Evening Team Building Events

Game Show Trivia

The Team Trivia quiz with a difference….It is a well-known that everybody enjoys a trivia quiz and this is particularly true of our interactive game show: phenomenally successful for any type of group, it can incorporate any required themes, shaping them around your requirements. Our game shows are a combination of all the best interactive participation games you’ve ever played - and one or two that you haven’t!  

This is a trivia night with a difference in which teams will be required to solve puzzles and riddles, use a bit of lateral thinking and draw on all their reserves of general knowledge in order to come out on top...

http://www.teambuildingaustralia.com.au/the-trivia-challenge-i165/

New Team Building Program launched

Bollywood dance spectacular comes to a conference room near you.
Yes, Teambuilding Australia has launched a great new team activity for all delegates to take part in. From 20 minutes to 2 hours, with options for a night performance, teams can explore the bonding of Bollywood festivities like never before.

Ask us for more info or simply visit www.teambuilding.com.au

http://www.teambuildingaustralia.com.au/bollywood-dance-workshop-i253/

Planning a teambuilding event

If you have decided to have a team building for your group in order to improve their co-operation and effectiveness, then your next step is to start planning. To ensure that your event is successful it is imperative that you plan carefully, and enlist the help of a professional if you feel that this type of event planning is outside of your skill level.

Here are some areas to focus on when planning team building events:

Location

While it is obviously easiest to host your team building event in your office, there are certain advantages of having the activity take place elsewhere. For one, you will find that your employees are more engaged in the activity, as they can't be distracted by e-mails, phone calls, or clients. Being away from work also helps employees relax and may make it easier for them to step outside their normal comfort zone in order to discover new roles.

Message / Lesson

Just having a team building event isn't of much use if you don't have a specific goal to focus on. Leadership, co-operation, synergy, productivity, and team work are all great team building ideas that you can incorporate into your activity. Additionally, if you have any corporate-level messages that you want to reinforce it can also be brought into the event. If you are considering incorporating multiple messages it may be wise to hire professional help to ensure you don't send conflicting messages.

Activity

How you deliver your message is almost as important as the message itself. Luckily there are tons of fun and creative ideas for team building events. Scavenger hunts, amazing race events, sports days, climbing, painting, trivia, building or problem challenges, there is no shortage of great events to choose from - just ensure that it conveys the message you are trying to reinforce.

Timing

If your activity is going to be part of a larger conference, then you will have to consider when the event is going to take place. Usually the start or end of a conference is the best time for team building events, but if you have a multi-day conference you may want to have the activity during the middle or end of a particularly lecture-heavy day, in order to re-energize the group. Some events are also perfect for before or during dinner events, and can add more of a party atmosphere.

It can't be stressed enough how important it is to properly plan team building events - otherwise you may find all your work is for naught. If you need help, get it, as you will get much more value out of the final product - engaged and co-operative employees.

Team building Australia is Australia's leading corporate team activities provider. For more information please visit us at http://www.teambuildingaustralia.com.au.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4294226www.teambuildingaustralia.com.au

Free Ice Breaker activity for conference

Six Degrees of Separation

It happens all of the time: we meet someone who knows someone we know. It’s a small world, that’s for sure. The object of this game is to see how small the world really is.

1. First, find a partner. Introduce yourselves and make a list of five to ten things that you have in common with each other: where you went to school, year you were born, number of years with the company, food likes, sports likes, etc.
2. Once you have completed your first list, you must find someone else in the room that also has one of those five to ten things in common with you. When you have found that person, repeat step one and develop a new list.
3. Repeat step two.
4. Continue until you have met five other people or time is called by the facilitator.
5. A prize will be given to the first person able to complete the game. When you are done, let the facilitator know that you have finished.

Materials Needed

Prize

Time

Allow approximately 15 - 20 minutes for game. Once most people have finished, call time. Ask your winner to reveal his/her chain of separation by introducing those interviewed.www.teambuildingaustralia.com.au

F.A.C.T.S. Team Model

The following F.A.C.T.S. model of effective team member behaviors (follow-through, accuracy, timeliness, creativity, and spirit) may serve as a guide for helping teams identify behaviors that support synergy within the work team.

Follow-through 
One of the most common phrases heard in groups that work well together is "You can count on it." Members trust that when a colleague agrees to return a telephone call, read a report, talk to a customer, attend a meeting, or change a behavior, the job will be done. There will be follow-through. Team members are keenly aware that as part of a team, everything that they do --or don't do---impacts someone else. 



Accuracy 
Another common phrase heard in effective work groups is "We do it right the first time." Accuracy, clearly a reflection of personal pride, also demonstrates a commitment to uphold the standards of the team, thus generating team pride. 



Creativity
Innovation flourishes on a team when individuals feel supported by colleagues. Although taking the lead in a new order of things is risky business, such risk is greatly reduced in a cooperative environment where members forgive mistakes, respect individual differences, and shift their thinking from a point of view to a viewing point. 



Timeliness
When work team members are truly cooperating they respect the time of others by turning team priorities into personal priorities, arriving for meetings on time, sharing information promptly, clustering questions for people, communicating succinctly, and asking "Is this a good time?" before initiating interactions.



Spirit
Being on a work team is a bit like being part of a family. You can't have your way all of the time, and - to add value - you must develop a generous spirit. Leaders can help work teams by addressing these "rules" of team spirit: value the individual; develop team trust; communicate openly; manage differences; share successes; welcome new members.

www.teambuildingaustralia.com.au

12 steps to make a good team a great team!

12 steps to make a good team great!

1. Roles
An effective team will have a blend of different talents, abilities and personalities. It is important to remember that leadership is only one of many vital team roles. A balanced team generally will have thinking, supporting, doing and challenger style roles in addition to the leadership role.

