Team Building Blog

Team building – every great company swears by it. For decades businesses have sought to provide new and innovative programs to their staff to improve communication, camaraderie and productivity just to name a few. However, many leaders find themselves repeating the same standard teambuilding activities… until now. The newest and most creative Team Building Program pays homage to the CSI movies and television programs that are hugely popular today.

CSI is the perfect framework for building teamwork. What would happen if the forensics team didn’t work well with those who collected DNA and trace evidence? Imagine one CSI agent gathering fingerprints from the crime scene and keeping that data for himself rather than sharing it with a CSI agent from a different department. It truly takes a team to solve a crime, just as it takes a team work through challenges in the workplace.

Picture your team trying to solve a high-profile homicide or running the streets of your home town collecting enough evidence to apprehend a group of notorious felons. These exciting programs not only bring your favorite crime solving dramas to life but will encourage collaboration, teamwork and critical thinking skills from your team members. Forget about the boring boardroom lectures – put your teams to work literally in these stimulating activities.

The numerous benefits from using this style of program include; any size group can be accommodated, the activity can take place indoors or outdoors (or both!) not to mention it’s completely “outside the box”. Outdoor courses can be custom designed for your location and never again will you hear complaints or grumbles of the same old training sessions.

If you’d like to experience the teamwork that real CSI agents practice every day, TeambuildingInc.com expert facilitators can deliver an engaging CSI team building experience that culminates with an in-depth discussion of how CSI teamwork applies to the workplace. The connection between crime solving easily links back to the real world of business and specifically your company.

Your team has three options to experience CSI and a team building adventure:

1. CSI NegativeZero: The Case of Victor Steele (half-day): This indoor CSI program couples your team’s analytical abilities with some of the newest forensic technology. Your team is tasked with identifying the killer of a rising actor from a group of three likely suspects. Will you catch the murdering marauder in time… or will they strike again?

2. CSI: On-location (half-day): This outdoor CSI program allows your city to be the scene of a major crime spree…and you’re the newest member of the CSI team. Your job is to walk the streets of your town, trace the footsteps of the criminals, and collect the evidence that will put them behind bars. Using teamwork and quick-thinking, this high-stakes crime drama will put your sleuthing skills to the test!

3. CSI: Agent for a Day (full-day): Solve a classic murder mystery and then hit the streets of your hometown! This full-day CSI program combines CSI NegativeZero: The Case of Victor Steele and CSI: On-location to offer a dynamic CSI team building experience. Your team will experience both styles of a crime scene investigation in this day long program that doubles the impact of working as a team.

National Treasure and its sequel were big hits. The Amazing Race took Reality TV watchers on weekly adventures around the world. The DaVinci Code thrilled audiences with Tom Hanks’ clue-solving prowess.

All of this adds up to the desire of teams to experience clue-solving for themselves on their own team building treasure hunt. Teambuilding, Inc. taken up this challenge and created GeoQuest: The High-Tech Treasure Hunt. Teams of five or six receive a hand-held GPS unit that has been preprogrammed with specific sites (waypoints) that contain clues to solving the puzzles.

Groups can race through more than 45 cities around the United States, such as Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Miami, San Diego, Denver, San Francisco and more. On their way, they must use their GPS unit to navigate to the waypoint. Once there, they must use their wits and keen powers of observation to solve mind-boggling clues.

Team building treasure hunts offer groups with the opportunity to work together to make decisions and get results, but most of all, they have a fun, bonding, shared experience that lasts well beyond their treasure hunt.

If you’d like to learn more about the Teambuilding, Inc. team building program, GeoQuest: The High-Tech Treasure Hunt, contact Teambuilding, Inc. at 888.672.1120.

They’re productive. They meet their goals. They’ve been around for a long time. And, although they don’t model your organizational values, you keep them around. They’re the cultural misfits and most organizations have them.

In order for a company to have a cultural misfit, the organization must have clearly defined values that describe behaviors that will create the desired work environment. If you work for a large corporation, you most likely have a clearly defined mission, vision, and values. Examples of values are Customer Focus, Excellence, Integrity, Quality, Respect, and Teamwork.

You can see these words listed as values and proudly displayed in your lobby. You can find them in your employee handbook. The public can view them on your website and maybe even in your annual report. Your organization proudly announces what you value, or at least what your senior managers say you value.

