I have asked the same question to two different large team building & leadership groups this week. One group was Corporate HealthCare staff the other was High School teachers. Both groups developed great ideas and support that they need in order to be more effective in getting their work done.

With the HealthCare staff I asked What do you need from your patients in order to be more effective at getting your work done?

With the High School Teachers I asked What do you need from your students in order to be more effective in getting your work done?

Following the question, in both groups, we worked to define, create and develop continued training, coaching and consulting to work with the patients and students to make these ideas into reality.

On to the inquiry:

• Choose who you directly affect through your work, meaning who do you serve in your role. For health care group it’s patients, for teachers it’s students, for managers it’s subordinates, etc… The challenge may come if you work internally, for example an accountant within a company who doesn’t see the customer, think about it…
• Ask What do I need from them in order to be more effective in getting my work done? What else? What else?
• Is any of this happening already? Even a little?
• How did you manage to make that happen?
• What is the next step you can take to implement what you need to make your work more effective?
• When can we go-and-see what you have done?

Please share your responses and feedback.

michael cardus is create-learning

image by kevin dooley

Defining the goals of an organization and how your role contributes to that goal is tough and necessary.

Tough because as managers we think that everyone just knows…and sometimes we are not even all that sure ourselves.

Necessary because the decisions people make when faced with challenges and workplace complexity, are based upon the organizational goals.

You…make millions of choices a day about your work, all these choices are based upon what you think the goal of the company is, and how you think your work contributes to this goal.

This is why is must be made clear and consistent in words and action.

Next time you have your team together ask them;

1. What is the goal of this company? What are we in business for?
2. How does your work directly contribute to this goal?

Ask, then listen.

Depending upon what you hear you can educate, coach and inform the team as necessary.

What do you think?

Are the over-arching goals of your company really important to your day to day work?

michael cardus is create-learning

Before meeting with the Executive who will be accountable for the results of the Team Building & Leadership Consulting, Coaching, Workshop I am leading. Sometimes I send some questions for them to think about.

Below are some of these questions;

• * What is your longest time-frame for the goal you are tasked to complete?
• * What do you want the team to do, that they are not doing enough of already?
• * How will we know when they are doing enough of this?
• * If we can accomplish what you want the team to do more of, what value would would that have? think outside of ‘feel-good’ stuff. i.e. Increased efficiency in completion of work leading to faster completion of projects while still maintaining our current fee structure; can you put that into Dollars?
• * Now the feel-good stuff…and why does that matter?
• * Weird Question stay with me. – You leave work today, go home do whatever you normally do after-work, then you go to sleep. While you are asleep a miracle happens, and the current problems that you have identified are eradicated. BUT you have no idea that this miracle happened. You arrive at work, what is the first, tangible, objective thing that you would notice that makes you think “WOW! that problem is solved and work is better.
• * What is an example of one process / system that is operating above or at your expectations?
• * Who is in charge of that process / system?
• * If I was to ask the employees, What is one thing that the Leadership can do more of, to increase your effectiveness in completing your work? What do you think they would say?

michael cardus is create-learning

image by Neal.

Working with students and corporate executives in Team Building & Leadership simulations I see a great deal of cheating.

Not, the were being creative by staying within the guidelines kind of cheating . The I know the rules and choose to violate them anyway  kind of cheating.

Work also has rules, guidelines, policies, regulations. If some of the regulations are violated someone can get fired, the company can receive a fine, lose funding, and several other things.  People also violate these rules.

When I see this happen in the activities portion, that always leads me to this processing question.

• What, if any violations of the rules happened?
• If we behaved in the same manner, and purposely violated regulations what could happen?
• Why would you choose the break the rules today, here, in that last activity?

That final question always get a response in a similar fashion. This is just a game and it doesn’t really matter.

On to the Inquiry:

In reference to the response above This is just a game and it doesn’t really matter.

Here is my usual response

• I agree it does not matter, so why would you cheat on something that, as you said does not matter?
• What are your actions when something does matter?
• When something does matter, how will you react to that?
• What are you willing to do, when it really does matter?

A team building activity is meant as a reflective-learning piece. Something where you can have an experience, learn some new skills, take some risks and make choices without the companies and your future on the line. 

