Team Building Activities
Teamwork & Creativity

Free team building activities tool introduction:

Given the pace and speed of this new global economy, it’s now more important than ever to hire and retain creative thinkers. These are the people that will figure out the newest, best and brightest way of making the sale or producing additional widgets for the organization.

Creatively in the workplace also helps to keep the work environment fresh and inviting. When people are creating, and pursuing new ideas they are far more engaged than if they were simply filling an order – the same order, the same process, the same everything. Ugh!

Creativity within your team has many benefits, which include:

• Keeps people active as they work to identify new solutions.
• Improves team morale as each team member feels empowered to introduce change.
• Builds confidence as team members see themselves as innovators.
• Inspires team members to grow, learn and expand their skill-sets.
• Breaks down old, more traditional ways of team management.
• Rejuvenates the workplace with new team building activities, and the team is engaged by new ideas that are highly prized. Creative thinkers are quickly recognized and rewarded by management.

Team building activities are great tools for leaders to teach and coach their team.

Use our free team building activities tool to share assit your team and increase profitability.

Silly Me!
Purpose of this activity: To lead your team to think more creatively. This activity depends on the leader’s willingness to have fun and put his or her self out there, perhaps being a little silly, in order to take away the fear and anxiety team members might have over making a “silly” suggestion that could be worth millions.

Explanation: Create a short audio or video “INVITATION” that announced the agenda of your next strategic planning meeting.

As the leader, it’s your job to rally your team and get everyone on board with thinking of ways to produce more revenue and be more cost efficient.

Utilizing a combination of music clips, photographs, video and audio clips, illustrate your invitation to your employees. Let them see your humor and fact that you want this process to be fun and entertaining.

It’s best to write out your invitation first. Then, think of ways to illustrate the words in a fun and humorous way.

For instance:

• To all of my TOP GUNS (play the sound track of the movie Top Gun in the background, showing Tom Cruise high-fiving his co-pilot as they say “I feel the need for speed!”)
• you are cordially invited to attend a breath-taking event. (play a clip from Close Encounters of the Third Kind as human catch their first glimpse of aliens)
• As a member of this unstoppable team, (play an assortment of athletic clips in quick progression of basketballs being slam dunked, football players making touchdowns and wrestlers being body slammed, etc.)
• I’m counting on you to help lead this team to victory. (show clip of a scoreboard counting down, followed by scenes from a Rocky movie as the wins the heavyweight title of the world!)

Hopefully the above example inspired your own ideas of how you can take these team building activities to the next level. Perhaps you film some footage of yourself doing some crazy stunts and use those clips to make your key points.

With today’s technology being so widely available, the options are truly limited only by your own imagination.

The more engaged the leader is in the creative process, the better the team will ultimately perform. So, go out there, BE SILLY, and inspire your team to have fun.

Finding The Hook
Purpose of this activity: To assist employees in capturing their creative ideas and not losing the opportunity to make a real difference in the success of the team.

Explanation: It’s a well known fact that every successful songwriter carries a pen and paper where ever they go. The reason for this is that they must capture an idea or a phrase for a song immediately when they think about it or they might very well forget the idea within a matter of hours or even minutes.

Capturing ideas is a skill that every good leader should promote.

Quality ideas are the lifeblood of every successful organization. However, many times your employees might identify terrific ideas but never share them simply because they don’t remember the idea, or because they are never asked.

As the leader, you can promote creative thinking and increase awareness of this issue by making this a topic of your next staff meeting.

It’s a fact that whatever we focus on, we tend to gravitate towards. Perhaps you’ve heard the old saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

The same is true as you challenge your team members to focus on coming up with new, original and innovative ideas. The more they are aware of the need to think creatively, and the more you ask them to contribute creative ideas to the team, the more they will positively respond with some wonderful, and potentially profitable, new ideas.

Songwriters are always seeking “the hook”, or catchphrase that will stick in the music listeners mind. You want your people to be seeking “the hook” or the one simply tweak to the system that will help the company produce more or spend less.

Let your team members know that you may not have all the answers, but that you are confident in their collective intelligence and creativity to find multiple solutions to key issues.

Encourage team members to seek out “hooks” when speaking to business associations, with customers, and even competitors.

Meet again in one or two weeks to discuss their findings. This meeting will certainly be an eye opener for everyone!

Receive your free Team Building At Work tool, a collection of 40 fun and effective team building activities, exercises and ideas that promote increased team performance. Remember, you only need to download once. All of the various team building templates are included in a single pdf file for your convenience.

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» Customer Service
Serve your employees well and they will in turn take care of your customers. Use team building to satisfy your workers.

» Enthusiasm
High energy, enthusiastic employees are extremely valuable to effective teamwork. Promote enthusiasm in your team.

» Expectations
Raising the bar – expect more from your team or run the risk of sending a message that you sanction lower performance.

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