And yet, organizations do a poor job of holding people accountable for “living the values.” While some organizations include the values in the performance appraisal process, the lack of adherence to the values is rarely grounds for dismissal, especially if the individual is meeting his/her objectives.

A 2002 American Management Association study found that 86% of company surveys have formally stated values. Fifty-nine percent of people reported that failure to adhere to corporate values has a consequence.

The impact of not enforcing the values is tremendous. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that people generally do not leave companies for money. They leave because of the work environment, their coworkers, and their manager. By allowing misfit behaviors, organizations are ultimately creating an unfriendly work environment for those who buy into and demonstrate the corporate values.

Basic truths about managing cultural misfits:
Managers must take responsibility for not only modeling the values, but also for enforcing desired behaviors and rewarding those who exhibit them.

Managers must accept that:
• Telling people that their behaviors are inappropriate is uncomfortable, but necessary.
• Behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated. Therefore, managers must praise and reward those who exemplify the corporate values.
• Behavior that is tolerated, persists. Negative behavior that is exhibited without consequence will become a pattern and must be addressed.
• You cannot expect improvements in performance with any greater degree than the frequency in which feedback is given. Coaching is key to redirecting misfit behaviors.
• Holding people accountable for their behaviors and performance builds morale.
• What get measured, gets done. Values must be identified in the performance management system and there must be clear consequences for not exhibiting the values. Beyond stating the consequences, they must be imposed when necessary.

Individuals are not misfits…just their behaviors
Cultural misfits may be effective in their roles. They may be meeting or even exceeding their goals. But if they do not fit into your culture, they are hurting your company more than they are helping. You don’t want to lose them because they clearly add value. But you owe them the courtesy of investing in helping them to change behaviors that allow them to be a better fit. Perhaps they need team building, coaching from their manager or an external coach. Maybe they just need training on specific skills related to areas such as communication, conflict management, or their overall leadership style.

Given the opportunity, people can change their behaviors so that they are aligned with the stated values. But as Jim Collins said in Good to Great, “You have to get the wrong people off the bus, the right people on the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”

Sometimes cultural misfits need to find a new bus in which their behaviors are a better match.

Team building programs are becoming more and more creative…and are requiring and building heightened levels of creativity. Consider the Teambuilding, Inc. activity, You Take the Cake!, in which participants are tasked with turning ordinary sheet cakes and loads of cake supplies in to a metaphoric representation of your team and how your team will work together to drive success.

At one of our team building program for a major pharmaceutical firm in which a marketing team turned their cake supplies into a three-dimensional motorcycle. Their creation symbolized the free-spirit and boundary-less creativity that they so valued. With a fleet of motorcycles driving down the highway in formation, they described the teamwork and coordination that they would help them to achieve their goals.

When teams leave there traditional work environment and not only discuss where they are headed, but also engage their emotions in a physical activity, the mind, body and spirit are primed to unify into a vision that becomes reality.

If you’d like to learn more about the Teambuilding, Inc. team building program, You Take the Cake!, contact Teambuilding, Inc. at 888.672.1120.

Team building programs of the 90’s took place in fields and forests. Remember ropes courses, both low and high, that allowed people to engage in a series of team activities and face self-imposed limitations while dangling from cables?

The next decade ushered in classroom-based team building that included behavioral profiles, such as the DISC model and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

As we look forward to the next generation of team building programs, people will be coming out of the woods and sterile hotel conference rooms. So where will they be going? They’ll be headed to facilities with a sensory-rich environment that enhances the team building experience.

For example, imagine going to your local zoo and participating in ZooQuest, Teambuilding, Inc.'s handheld GPS-based treasure hunt. Or, picture yourself on the deck of the Midway in San Diego or the Battleship New Jersey across the river from Philadelphia participating in the Teambuilding, Inc. activity, Battleship Adventure.

By linking the activity to the facility, the experience is heightened and people remember more of what they have learned. Research clearly demonstrates that people learn better and remember more when their emotions are activity. So picture visualize your team at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ engaging in the Teambuilding, Inc.'s Deep Water Adventure activity in a room with a view to the shark tank.

Team building programs are evolving, so teams can too.