Win As Much As You Can!

Building Teams & Trust

"Now I get it!" said one senior manager of a quasi-governmental financial institution after participating in Win As Much As You Can. "I know exactly what’s missing from my team and just why they aren’t acting like a team!!!"

Each individual must make a choice during this highly engaging, always boisterous, and often surprising exercise...and that choice has lasting, real-life personal, team, and trust implications. People leave with an impression of each other that they never had before.

In this game/ exercise patterned after the 'Prisoner's Dilemma,' participants explore the force and magnitude of trust to building effective teams. Fun with a punch!

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

You and a partner decide to embark on a new career -- bank robbery!

 

In your first attempt, however, you are captured. You both are taken to jail and isolated. You know that you will spend at least two years in prison for your offense, but if you cooperate and "squeal" on your partner, you will spend no time in jail and your accomplice will spend five years in prison. The same offer is made to your partner. If you squeal on each other, however, both of your prison terms are extended.

		Accomplice
	You	Stays quiet	Squeals
	Stay quiet	-2,-2	-5,0
	Squeal	0,-5	-4,-4

So, do you remain silent, or squeal?

 

Lost at Sea!

A Classic Teamwork Exercise

 

Subgroups are put in an awkward situation -- they are in a rubber raft in the middle of nowhere, mid-Pacific and given 15 items to help ensure their survival. How will they rank the items? Will they survive? Will it become a sequel to the "Titanic?"

This exercise gives an experience of effective teamwork, but more -- it results in measurable, quantitative proof that team can work!

(But, there is a "dark side" to teaming. And, that, too, will be explored.)

The Strength Deployment Inventory

The Power of Teamwork: Aligning Individual Strengths

 

Strength ... The Strength Deployment Inventory helps team members identify their personal strengths in relating to others under two conditions: when everything is going well, and when they are faced with conflict.

Deployment...means to move strategically as a team or take positions in support of the team for effective action. The SDI suggests that a team member’s personal strengths may be used to improve relationships within the team. The SDI measures strengths in three motivational areas:

• The need to influence others (Assertive-Directing)

• The need to shape order from chaos (Analytic-Autonomizing)

• The need to nurture and help others (Altruistic-Nurturing).

Inventory...the SDI is not a test where there is a "right" or "wrong" answer. It is an easy-to-complete 20-item inventory that provides, as one team member expressed it, "a flash of insight into myself and others on the team. I know more than I had ever hoped about what I need to do to get the team working really effectively."

The Strength Deployment Inventory is presented in an engaging, insightful, and often humorous, way. Through explanation, work-life experiences, and key, memorable points, the strengths of each motivational pattern is fully explored, as well as the dynamics and power of teaming.

The “Ladder of Inference” 

So, who is at fault?!?!?

Who’s responsible for the injuries to a child playing with a friend at a neighbor’s house? Well, a minor injury occurred -- but the real injury happened on the way to the hospital. Seatbelts would’ve helped, but it might also never had occurred if the 80-year-old man with a suspended license...well, there’s a lot more to this than "meets the eye."

Participants are told an intricate and engaging story -- one that challenges their values as they rank characters in the story. The story also invites participants to compare their intrinsic values as they are asked to come up with a consensus ranking. The discussion gets wild as they narrow in their rankings.

As they examine the factors that influenced their rankings, they learn that most of the information they used has been inferred. In the debrief, participants explore Chris Argyris'/Peter Senge's Ladder of Inference

 

 

Business Writing:

Making your words work…

Research conducted by Harvard University shows business people with good communication skills receive promotions about 35% more often than those who communicate poorly. In business, information must be delivered in a clear concise manner. As employees become more responsible, there is a greater need for written communication that conveys both ideas and actions, and is easily understood. A basic and intermediate course will be developed and delivered to provide attendees with the skills and techniques they need to write more effectively. Practice enables participants to improve their skills using examples from their everyday work.

 

QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE IS FOR EVERYONE

Customer Service, we all talk about it and espouse the benefits, but delivering customer service that delights, requires more than just words. Providing good service requires an understanding of who the customer is both internal and external and what barriers and biases exist. To be truly effective means more than just saying the words; but looking at how to handle all types of situations.

Many organizations tout customer service as a valued behavior, the most successful, model appropriate actions and reward excellence.

A consistent approach is used at all levels and delivered to all customers, internal and external

Quality customer service is interactive, practicing the skills learned and developing proficiency. The program can be delivered in 1/2 day modules with practice time in between. It focuses on the basics then adds components to address specific organizational needs.

