them generate ideas to see to it that your company remains competitory in the international marketplace. To find the budget, perhaps have 1 retreat this year rather of 2 or arrange an off-site each other year rather of annually. Take your team on a desert safari in Dubai, abseiling in Oman or horse riding in Jamaica and use an experienced facilitator to link your experience with your day to day business challenges. 9. Set the tone with pre-communication. Use an e-mail or cautiously crafted communication piece on your intranet to convey objectives, expected values and code of conduct. For example, if your group is in the habit of having a drunken fest, re-think your approach in the light of:
10. Ensure full attendance by the entire team for the duration of the session. This may be challenging but it may be done. It is difficult to achieve results when key players are popping in and out of the session. Have each attendee arrange back up and provide a full briefing with regards to galore of the situations that are likely to emerge. They will have to let key clients and suppliers know how long they will be away from the office, when they are returning and who to contact for the duration of their absence. 11. Keep your briefing brief. People have fixed attention spans, specially if there has been a long traveling to get to an off-site. A half hour activity of formally presenting something followed by a half an hour for questions is more than sufficient to kick things off. Going overtime, puts pressure on the rest of the agenda and frustrates the members of your team. You may always build more airtime into the agenda for the duration of the business percentage of your retreat or session when all of the team building is finished. 12. Arrange for regular checkpoints with the facilitator or event planner and implicate him or her in all course corrections. Discuss how things are going and come up with solutions together if there are any concerns. 13. Don’t cut the simulation or debriefing short. Remember, analytical learners won’t “get it” just based on experience. They need time to think and process. If you panic and cut things short, they will never have an prospect to get value out of the session. 14. Follow up, follow up, follow up! Encourage the use of the new tools introduced through team building on an ongoing basis. Give each breakout groups a project and have them provide periodic updates in the months following your team building session. (c) 2008 Executive Oasis International. All rights reserved. |
