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Chicago is one of the largest and richest cities in the world. The job market is so diverse that the city has earned a reputation for a very balanced economy. In addition to being varied, those companies are also plentiful. In fact, Chicago is home to the second largest central business district in the United States.

With businesses playing such an important role in the city’s economy, it shouldn’t be surprising that many employers are willing to invest in Chicago team building activities for their employees. After all, teams make a company much stronger than it could be when individuals work independently because teams are capable of greater productivity and creativity. This is true for several reasons.

First of all, it is easier to complete large tasks when several people are working on the same project because it can be divided into smaller pieces. This prevents putting too much strain on any one person. Second, teams also have the capacity to capitalize on individual strengths and compensate for weaknesses within the group. And third, teams provide an atmosphere where relationships and trust can form. And all of these things increase employee satisfaction and productivity.

Even though teams can yield these kinds of results, the ground rules for team work need to be established before the work begins. Sometimes those ground rules and channels of communication are difficult to create in an office setting though. That’s why team builders in companies, athletic facilities and schools are starting to incorporate games in their team building efforts.

Professionals have learned that games naturally stimulate competition, conversation and a friendly environment. And, in this kind of setting, friendship and trust begin to form as well. Coincidentally, these are all key ingredients for team work as well. Games don’t need to be complicated or expensive to be effective team building tools, but they should involve everyone in the group and cater to people with different interests and abilities.

Team building activities that are available in or around Chicago include everything from sailing excursions on Lake Michigan to scavenger hunts around local neighborhoods, museums and attractions. Sailing will definitely get the group out of the office environment and teach your employees about the value of team work, but it might take longer than you would like. Scavenger hunts, on the other hand, can usually be completed in an hour or less and they draw on the strengths of the team as a whole. Since many of them take you through the city, the experience will be fresh in their minds every time they come to work.

If you are looking for some exceptional Chicago team building scavenger hunts, visit Watson Adventure’s website (http://www.watsonadventures.com/chicago.html). They showcase all of Chicago’s most popular attractions with creative and challenging clues. The author, Art Gib, is a freelance writer.

New York is the largest city in the United States, and as such it naturally has assumed the status of corporate capital of America, if not the world. Additionally, New York is one of the most often visited cities in the country due to its huge variety of sites and attractions. Even though there are countless landmarks and famous sites in New York, most tourists are still intent on using guidebooks to help themselves along. The problem is that most of these guide books only explain how to get from attraction to attraction and don’t go into much detail about what to do once you get there.

A corporate scavenger hunt can be a great way to immerse oneself in a more interactive experience of the city - both for tourists, and for residents and corporations. New York Team Building activities, such as scavenger hunts, allow groups of people to form small teams and explore places across the city, such as Times Square, local Museums, Grand Central Station, area Zoos, and Central Park, by following clues and trivia that help you get from one place to the next. All the while, someone is prearranged to guide you through each attraction so you can learn more about each attraction than any guide book could possibly provide.

As a corporate solution for team building in New York, these scavenger hunts can help a company to get to know each other, build relationships, forge a competitive spirit, and simply have some fun together. Just as any other New York team building exercises, corporate scavenger hunts offer unparalleled opportunities for departmental camaraderie and teamwork and can provide a unique way for companies to take a break from the everyday monotony of the corporate world. But, perhaps best of all, scavenger hunts are just plain fun!

These team building scavenger hunts utilize every member of the team, so they help build teams on from the individual level as well as the team level. They truly are a great way to build relationships, learn trust, create confidence, increase communication skills, and strengthen a company one team at a time. If you want people to work hard together, sometimes they have to play hard together, too.

So, whether you are trying to build a better team, strengthen a company, or just enjoy a vacation in New York, a scavenger hunt is a fun and exciting way to invest your time and money.

Art Gib is a freelance writer, and Watson Adventures (http://www.watsonadventures.com/new_york.htm) is a scavenger hunt organizer for team building in New York and other cities. They specialize in corporate scavenger hunts.

