Blogs - The Challenge

How can team building be effective?

Managers and leaders are encouraged to create procedures and policies that encourage people to follow proven “trails” to create a measurable outcome, maybe a sale, or a product. Mangers spend time working to make people be at their most effective. How often do mangers, individuals, and teams push themselves out of their discipline? How often are individuals and teams given the opportunity to safely practice pushing that comfort zone, to walk a different “trail”? Once a manager, individual, an… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on June 25, 2009 at 5:16am — No Comments

Corporate Team Building as Part-of your meeting agenda

I was engaged in an interesting discussion with a meeting coordinator from a large manufacturing organization. We will call the meeting coordinator Sara. Sara calls and we start talking about the organization she works with. I bring her through the opening questions. We speak for almost 25 minutes the group wanted a Team Building Icebreaker for 30 minutes in the evening. I made some suggestions of what will work best. She tells me that one of the executive staff spoke to another participant fr… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on April 12, 2009 at 7:44am — No Comments

Corporate Team Building Retreat

Sample Agenda of a Corporate Team Development program that Create-Learning-Team Building facilitated for a large group of 250+ participants. This program was held at a Corporate Conference Center. This program can be customized for your teams' unique needs. Corporate TeamBuilding Overview: Facilitating an off-site team development program located at a conference center in Western New York (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on March 20, 2009 at 6:24am — No Comments

Team Decision Making: Team Development

This is a sample Team Building Program that was created for a Non-Profit Health Care organization. The focus is on decision making amongst the internal teams. This program can be customized to fit both for profit and not for profit clients. Program Overview: Facilitating communication and increased effectiveness of staff and the population served. Communication and unified decision making within the team is necessary… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on March 20, 2009 at 6:11am — No Comments

Talent Management falls to bottom of Leaders to-do list

With this mantra of economic doom and gloom organizational leaders are shifting their focus away from Team Development and talent enhancement, forcing them to scramble to cut costs. ...top leaders around the world ranked financial pressures to cut costs and rapid market decline as their toughest business challenges, dropping talent management to last on the list of business challenges. Developing and retaining high-performing talent is a key business strategy that should not be overlooked…Train… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on March 20, 2009 at 6:00am — No Comments

Orientation Program: Leadership & TeamBuilding Program

This orientation program can be customized for Incoming Students and Outgoing students alike. Additionally this orientation program is customizable for all educational institutions - Universities, Colleges, High School, Middle School, etc... Program Overview: This student orientation program is a full day (4 - 6 hour) student orientation program. The program includes a portable ropes course & TeamBuilding initiatives to incr… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on March 8, 2009 at 4:38pm — No Comments

Items that were on my desk when I was terminated

Personal Team Building Consultant story; Some of you who read my blog know that before I started Create-Learning-Team Building I worked as the Workforce Development-Team Building Director for a local conference center. Things did not end well between the them and me. If you want to hear that story contact me. I am rather transparent in the story (although realize it will be biased.) I was abruptly asked to not return to my former employe… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on March 4, 2009 at 6:09am — No Comments

Corporate Team Building & Leadership: Silence is your strength

Recently I was facilitating a team of 15 - a group that wished to enhance their team skills by creating a culture of empowerment. As I progressed through the training I saw that when I posed a question and asked the team to spend some time (generally 3-5 minutes) planning how they would solve the team building activity - all I heard was silence. Then after about 10 seconds their manager would jump in and tell the team what to do, assign roles and delegate tasks. During the break time I met wit… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on February 22, 2009 at 6:00am — No Comments

Death of Corporate Team Building, 4 reasons

Your corporate team building program was not a success? Here are four possible reasons why. 1) Lack of understanding why they are there. If the participants are not made aware of the reason for the team building program there can be some serious hostility. Some coordinators like to "keep the people in the dark" and surprise them with team building. Another common idea is, "we will not tell them what we are doing and when it starts they will be totally surprised". These two ideas are a r… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on February 18, 2009 at 5:18am — No Comments

Perception of Teams are What Teams are

I work mainly with corporate clients. Many of them have giving me the pleasure of consulting with them for many years now. Some at this point know and have a good idea of my "bag of tricks" as well as have dialed in to ask me the questions to receive the answers that they require. How does this apply to Challenge courses & Ropes Courses - everyone has a perception that is created within their minds I will call this perception individual construct (IC). Also the team creates a perceptio… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on February 12, 2009 at 4:30pm — No Comments

Camp Training and ACCT Practitioner Certification (Lv 1)

