"Team building activities are stimulating problem-solving tasks designed to help group members develop their capacity to work effectively together. Many team building and initiative tasks are like kids games, others are novel, complex tasks and designed for specific needs. More elaborate initiative tasks can involve ropes courses, night-time activities, and exercises lasting over several days.
Team building activities are often used in meetings, presentations, workshops, training seminars, education programs, corporate training, with college, high, middle, elementary and pre-school school groups, sport teams, teacher training, youth work, and in therapeutic and correctional settings. Team building exercises can be adapted for virtually any setting, young or old, large or small, and across cultures.
Much depends on the role played by a facilitator. Different team building activities facilitated in different ways with different groups can and will lead to a wide variety of different experiences and different outcomes. In the hands of an excellent facilitator, even the most simple game can become a significant experience for participants; with a poor instructor, even with the most well-designed activity can go awry.
An important part of team building exercises is participants' reflection and discussion about the activity, how they approached the situation, and possible points of learning. For example, a group could be videoed during an activity and the video watched, analysed, and discussed, to help extract potential learning from team building exercises" (Free Management Library)
"The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit.... This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” -
Peter Drucker
"Individual commitment to a group effort...that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."
- Vince Lombardi
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Empowered employees are dramatically enabled,
and powerless employees are dramatically disabled.
When you put fences around people you get sheep.
Unknown
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Empowerment is achieved through the equation of
E = A x D x S
where A = Autonomy, D = Direction, and S = Support
Autonomy - handing the ball off and allowing people to run to daylight.
Direction - providing well-defined objectives and setting clear-cut goals
Support - providing resources, training, and validation by continuous recognition
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The 10 Commandments of Empowerment
1. Let go of things others can do.
2. Involve, delegate, and challenge.
3. Share knowledge, information, and skills.
4. Value, trust, and respect each individual.
5. Encourage initiative, ideas, and risk taking.
6. Ensure that people have goals and know how they are performing.
7. Provide support without taking over.
8. Coach to insure success.
9. Reinforce good work and good effort.
10. Model the way - Practice what you preach.
(Teambuilding,.inc)
