Assemble a Training Kit to Build a High Performance Teams Foundation

Every team is built on a foundation which determines their performance character. I will share 7 specific everyday tools you assemble to build a high performance teams foundation.

I will be using 7 everyday items to represent the bricks in your Teams Foundation. Here's a physical exercise that you can participate in so that you can thoroughly understand each brick.

Teaching Kit

The first thing to do is to find and gather each of the following items into an available shoebox and use that box to hold your Teaching Props.

When you're ready to facilitate the exercise set these items out in front of your group to set the stage for targeted discussion. These parts can be used individually for more targeted discussions, or as a complete set to allow for creativity.

Begin by setting out one piece at a time in the center of the group, than ask and answer the following questions.

Puzzle Piece:

Who fits with you the best?
What is your piece of our team puzzle?
When does your piece come into place the best?
Where do you see your piece in the next performance?
How do you see your best performance?
Why do you believe your answers are correct, what's your evidence?

Light Bulb:

Who gives you the green light to be creative?
What new ideas do you have?
When are you at your brightest?
Where is your shut off switch?
How are you going to make your light brighter?
Why would you care to show others the light?

Question Mark:

Who would you like to ask a question?
What questions do you have for the group?
When are you at your best to answer questions?
Where do you see questionable results?
How do you answer your criticisms?
Why would you care to answer them?

Brick:

Who gives you strength?
What is the foundation of this team?
When are we at our strongest?
Where are at our weakest?
How can we get stronger?
Why do we need to discuss this?

Digital Camera:

Who would you have taken a picture of today?
What would your picture be of?
When do you see our weaknesses?
Where are the snap shots of excellence?
How do you see us in the future?
Why should we try to picture our performance?

Newspaper:

Who's note worthy on the Team?
What do you want to tell others about this experience?
When was our most historical success?
Where are we going to be at our best next?
How would the headline read in tomorrow's newspaper?
Why would anyone care?

Bandage:

Who needs some first aid?
What do you see might get broke?
When are we covering up our weaknesses?
Where are we vulnerable?
How do you see it being prevented until than?

Summary

Use exercise as a teaching tool kit to find some deep rooted feelings about weaknesses, strengths, evidence to support those opinions and much more.

Trainees of all types from, Martial Arts Teams, Production Teams, and Executive Teams can all identify with the method and results. So use this Foundation Training Exercise To Build A High Performance Team.

Paul Godines from Adapt on a Dime.com is an expert Career Coach who specializes in helping troubled Career Builders. To read more tips and techniques like the ones in this article, please click here: http://www.adaptonadime.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Godines

Difference Between Mentoring and Coaching

When some business owners and corporations start looking into mentoring programs, there is some initial confusion about what mentoring is. One of the biggest confusions that they have is identifying what differentiates mentoring from coaching and why mentoring can be so much more effective.

In order to understand the differences between mentoring and coaching, the first step is to identify what a coach does. Coaching is going to be focused on the performance of an individual, it is going to help a staff member who is struggling to pick up a required job skill to overcome the mental block they have against it; in other words, coaching is about improving the way a staff member performs and is designed with a specific agenda in mind.

On the other hand, mentoring is all about personal growth. Rather than having a defined relationship between the people mentoring and the person being mentored, both parties are able to relax a bit, to develop a trusting relationship and to contribute to that relationship. While mentoring is, in part, about helping newer employees - even just those who are new to a specific department - to learn the job, mentoring is also about helping those being mentored to grow as individuals.

Coaching is specific; if you look at it with a sports analogy, the coaches are the ones who are on the sidelines telling the players how to get the job done - they are calling plays, making substitutions and are focused on the team reaching a goal. Mentors on the other hand are more like team captains. They aren't coaching from the sidelines, but they are in the game. Mentors aren't telling people what they need to do; they are working with them to get the job done.

In other words, mentors are not just focused on providing instruction; mentors are more willing to have a balanced relationship with those who they mentor. Mentors are not going to just be the one saying "you have to do it and it needs to be done this way;" mentors are going to be the ones who recognize that working with others will also help them to grow - both personally and professionally.

Mentoring creates a balanced, ongoing relationship and looks at the person being mentored as a whole person: it's about making sure that the mentee is invested, thinking about their future and getting the guidance that will help them to reach their goals. Coaching is far more short-term and more specific; it's about making sure that a task is accomplished and that a goal is met rather than setting and achieving ongoing goals.

Coaching can be effective in the workplace, however many companies that are able to put a mentoring program into place find that they increase productivity, profitability and growth - both for the company and for those who are involved in mentoring programs. Coaching can help to get new employees focused, mentoring can help them embrace their positions and to grow with the company - and that's what makes mentoring more effective over time.

Copyright 2008, Cecile Peterkin. All rights reserved.

Cecile Peterkin, a Certified Career Coach and Speaker, helps businesses leverage the mind-share of retiring Baby Boomers and senior managers, and transfer it to the next generation of leaders with her ProMentoring program. For more information visit http://www.ProMentoringInc.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cecile_Peterkin

Avoiding the Blame Game - 3 Tips

"If only you...then..." When those four words fall out of a team member's mouth the toxin known as 'blame' begins to enter the life of the team. Avoid it at all costs! It will poison team members creating resentful, isolated, and insecure people. Rarely, if ever, is one person the cause of a team's failure or success. We have a tendency to do both, either blame someone for failure or reward one person as the 'game changer' that ushered in the team's success. It's not that easy nor is it realistic. Success and failure happen as a result of millions of small actions and choices by everyone on a team. Simply put, it is unfair to point at one person. Organizational culture that celebrates failure as well as success will create teams that support one another and avoid the blame game.