 PUTTING GOALS IN MOTION

Setting goals is one thing. Bringing them to life is quite another. This half-day workshop focuses on the key elements that make or break a team’s ability to accomplish its goals:

• focused and aligned efforts
• realistic planning
• effective communication
• tracking progress

This program provides a quick, interactive primer for executives to:

• Set meaningful, measurable goals

• Break goals down into manageable steps

• Ensure actions are assigned and accountable

• Develop milestones to show progress

• Create a workable action plan

• Track progress and identify problem spots

• Use language and appropriate communication

• Provide valuable feedback

This is a working session where participants learn techniques for improved goal setting and implementation. Even better, executives walk away with practical tools and progress on goals they are currently working on in their jobs.

• Making Sure Your Message Gets Through •

Matching Communication Styles

Myers Briggs Type Indicator 

Developing effective leadership skill in the area of communicating is key. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is a "personality instrument" that provides an exciting, informative, insightful approach to enhancing communication because the subject is YOU, your leadership strengths, and setting the context for leadership.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an easily-completed questionnaire for identifying our natural preferences, strengths and temperaments. Through 94 short questions, the MBTI identifies differing styles of perception, judgment, direction, and approach.

Outline:

• Overview of effective communication

• What is the Myers Briggs?

• Assumptions about "type"

• Instrument administration

• Debrief:

- Situations that are energizing (extroversion/introversion)

- Preferences for detail and visioning (sensing/intuiting)

- How decisions are made (thinking/feeling), and

- Comfort level with change and strategies for

interpreting change (judging/perceiving).

• Optimize strengths (and accepting the strengths and styles of others)

• Communicative profiles of the teams of employees

 

Steps to Better Presentations

It has been said that for many, giving a presentation is as high on the fear scale as dying. It doesn’t have to be. Using 25 basic steps derived from experience and research, public speaking becomes easier and far more effective. Steps 1-10 are listed below

1. Relate to the audience… Bring your passion
2. Identify barriers you create to limit your credibility… Does your audience feel separate?
3. Name your fears.
4. Present as you would talk .."one on one" Talk to your group, not at.
5. Set up presentations in terms of this is the purpose… help them achieve it … then show them they did it!!!
6. Look and Listen.. Step outside yourself do you hold attention? Look at yourself in the mirror as if you are outside yourself
7. Rehearse as if you are delivering
8. Reinforce learning with interactive questions keep it simple make it relevant
9. Do you know why your audience is there and what they need
10. Get specific feedback from attendees and observers

 

Train the Trainer

 Working with individuals or groups to impart knowledge or skills requires the development of a specific program that is delivered and measured. Having the knowledge or knowing the skill does not ensure successful transfer of learning to the end user. To be proficient in this area requires an understanding of how adults learn, the best intervention, and a method for evaluating continuous success

Purpose:

To provide the knowledge and skills through interactive programs to enable each of the participants to be successful trainers/facilitators.

Each participant will:

• Identify the components needed to enhance adult learning
• Create needs assessments
• Write behavioral objectives
• Create job and task analysis
• Develop evaluation methods
• Create a lesson plan/ program module
• Deliver a presentation

 360º Assessments

"What a wonderful gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us." Robert Burns

Despite how honest we think we are we can not view our actions from the perspective of others. They see us based on their experience and bias and may not interpret our intent, as we desire. Equally important is the perception of our customers, do they perceive what we intend? By using the 360º assessment, information is gathered on areas of success and areas that need strengthening. The next step is learning how to apply the information. This is the coaching aspect in which individuals and teams develop action plans and learn resources.

 

Telephone skills

Telephones, land lines, cell phones; they are a mainstay of our hectic schedules and business success. Everyday that simple instrument enables us to sell, problem solve, communicate, provide customer service and develop relationships. Despite the internet, the primary contact for customers is the telephone. 80% of first contacts via the telephone will be with receptionists and help desks.

The attitude conveyed by the first telephone contact a customer has will set the tone.

HIV/AIDS in the Workplace and ADA

Over the last 20 years the media has filled us with information about HIV and AIDS but how much do we really know?? With the medical advances people are living longer with HIV and many are staying in the workplace. This raises questions about prejudices as well as the law. How do the underlying concerns or fears impact the workplace? What is ADA? Who does it protect? Who will it impact? Using various approaches, information is provided about HIV and ADA and participants leave with solid facts and actions.