Teams are valuable because of their ability divide and conquer large tasks in an efficient and creative way. Everyone wants their teams to be strong and unified, but they need to be diverse too. In the best teams, team members are able to understand each other and work together without losing their sense of individual worth. After all, unity doesn’t mean that differences need to be homogenized out of existence. Rather, it means the team has learned how to capitalize on group dynamics and individual strengths that contribute to the team’s effectiveness as a whole.

Creating this kind of team unity can definitely be a challenge. To attain this kind of unity, team members must learn about each other through good communication in addition to having common goals. Knowing each other well is important because it helps team members form realistic expectations and avoid unnecessary frustration. For example, it is harder to be patient with weaknesses when they pop up as surprises and nigh impossible to capitalize on another individual’s strength if team members don’t even know that it exists.

One of the best ways to get people to work together without sacrificing individual strengths is through team building games like rope courses, trust falls, relay races and scavenger hunts because team building games do more than force people to work together. They bolster enthusiasm, build relationships and establish channels of communication that can also be used in an office environment once they have been formed. Teachers, coaches and managers have all been so impressed with the results of team building games that many of them are willing to invest time and money into getting employees, students and athletes out of the office, school or field and into the games.

Games are such an effective tool because they usually take place in a less stressful environment than work which makes it easier for people to open up and be themselves. Games are also useful because they create shared experiences that everyone enjoys which will help them bond together and become a better team. By adding a little fun into the mix, the activities you choose can also function as a release valve that rejuvenates and recharges your employees.

If your team building games do prove successful and your teams become more effective in the office, make sure you reward them for meeting their goals and becoming more efficient. Reward can come in the form of simple thanks, praise and treats but the form of appreciation isn’t nearly as important as making sure it is expressed. Work may not be as fun as team building games, but meeting their goals and being recognized for their work can go a long way in keeping people motivated.

If you want to invest in tried and tested team building games that have been acclaimed by the New York Times, check out the scavenger hunts at Watson Adventures (http://www.watsonadventures.com/team_building.html). The author, Art Gib, is a freelance writer.

Life starts as we are born into teams, called families. At this point, the task of learning to “get along” begins. Then the task continues as we keep working in teams during school and careers. Why is “getting along” such a universal hardship. Perhaps it is because we are all so different and the way we think and express ourselves varies from person to person. Although some people do simply click when they come together, in most cases different personalities clash a little when they are brought together and told to work in a team.

This is somewhat ironic since teams are formed not only for their efficiency, but for their diversity as well. After all, with a potpourri of different personalities come a wider variety of strengths that can help compensate for individual weaknesses. Unfortunately, as sibling rivalry illustrates when we are very young, just being part of a team is no guarantee that everything will go smoothly. Ask any parent, teacher, coach or employer and they will all affirm that team building can be a difficult task.

So, what can help the important process of team building go smoother? Let me suggest an anecdote similar to Mary Poppin’s creed that a “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Whether you are dealing with families, athletes, students or employees, teach them to have fun together and the ability to work together will follow.

When people have fun together, communication and energy naturally start to flow. This in turn develops trust, relationships and understanding that can then be used in a home, school, sports or office environment. Friends, not enemies, make well-oiled teams.

One of the best team building activities for groups of all sizes is a scavenger hunt because scavenger hunts do a good job of involving every team member. Scavenger hunts utilize sharp eyes and minds rather than physical prowess and everyone can contribute to solving the clues along the way to find the answers.

Scavenger hunt team building in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., New York and other large cities is especially fun because of the many attractions and historical sites to build on. On these hunts you can learn about local haunts, find clues in museums that hold your interest and keep you moving through the art or learn the most random and entertaining facts about founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin. Some hunts have been adapted specifically for special occasions like Mother’s Day and Father’s day while other are versatile and fun for many kinds of groups any time of the year.

To learn more about scavenger hunts and fun activities for team building in Philadelphia, visit Watson Adventures (http://www.watsonadventures.com/philadelphia.html) and look through a wide variety of options. Your students, family or employees will love it. Art Gib is a freelance writer.

Finding ways to motivate employees to do their best and beyond is rewarding for both the employee and the business. A successful manager turns reasonable requests asked of their employees into incentives for a job well done.

