Align & Coelesce Your Teams • Better Communication

Team Building & Development

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Team Development: Aligning Your Team

Team Development

Being A Team

Teams will participate in fun, memorable, hands-on, and challenging activities. Participants learn how they and others currently contribute to the team and explore ways to concretely improve this contribution in the workplace.

Subjects covered may include:

  • Problem solving
  • Risk taking
  • Trust
  • Creating norms
  • Decision making
  • Conflict management
  • Communication
  • Teamwork

Communicating in Teams

Communication in teams lies at the heart of a project's or department's success and challenges. Sorting out communication issues can be difficult. Communication is so pervasive in organizational work that we often overlook it as a source of problems.

Tackle the most challenging communication problems with this program. We demonstrate the profound impact of poor communication then teach the skills needed to get communication back on track.

Your team will:

  • Discover the powerful impact of both ineffective and effective communication
  • Identify damaging communication techniques and environments
  • Improve communication behavior
  • Handle unique communication problems

Team Kick-offs

Ensure that your new team has the tools it needs to achieve its optimal level of performance.

Activities may include:

We will work with you and your team members to create the program agenda that will make the difference in your team's performance. 

  • Clarify roles and responsibilities
  • Determine decision making processes
  • Establish ways to be together
  • Establish team values
  • Establish the team culture
  • Develop the team mission and vision
  • Develop communication policies

We will work with you and your team members to create the program agenda that will make the difference in your team's performance. 

Handling Team Issues for Optimal Team Performance

Looking to take your team to its optimal level? Does your team have some issues to be ironed out? We will facilitate your team's issue resolution and take your team to a higher level of performance.

Activities may include: Clarify roles and responsibilities

Resolve conflict We will work with you and your team members to create the program agenda that will make the difference in your team's performance. Typically this includes confidentially interviewing everyone on the team.

  • Determine decision making processes
  • Establish ways to be together
  • Establish or clarify team values
  • Establish the team culture
  • Development the team mission and vision
  • Assess the team for improvements
  • Improve communication without assessments (DISC, Myers Briggs, etc)
  • Clarify roles and responsibilities
  • Resolve conflict

We will work with you and your team members to create a workshop that will make the difference in your team's performance. Typically this includes confidentially interviewing everyone on the team.

Being a Virtual Team


Being a team for virtual/remote teams Bringing your virtual team in to get to know one another and deal with some key team development? We will facilitate an extremely productive event for your virtual team so that they will get to know each other better and become even more productive.

Activities may include: 

  • Clarify roles and responsibilities
  • Get to know your team members better
  • Develop communication policies
  • Determine decision making processes
  • Establish team values
  • Development the team mission and vision
  • Establish ways to be together

Tackle the most challenging communication problems with this program. We demonstrate the profound impact of poor communication then teach the skills needed to get communication back on track.

Activity Details

Duration:   4 hours to 3 days .
Purpose: To align and coalesce your team 
What: A workshop devoted to developing the team and solving team issues 
How: Using multiple activities to speak to your team's particular needs and issues.
Where: Off-site or on-site

Brainstormers™

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Perfect For

  • Retreats
  • Special events
  • Celebrations
  • Training Programs
  • Workshops
  • Kick-offs
  • Meeting

How it Works

Two or more teams of 3-7 people compete using their creative minds in an extremely fun game-show like event. Imagine Donald Trump's The Apprentice and the Family Feud rolled into one with a very high dose of creativity.

Each team works together to answer simple, mind stretching, yet often hilarious questions (question examples).

Brainstormers™ is played in 4 parts. Each round gets progressively more difficult and the rewards are greater. Teams are given challenging and provoking questions that require team creativity, and help to expand generative thinking and creative perspectives. Prizes are generally awarded to the winning team - and, of course, the losing team gets a consolation prize. In addition to team contestants, the game involves a team of judges of your choice.

Brainstormers' teams can be made up of already existing teams, departments, divisions (product vs services), functions, or regions (left coast sales team vs right coast). You might even have one company compete against another. There can be as many teams as you desire.

Set-up

It takes IdeaGuides only one hour to set up this gameshow in a location of your choice. The questions and challenges come from the IdeaGuides database and can be tailored to your particular needs.

