Distinctions for Teams: assist vs. help
As a teacher of team skills (or leader of a team), which do you find yourself doing more often, assisting the team or helping the team? There is a very important distinction between the two. To help someone means to step in, as in an auto accident. When you see someone on the pavement, you’re […]
Audio Interview: Dr. Jim Cain — In Defense of Adventure Based Education
“Teambuilding is nice but we’ve got work to do around here.” Have you ever heard that statement or a variation of it? Dr. Jim Cain has. He’s an award winning team skills trainer and author of many books including Teamwork & Teamplay. Dr. Cain travels widely training educators of all types. Many of these educators […]
Why Smart Companies (Teams) Do Dumb Things
How is it that a team (company) filled with so many smart people can do dumb things? Guy Kawasaki suggests there are 9 reasons: Consensus, Conviction, CEO’s, Experts, Good News, Lofty Ends, Budgets, Greed, and Arrogance. Better yet, Guy offers 10 strategies to help your team prevent or minimize the dumb things. CLICK HERE to […]
Teamwork Theory: Debriefing or Processing the Activity Using The “Results Diagram”
“Why did we do that?” It was the first question the group of 15 teenagers asked me after investing 90 minutes into completing the Spider’s Web initiative. My response? I bumbled around for a minute or so mentioning buzz words like “teamwork” and “leadership” and I tried to explain how they would use this stuff […]
Team Theory: A Venn Diagram Showing How To Create an Effective Teambuilding Game
John Venn (1834 – 1923) was a British philosopher and mathematician who created Venn diagrams in an effort to simplify the explanation of relationships between concepts. While leading a workshop at an International Coach Federation conference I asked the workshop participants to help me create a Venn that would show the three main elements of […]
Speed of Trust — Workshop by Stephen M.R. Covey
For the past couple of days I’ve been attending a “Speed of Trust” workshop at Snowbird ski resort in Utah. The workshop is based on Stephen M.R. Covey’s soon to be released book entitled “The Speed of Trust“. Pictured to the left is Covey with Tom Heck, President and Founder of the International Association of Teamwork Facilitators. […]