Camp Stella Maris is offering a training/conference/workshop open to anyone. Please read below:
View the brochure/registration form

Who: You! What: Camp Stella Maris Regional Camp Training Where: Camp Stella Maris, Livonia, NY (25 mi south of Rochester, NY) When: April 3-5, 2009 COST: $200 for up to 5 sta… Continue

Added by Adam Bell on February 9, 2009 at 1:30pm — 3 Comments

Top 25 TV Theme Songs of All Time

Top 25 TV Theme Songs of All Time Adam's Top 25 TV Theme Songs of All Time Enjoy: Honorable Mention: Duck tales, Spongebob, I dream of Jeannie, The Monkeys, Happy Days, Cops, Boy Meets World, Sesame Street, Baywatch, The Drew Carey Show (5 o'clock World and Cleveland Rocks), Power Rangers, Jeopardy 25.) Captain planet – He's our hero AND taking pollution down to 0. Al Gore would be proud 24.) Flinstones – A modern stone-age family with a fun opening 23.) Married w/ Children – It takes talent… Continue

Added by Adam Bell on February 2, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Top 25 standup comedians of all time

25 Jim Breuer – Anyone who loves AC/DC enough to have a band on stage deserves to be on this list. (Half Baked=yes Goat Boy=no) 24 Demitri Martin – He'd be higher on this list but he's too new. He's great so far. Keep bringing it. 23 Kevin Nealon – Subliminal man, Hans and Franz, etc. Underrated stand-up. 22 Rich Voss – Why hasn't he become an A-list comedian yet? 21 Pablo Francesco – Take Frank Caliendo's voices and add good jokes and you have Pablo. 20 J… Continue

Added by Adam Bell on February 2, 2009 at 11:00am — No Comments

Certifications? What's the deal with that? (Seinfeld voice)

As a year-round challenge course professional, it is easy to justify making the financial commitment to become certified. And by certified, I am referring to the piece of paper that a supervisor or book of standards likes to look at. The challenge I find, is how to "certify" the 20 seasonal staff that I work with. I think we can all agree that more training and certifications is positive, however the camping world has yet to find a great way to accomplish this, without spending a fortune… Continue

Added by Adam Bell on February 2, 2009 at 10:30am — No Comments

3 Reasons Your Leadership Sucks! and how to improve it.

3 Reasons why Your Leadership Sucks! and how to improve it.

… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on January 20, 2009 at 6:14am — No Comments

Team members should be friends?

Team Members should be friends? Aristotle suggested that friendship, like successful team membership, has three components: • They must enjoy one another’s company. • They must be useful to one another. • They must share a common commitment to the good. Team Members Must Enjoy One Another’s Company What does it mean to enjoy another team member’s company? What is it that just makes the other members of a work team not just tolerable but enjoyable? A mistake many new (or even e… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on January 20, 2009 at 6:12am — No Comments

Team members should be friends? part 3

Aristotle suggested that friends "have a common commitment to the good". If we substitute the word "team members" for "friends" we can develop personal enhancement skills and enhance our value to the company by focusing on improving our skills as an effective member of the team. Team Members have a Common Commitment to the Good Goals, metrics, benchmarks within a culture where the members focus on making their department and organization successful while remaining accountable for their… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on January 7, 2009 at 6:32am — No Comments

Team Building Through Forced Adversity - Your Challenge Awaits! By Lance Winslow

By Lance Winslow

One of the best ways to build your team strong and stronger than you could ever imagine is through forced adversity. What do I mean by forced adversity? Well, if you meet strong groups, teams or organizations with a tight bond, you will find they have shared at one… Continue

Added by Lance Winslow on January 6, 2009 at 1:46pm — 1 Comment

Team members should be friends? part 2

Aristotle suggested that friends must "be useful to one another" If we substitute the word "team members" for "friends" we can develop skills and enhance our value to the organization by focusing on improving our skills as an effective members of a community. Team Members must be Useful to One Another This is what a team is for. To develop a network and system of shared usefulness. A shared usefulness where there is a shared knowledge of roles and responsibilities for each member of the depa… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on January 6, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Should Team Members Be Friends? part 1

Aristotle suggested that friends must enjoy each other's company. If we substitute the word "team members" for "friends" we can develop team skills and enhance our value to the team by focusing on improving our skills as an effective team member. Team Members Must Enjoy Each Other's Company What does it mean to enjoy another's company? What makes co-workers just tolerable and not enjoyable? Some people within workplaces focus enjoyment on others. They spend time viewing friends, colleagues,… Continue

Added by michaelcardus on January 5, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

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