Sample Brainstormers Questions

What ways could you improve a grocery store? What are ways to light a candle without using a match?
What are things you can do to avoid long lines at the check out counters?
You created a new product for a toothpaste that provides you with all the minimum daily requirements for vitamins, this tooth paste is guaranteed to protect teeth from cavities and also reverses cavities. Find a Slogan.
You are in charge of introducing a new children's cereal that makes children get straight A's in school. What do you name this cereal?
What do a cascading waterfall and a toothpick have in common?
What would happen if all conflicts were resolved in less than 10 minutes?
Besides snapping your fingers what are some ways to get a waiters attention?
What are things you can do to avoid long lines at the check out counters?

Customizing Questions

We will customize questions to fit your organization. The questions could be general such as the examples to the right or specific to a business need, for example, "What are ways to improve our customer service?" or "What are things we can do to improve communication" or "What are things we can do to attract more customers." The possibilities for questions are endless.

Benefits of Brainstormers Activity

  • Develop a sense of teamwork
  • Exercise and practice team creativity and brainstorming
  • Celebrate success
  • Demonstrate that your company values creativity
  • Build morale 
  • Generate great ideas!

Event Details

Duration:   1 to 2 hours 
Purpose: To have fun generating ideas while building your team; May be used as creativity practice and/or solutions to real actual problems
What: Highly interactive and fun gameshow-like activity
Number of People: 8 to 28 people
Where: Off-site or On-site

Solution Speedway™: Solutions to Individual Problems


Find Solutions with your group quickly, in a matter of hours!  

What is Solution Speedway™?
Solution Speedway™ is a fun, and extremely fast-paced evening where you get solutions to challenges and problems. This is a dramatically new type of brainstorming process allowing all participants to contribute ideas to each person's challenge or problem. You'll have fun while getting great ideas for your projects or business challenge.

The Structure
Each person becomes the center of a two-step process
1) Focusing.. We will focus on the problems/challenges or projecst in order to understand what type of ideas are being sought for.
2) High Speed Speedway Idea Generating....in a creative frenzy we will generate lots of ideas in a structured and guided process to the challenges.

Examples ofSolution Speedway ™ Challenges
What are ways to market my product or service?
How may I create a top-notch presentation?
How do I give my customer more while spending less?
How can I exploit my talents?
How can we reduce cost?
What are ways to boost the morale in the office?
What are some unique ways to publicize are events?

Your group will receive lots of great ideas to their problem, project or challenge.

Event Details

Duration:   2 to 4 hours
Purpose: To generate scores of ideas to individual problems.
What: A fast-paced activity where everyone brings a "problem" and gets ideas from everyone else for solutions 
How: Use a huge variety of ideation and convergence tools, introverted and extroverted processes,
Number of people: 5 - 30
Where: Off-site or on-site

Play for Innovation


What is Play for Innovation?
Play is not just for children; it is necessary part of being a creative team.  This activity of fun and games will provoke and exercise creativity in your team, work and life, individually and together.

A Large Variety of Activities 
We will explore your creativity and have fun with it.  

We will be creating metaphors, busting creative blocks, exercising our creative muscles,  learn some fun techniques, solve fund challenges, explore our imagination, and spontaneity, play a variety of improv games, examine our curiosities, experiment with our perceptual awareness, play with words and images, formulate hypotheses, determine consequences, design inventions, enter the world of art and literature.

Activities are chosen based on the needs and desires of your team members. 

Event Details

Duration:   2 to 3 hours
Purpose: To exercise creative muscles as a team.
What: a large set of activities all provoking creative activity 
How: We will create images of delight, solve a problem or two, design inventions and explore the world of creativity.
Number of people: 5 - 50
Where: Off-site or on-site

Why Build the Team?


Produce Productive Results
 Our team building will support your team to produce uncommonly productive results
"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."  Andrew Carnegie

To Have a Successful Experience for the Team
 Our team building program will help your team work successfully together
"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." Henry Ford

Make Stronger Teams & Individuals
Team building makes each individual stronger
"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." Helen Keller

Aligning the Team
The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime." Babe Ruth

Reach New Heights
Team development helps you reach new heights "Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it." Brian Tracy