In the Fearless Presentations® class, participants are able to overcome the fear of public speaking by immediately practicing the exercises that the instructor explains. By no means is this a passive, lecture-based class. Participants spend more time out of their seats than in their seats!  When they leave the class, they feel more confident not only about speaking in front of a group, but also about the future of their careers.

Phoenix, Arizona is just one of the cities the Fearless Presentations® class comes to in the U.S. throughout the year. Participants are guaranteed to reduce their nervousness and improve their public speaking skills.

1. Give Sincere Compliments: When times are tough, we can easily be distracted (sometimes just trying to stay above water). That is the time that your team members need reassurance, and a sincere compliment can go a long way in helping your team feel more comfortable.  Remember that the team member doesn’t have to be perfect — just improving.
2. Share Information: People fear the unknown a lot more than reality in most cases. If your team knows what’s wrong, they can often help you fix it. Often, leaders will try to protect the team by keeping negative information to himself/herself, which just makes the team wonder what you are hiding. Fear causes people to react aggressively, so share information, and your team will help you.
3. Set a Goal: A shared goal can help the team work together toward a common result. A number of small successes can improve morale dramatically.
4. Brain-Storm: Challenges are often opportunities in disguise. When challenges develop, get your team together and brain-storm solutions.  One big idea can open up additional revenue streams.

Get your team working toward a common goal by praising them and working on tough challenges together. Your team culture will grow, and you will be way ahead of the game when things turn around.

We began the day with Creating a Team Culture, and specifically with taking a look at personality styles. This prompted a very lively discussion as the women grappled with how they have experienced different personality styles in the workplace. They found it very insightful and helpful to learn about typical strengths and weaknesses of each style, and had a passionate discussion.

This led nicely into exercises centered around the four sets of Leadership Principles. We covered the areas of building trust and rapport, managing conflict, gaining cooperation, and building your team. By the end of the Creating a Team Culture portion of our team building day, they were conversing and interacting much more freely than at the start of the day!

The second half of the day was Structures – a wonderful team building workshop that engages the participants in solving a series of puzzles and challenges in order to accumulate the parts needed to build two dollhouses. They must be creative and work very closely together in order to be successful. With the success of the morning workshop, this was easier for them than it otherwise might have been!

The dollhouses were donated to the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas where they will go to be available for children to play with when they are in residence. It added a dimension to the event that reminded everyone that there is a larger picture to keep in mind.

“Ellen did an amazing job with our team! Everyone found the morning session to be eye-opening and extremely helpful as we strive to understand each other better. The afternoon session really cemented it all together for us by giving us the chance to play together. This is a different team now!” — Josie Razo, Galderma Laboratories

Engaging in a full day of team building activities can be a great way to bring your team together. With Creating a Team Culture as a morning classroom-based workshop to address principles, and Structures as a more active team building exercise in the afternoon, it creates the perfect combination!

Build-A-Bike is a fast-paced, high-energy workshop gives participants the opportunity to interact, compete and ultimately work together to solve a series of challenges. Due to our competitive human nature, there is typically some skepticism at the notion that the teams need to collaborate to solve the challenges more efficiently. But this group was accustomed to working together across lines, and they rose to the challenge!

By the end of the event, they had built 30 bikes! Local kids from the Boys and Girls Club of greater Las Vegas came at the end of the event to receive the bikes. There was not a dry eye to be found! In the midst of all of the opulence and extravagence of Las Vegas, Symantec helped children who don’t have their own bikes to have hope.

“This was an amazing event! Ellen and her team pulled everything together flawlessly. And the children coming in at the end – well, I could barely see through my tears! We’ll definitely do this again!” — Ariana Glinski, Symantec

Everyone likes to give back to the community, especially to kids in need. Including Build-A-Bike in your next conference gives your employees the opportunity to do just that while adding energy, enthusiasm and fun!

The Wells Fargo employees were separated into 32 groups and each group had activities to participate in. Completion of the activities was only possible by each member making significant contributions to the different projects. For each activity there was a common purpose, whether it was tasks to accomplish or problems to solve, the goal was clear so that each group knew what had to be achieved. The common purpose also highlighted individual contributions. Good team work isn’t when individuality is lost, but rather when each individual is able to contribute their best for the good to the team. The common purpose is the goal of the team work.

That common purpose must collide with the individual efforts and contributions of the team members. Through the activities each person was able to contribute according to their own talents, skills and abilities. Whether a person is artistic, organizational, mechanical, analytical, motivational, etc., whatever is possessed by the individual they were able to contribute to achieving the common purpose. Through the Build-A-Bike Team Building Event every individual was given opportunity to contribute to the overall goal of the program. That was team work at its best.

Thanks so much to Wells Fargo for a great team building experience and for giving back to the community in a very significant way.

This Golf Team Building event is a fun way to teach some basic team building principles while having fun and giving back to the community. The teams were formed randomly but each team had to use the experience and talents of the members to complete the tasks. Some people are good at the design of the golf holes, others have the ability to put the parts together in a specific order to construct the holes: others have the ability to hit the golf ball and make the critical shot; still others are able to organize the individuals to get the best from each one. The best teams are those that recognize how each individual can contribute to the team and then cheers them on to make significant contributions. One “sentence” that was reiterated was, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

Thanks CUNA for a great event and for making a significant contribution to the Mission Central Food Bank. May the Ace Race experience benefit you as your gracious gift to the food pantry will benefit so many in need.

What can 400 people stuffing animals learn about team building? Each team had to work together as well as learn to work with other teams to finish the project. Each team member was needed to collaborate with each other and then stretch beyond their own team to collaborate with other teams so they could experience completing the animals. The collaborative efforts resulted in effectiveness in execution of the tasks. Effective collaboration leads to efficient execution which means that the goal(s) can be achieved. Collaborate, execute, achieve; these were the bywords for this teambuilding event. Thanks to Pfizer for providing the Rescue Bear Team Building Event that was instructional for the participants and made for a very appreciative children and families connected with one of the top children’s hospital in the greater New York area and across the US.