3 tips

Get comfortable with mistakes as much as success - The pathway toward success is littered with various dead ends, mistakes, and bad ideas. When asked if he felt like he wasted time on thousands of bad experiments before he finally invented the light bulb, Thomas Edison replied, "No. At least we know 2000 things that won't work." As a kid when I messed up, my mom gave me perspective, "Hey. It's not the end world." There are big mistakes, but they never usher in the end of the world as we know it. We all make mistakes. Take a deep breath and move forward together.

Motivate positively - Criticism is a poor motivator. No matter how much people think it works, it never does. It simply pushes people away and eats away at relationships. It creates a negative atmosphere in which to work. Do you know what motivates individual members of your team toward success? Challenging work? Appreciation? Choices? Recognition? Approval? Assurance? Value? Quality Answers? Guaranteed, when you understand what motivates others on your team and communicate in their language the team wins and a positive synergy results.

Let the leader lead - A few years ago I helped coach a middle school football team. One day at practice, one of the players messed up a blocking assignment. Joey, one of his fellow teammates, began to tell him off until Mark, the head coach, stepped in. "Guys!" he said as he walked over to Joey, "Knock it off. I'm the coach, you're the players. When there is a mistake, I'll take care of it and help to correct it." Mark reestablished his role as leader and Joey's role as player. By doing so, the team could focus on working together toward success, knowing that the leader would deal with mistakes and reward success fairly. No one was ever made the scapegoat for a loss or the star player in the win.

Mike Weaver, is co-founder and facilitator with The Group Mind, http://thegroupmind.com We help organizations discover creative solutions to vexing problems, and improve team performance. Our workshops are engaging, insightful, and create lasting positive impacts with everyone involved. Visit our website at the above link for more information about teambuilding with The Group Mind. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Weaver

Give Me 2 Minutes & I Will Share a Secret to Help Your Business Run More Profitably & Efficiently

With the recent turn of events and economic uncertainty, it is more important than ever that your organization is maximizing the output of people, resources and technology. In business, your success as an owner is not measured solely by your own output but rather by the efficiency and productivity of the people whom you manage, lead and interact with (i.e. suppliers, team, customers, partners, stakeholders etc.). Learning to manage and lead others is a necessity - and arguably even more important than learning the technical skills required to work in and on your business.

But what makes a good leader? Is it something that should come naturally or do you need to actively develop the core skills that underpin leadership?

When answering this question, most of us would readily provide examples from the sporting arena. If pressed for explanation, our response might include statements like "performs well under pressure", "always gives 100%", "maximizes his strengths and abilities", "is a good team player" or "the team lifts and performs when he/she is on the field". In plain terms, these are all characteristics of "emotional intelligence" - the sine qua non of leadership. Daniel Goleman, author of The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace, describes a model of emotional intelligence which consists of four domains and twenty competencies.

The first of these two domains are personal. Self awareness is characterized by a deep understanding of one's own emotions, strengths and weaknesses. Individuals with self-awareness have the ability to accurately self assess and make modifications if necessary to their behaviour. The second factor, self management is more about the control and regulation of one's emotions: the ability to self-motivate and display initiative plus the capacity to stay calm and focused when things do not go as planned.

The remaining two domains are social in nature and relate to a person's ability to manage relationships and others. Social awareness concerns the ability to consider the input and feelings of others in making intelligent decisions. Whereas relationship management encompasses the ability to communicate, influence, collaborate and work with others.

For some time we have recognised the importance of these factors of emotional intelligence to those who lead both "on the field" and also in the office. However, it has only been in recent times where strong empirical evidence has been gathered to prove the enormous impact that high emotional impact can have on the bottom line of an organization. According to Goleman, when he compared the performance of candidates in senior leadership positions, he found that nearly 90% of the difference in their profiles was attributable to emotional intelligence factors.

From a study published in 1990 evaluating emotional intelligence and productivity, those in the top 1% of basic labour and admin jobs (machine operators, clerks) performed three times better than those in the bottom 1%. For jobs such as sales persons or mechanics, an individual in the top 1% was 12 times more productive than those in the bottom 1%. Again, technical competencies being relatively equal among all the candidates assessed. Finally, in the category including the most complex jobs (lawyers, physicians, account managers) those at the top were measured against those of average skill (not the bottom 1%). The added value of a performer in the top 1% was 127 times greater than the average performer.

Our traditional education system has primarily focused on the development of technical and cognitive skills. It is not entirely surprising that whilst a few owners and managers may be naturally inclined in the area of emotional intelligence, most of us could benefit greatly from development in this area. Developing emotional intelligence however, is not something that you can learn by reading a book. It requires hands on training, practice, perseverance, 360 degree feedback and reinforcement. Whilst some may find this challenging, confronting and threatening, developing emotional intelligence is an extremely rewarding pursuit and will produce tangible, measurable results that positively impact the bottom line profitability and efficiency of your organization.

For more information on the author and her latest book, On The Shoulder of Giants: 33 New Ways to Guide Yourself to Greatness, visit http://www.imagineeringunlimited.com or contact us at info@imagineeringunlimited.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rhondalynn_Korolak