2. Clear objectives and agreed goals
An effective team knows the goal it is working toward. Having clear objectives and agreed goals is more than knowing what results you want. The goals of the individual must be reconciled with those of the team for effective teamwork to occur. Begin with the end in mind to scope not only where you want to go, but also what are the milestones necessary to get there.

3. Openness and confrontation
In an effective team, people feel that they can state their own views, differences of opinions, interests and problems without fear of ridicule. There is no "stab in the back" mentality.

4. Support and trust
This is the skeleton on which an effective team is built. Support is not sympathy, but strengthening through assistance. With trust, people can talk freely about their fears and problems - knowing that they will receive from team members the help they need to become more effective.

5. Cooperation and conflict
People put the team's success before their own. Individuals trust and respect the abilities of others and are not suspicious of their motives. Conflict is also present and valued in an effective team. The team will work through an issue that causes conflict and use the result to achieve objectives. Conflict helps to avoid complacency and laziness and can often be the source of new ideas.

6. Sound procedures
The effective team thinks results first and methods second, but also realises that sound and proven working methods and decision-making help to achieve results. Good procedures help ideas to be captured and worked through without being lost and also ensure optimum usage of human and material resources for a challenge. Plan well, brief well, execute well and then de-brief.

7. Appropriate leadership
The best teams have leaders whose leadership style varies according to the situation and the needs of the individual group members and the group itself. In fact, the role of leader in an open and supportive team, can change from person to person as dictated by the situation. This situational form of leadership requires both the tolerance of members and the control of egos.

8. Regular review
Good teams understand not only the team's character, but they also look at the way that a team works, how it arrives at decisions, deals with conflicts, etc. They then use this information to develop new methods or plans and then implement these ideas. Reviews are best when teams are willing to go beyond personality and simple causes to actual root causes with a view to improving operating methods.

9. Individual development
Members of high performing teams feel good. They have opportunities to attempt new and challenging situations within the team framework and know they have the support of those around them. They are motivated to be successful.

10. Sound inter-group relations
The successful team can often appear threatening to less successful groups. This can cause isolation and hostility. The effective team works at its relations with other teams and ensures that help for others will be given when needed.

11. Good communications
Team members are aware of developments within their own team and how this fits into the larger picture of the organisation. When people understand why things are being done, they avoid duplication of effort. Rumour is replaced by fact.

12. Celebrate and acknowledge success
In the same spirit that errors are identified openly and reviewed for improvement to occur, success needs to be identified and celebrated to ensure that "what we do well" is equally addressed in tandem with areas for improvement.www.teambuildingaustralia.com.au

Team Working

Basic Team Working

What is a team anyway?

-A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable

-Small Number

-Complementary Skills

-Common Purpose & Performance Goals

-Common Approach

-Mutual Accountability

Ten common teaming problems

-Floundering

-Overbearing participants

-Dominating participants

-Reluctant participants

-Unquestioned acceptance of opinions as facts

-Rush to accomplishment

-Attribution

-Discounts and "plops"

-Wanderlust: digression and tangents

-Feuding members

Five issues to be considered in team building

1. Interdependence

This is the issue of how each member's outcomes are determined, at least in part, by the actions of the other members. The structure of the team task should be such that it requires cooperative interdependence. Functioning independently of other team members, or competing with them should lead to sub optimal outcomes for the entire team. Tasks that require the successful performance of sub tasks by all team members are called divisible, conjunctive tasks.

2. Goal Specification

It is very important for team members to have common goals for team achievement, as well as to communicate clearly about individual goals they may have. The process of clarifying goals may well engage all of the issues on this list. Indeed, shared goals is one of the definitional properties of the concept "team." A simple, but useful, team building task is to assign a newly formed team the task of producing a mission and goals statement.

3. Cohesiveness. 
This term refers to the attractiveness of team membership. Teams are cohesive to the extent that membership in them is positively valued; members are drawn toward the team. In task oriented teams the concept can be differentiated into two sub concepts, social cohesiveness and task cohesiveness. Social cohesiveness refers to the bonds of interpersonal attraction that link team members. Although a high level of social cohesiveness may make team life more pleasant, it is not highly related to team performance. Nevertheless, the patterns of interpersonal attraction within a team are a very prominent concern. Team building exercises that have a component of fun or play are useful in allowing attraction bonds to develop. Task cohesiveness refers to the way in which skills and abilities of the team members mesh to allow effective performance.

4. Roles and Norms
All teams develop a set of roles and norms over time. In task oriented teams, it is essential that the role structure enables the team to cope effectively with the requirements of the task. When the task is divisible and conjunctive, as are most of the important team tasks in our society, the assignment of roles to members who can perform them effectively is essential. Active consideration of the role structure can be an important part of a team building exercise. Task roles may be rotated so that all team members experience, and learn from, all roles. Even then, it is important that the norm governing the assignment of roles is understood and accepted by team members.

Norms are the rules governing the behavior of team members, and include the rewards for behaving in accord with normative requirements, as well as the sanctions for norm violations. Norms will develop in a team, whether or not they are actively discussed. 

5. Communication
Effective interpersonal communication is vital to the smooth functioning of any task team. There are many ways of facilitating the learning of effective communication skills. Active listening exercises, practice in giving and receiving feedback, practice in checking for comprehension of verbal messages, are all aimed at developing skills. It is also important for a team to develop an effective communication network; who communicates to whom; is there anybody "out of the loop?" Norms will develop governing communication. Do those norms encourage everyone to participate, or do they allow one or two dominant members to claim all the "air time?"

(From Scholtes, Peter R., The Team Handbook, Joiner Associates (1988))