If you are willing to cheat on something that admittedly has little bearing on your work and life. Then when you are faced with a real challenge in work, life – how far are you willing to cheat to make it right?

michael cardus is create-learning

image by by skipgo shannon

• 12/27/11 – Photos of Teams
• 12/28/11 – Images used in presentations & Articles
• 12/29/11 – Team Building & Leadership activity (simulation)
• 12/30/11 – Blog article
• 12/31/11 – NEW YEARS!

Favorite Team Building & Leadership Activities + Simulations 2011

• In no particular order.

Some of these were posted here. Some were leaked super secret like to the Create-Learning Letter a mostly-monthly e-newsletter that has TeamBuilding, Leadership & experiential theory + activities CLICK HERE to sign-up.

Planning Path

• Planning Path forces the teams to clarify accountabilities of the plan and necessary time-frames coordinating the effort of all the individuals into one system

Communicate This & Stick it here!

• Complex simulation illustrating communication by people listening and sharing  information in a manner that other people can understand the message being received as well as sent.

Processing the Experience Using Mouse Traps

• Utilizing an active reviewing method (as opposed to a passive method which is question & answer) aids people in creating brain based connection from the team building activity to their work, lives, community, etc…

Sky Bottle Commander

• Real-Time planning at the location of the problem to be solved.

Cycle Time Puzzle Variation: Puzzle Connection

• Puzzle Connection focuses on collaboration and decision making. Teams practice problem solving and communication skills, and increase their understanding of the need for constant communication between existing teams.

New Door to One Word

• Here is an opening activity that I use in DiSC Workshops. The purpose is to open the understanding of perceptual awareness and that we all have beliefs about ourselves, others, and our organization.

D–Quick Choice

• For participants to experience a D – Dominance type culture. In this activity all people are asked to use their Dominance to accomplish a task that has a tight time frame and a decision must be made.

DTC Operator

• Dimension Time Cost Operator (DTC) – is a tool for for seeing problems differently exploring ideas of extremes in size and cost. The DTC Operator can work to release Psychological Inertia.

Nine Windows

• Using nine windows serves us in discovering solutions by understanding the problem in the context of the past, present and future along with exploring the problem in the Super-System, current System, and Sub-System.

Plan:Do:Check:Act

• Individuals on teams when involved in challenges are really close to the problem and taking a Plan:Do:Check:ACT (PDCA) break will create clarity and teach a model of action steps and solutions finding in real-time examples.

everyone BUT YOU knows the best choice

• In what ways, besides just telling you which rope was the correct choice, could the people and teams support, guide, serve your team in making the right choice?

How To Process + De-Brief Team Building Activities

• Team Building Facilitators lead activities that add value to the organization, team and person. This is established and created through purposeful processing and de-briefing of the activities. Allowing for functional tie-backs and applications

Now Your Turn;

In the comments share your favorite team building & leadership activity or simulation.

What an amazing year 2011 was! Looking forward to meeting and working with your team and leaders in 2012.

michael cardus is create-learning

How does one lead AWESOME team-building programs? The ones that ensure that content and learning take place. A teambuilding program that is fun, and teams leave better than when they arrived? click here for the how-to book.

The STAR method is a behavioral interviewing method that organizations use to explore predictors of performance.

This STAR method can also be used for processing (de-briefing) a team building and training simulation.

Here is the Model – from MIT Careers Office

STAR Method

• Situation: give an example of a situation (goal, task, planning, project, etc.) you were involved in.
• Task: describe the tasks the you were directly involved in that situation.
• Action: talk about the various actions that you were directly involved in the situation’s task.
• Results: what results directly followed because of your actions.

The use of open ended questions and ability for reflection fit into the Experiential Learning Model where learning and transferable application of skills is processed.

Processing TeamBuilding Experience

Here is my alternative facilitation processing application of the STAR method.
The team completes a team building activity, then the facilitator guides the team in the following manner;

Situation: What from the (situation) experience resulted in a positive outcome?

Task: Describes the tasks (steps, processes, planning, etc…) involved that resulted in that positive outcome.

Action: share with the team your personal actions involved in the task (steps, processes, planning, etc…) the personal action is used because every person experiences differently. Once the individual contributors share their knowledge a deeper pool of team knowledge can be constructed to read more about this

Results: Describe the results. How can we transfer these team & personal actions that led to these results back to your team (organization, community, family, etc…)? List the action steps that can be taken to implement the new actions (learnings, skills, communication, etc…).

Create-Learning Team Building & Leadership offers Team Building & Leadership Train-the-Trainer programs. Interested? Contact Mike

michael cardus is create-learning

image by Neal.