Team Building with The Music Gym

Isn't it great when you can do your job and have fun and help others? Talk about a win, win situation!

We have done just that by teaming up with The Music Gym to allow us to provide team building using audio and sound technology, originally designed for the disabled, but adapted to create a great experience for others as well. And whilst we are having fun and helping others learn about teams, and team dynamics, some of the the fee goes back to helping the disabled. Great eh?

Masterchef helps with Teamwork

Masterchef Peter Bayless joined our Team Building day last week, bringing his own spin on cooking pasta to the fray. With recipes such as Between the Blankets and Putanesca Sauce the team had fun making the pasta and eating the results. Thanks Peter.

Motivation

5 ways to motivate others:


1. Motivating employees starts with motivating yourself. Find out what motivates you and use it.

2. Each person is motivated by different things. The first thing you need to do is to find out what it is that really motivates each of your employees.

3. Few of us have the outstanding qualities of inspirational figures such as Nelson Mandela but we all have an ability to inspire employees in small but meaningful ways. When people are inspired they become more enthusiastic, motivated and engaged which invariably improves their performance

4. Killer whales like fish. Their trainers use it to raise the bar that they jump over – a bit at a time.

5. Learn to let go – you need to trust people to use their own judgment .

Creating Great Presentations

Want to create a great presentation? Here are a few tips.

1. Know your subject - there is nothing worse than some talking about something they know nothing about. The audience will see through you. Do your research and you will feel much more relaxed.
2. Understand your audience - know who they are and what they want to get out of being there. Remember, your audience want you to succeed. Who wants to sit in a presenation that doesn't? So they are on your side.
3. Have a conversation. Keep the audience involved by getting them involved.
4. Dress well - make sure you look the part - looks really do count.
5. Speak up - if you have something to say make sure you can be heard otherwise your audience will go to sleep!
6. Don't overcrowd your slides - good visuals are so important in a world of constantly changing images being presented to us all the time.
7. Have fun - if you are having fun then the audience is more likely to.

Team Building at Brighton Science Festival

Team building can be a tricky business. It requires good communication and concentration. Recently attending the Brighton Science Festival, we challenged a number of teams to lay a stick on the floor without any team member losing touch with the stick, which was resting on their fingers, or hooking their fingers around the stick. A seemly easy task, it can prove difficult to accomplish. Small movements can cause the stick to rise rather than fall, causing confusion and disarray.
Here is a team from the Open University trying their hand at it, and successfully laying it to rest on the floor!

Top Tips for Middle Managers

Top Tips for Middle Managers

Based on ‘Managing in the Middle’ by Barry Oshry, which can be found at www.executiveforum.com

Even in today’s world of flatter, leaner organisations, most organisations continue to have three levels of hierarchy. At the top there are the people who shape and give direction to the entire organisation. At the bottom are the workers, who manufacture the business’s products or render its services. Between them are those in the middle, often torn between meeting the demands of those at the top and responding to the needs and concerns of the workers they are expected to manage. The middle can be a confusing and ambiguous place, yet it is potentially a point of powerful influence, both upwards and downwards.

Some Top Tips for Middles

Resist the urge to make other people’s problems, issues and conflicts your own. Your job is to coach and empower them to resolve their issues, not take responsibility for them

Keep your own mind. Pay attention to your point of view, your values, your solutions. This will maximise your personal contribution to collective problem solving.

Be a Top whenever you can. If you can resolve a problem without passing it up to the Top, then do it. Tops only need to be involved with problems that are unsolvable at the Middle level.

Be a Worker when you should. If your team is short-staffed or has a sudden influx of work, then help them out with it. But remember, this should only be a short term solution. If it becomes long term then you need to re-focus on the systemic problems which are causing it.

Facilitate solutions by bringing together the people who need to be together, and helping them to have productive interactions. This is more effective than trying to act as a buffer between them.

Integrate with other Middles. Strong, interactive relationships with your peers will enable you to make a strong collective contribution and reduce your feelings of isolation.


To see the full version of this article visit http://www.satc.org.uk/62/managing-in-the-middle/

Team Building with Cooking

There is no doubt that working together to make a meal is a rewarding experience. We've just had fun working with a client on a team building exercise where they had to put together a meal of ravioli, lasagne, tagliatelle and foccacia. Making the pasta from scratch was a good way of working out any initial frustrations and the resultant meal was a feast, tasting all the better because they had cooked it themselves. The team also had the opportunity to share the experience which would stand them in good stead back in the office. All in all, a good days work!