Motivated employees are your greatest line in defense in attaining quality job performance and meeting future goals.

Motivation is a key ingredient to any success. A skillful manager provides a winning strategy by setting up targets for the employees to achieve company aims. Most people respond well to positive feedback.

Today’s workforce understands budgets and do not always expect to see rewards in their weekly paycheck. A personal comment of- ‘Good job, Mary’ or ‘Thank You, Bob’- can at times gain more profitable results than a fat bonus (don’t tell my boss- I said so).

A strong leader knows how to inspire employees because one person can not manage the workload alone. Every person wants to feel their hard work is appreciated.

Competition is a tool you may find useful in motivating your staff. Your driven helpers competing with their fellow co-workers can only mean more productivity for you.

Bosses are surprised to learn that money is not always enough as a motivator. Recognition and fairness are among the awards that employees treasure and can not be deposited into a bank account.

Creative contests are a good idea for seeking to pump up the game in your crew. Keeping up the group’s morale is beneficial for the future good health of your employees and the company.

Allowing your trusted employees freedom to enjoy themselves while working is a great self- motivator which takes some much needed pressure off management.

Use the competitive edge in people to insure assignments will be carried out in a professional manner. You do not want the integrity of your business to suffer just because someone covets a desk clock prize.

A self-starter in the workplace can rally the others who may have fallen behind in their work. Let your valuable employees see that you appreciate their extra effort.

Give them an unexpected twenty minutes on their lunch break. Tell the employee who always volunteers to work late that they have earned a half-day holiday. Do not consider above the call of duty dedication as part of the job description.

Loyalty is a great motivational speaker that will not go unheard.

Surprisingly, factors such as pay, benefits and working conditions were given a low rating by both groups. So after all, and contrary to common belief, money is not the prime motivator. Though this should not be regarded as a signal to reward employees poorly or unfairly.

You should not have to coax your employees to manage dead lines. Pride in themselves is more than a sufficient accomplishment for plenty of folks.

A personalized plague to hang on the wall or a signed card letting them know they are valued is a small token that makes a huge difference. Give yourself a pat on the back and get to work!

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There are many different companies, organizations, schools and other groups that could benefit from fun team building activities in Washington, D.C.

Team Building Benefits
Team building can help the people in your company, college or family work together and have fun during the process. As they work together in a fun environment, people learn how to communicate with each other and capitalize on individual strengths in a team setting. These skills can then be transferred to school, home and business environments where they will make less entertaining activities run smoother. In addition to being fun, team building activities can also serve as a needed release valve. If you sense that people you need are getting a little burned out, you may want to invest in a team a building activity just to renew their energy.

Just by being fun, team building activities can also make your employees, students and family members happier and it is a proven fact that happy people work better than grumpy and disgruntled individuals. Perhaps this is because they tend to have more energy and higher commitment levels which make them more effective. They are also easy to work with which is an important characteristic to possess if they interact with other employees and your valuable customers.

Why Washington, D.C.?
Theoretically, you could organize or participate in team building activities all over the country, and a lot of people do just that. But Washington, D.C. is a particularly fun place to host events because it is home to many beautiful and historical attractions like the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of American History, the Air and Space Museum, the Lincoln memorial, the White House, Georgetown and the Zoo.

Team building activities are also easy to find in Washington, D.C. because the busy environment in the nation’s capital has created the need for effective teams and an occasional release valve. Banking institutions, government organizations, businesses and colleges are scattered all over the district which means there are a lot of stressed and busy people working in the area. Johns Hopkins alone could probably generate enough stressed-out medical students to merit some fun team building activities.

A lot of people are wising up to the importance of incorporating a little fun in our competitive and highly stressful society. Whether you work with youth, young adults or grown professionals, you will find that they work better together and become more committed to you, if you can throw a little fun into their day.

If you are looking for ways to foster team building in Washington, D.C., Watson Adventures (http://www.watsonadventures.com/washington_dc.html) has been acclaimed by the Washington Post for their creative and fun scavenger hunts. The author, Art Gib, is a freelance writer.

It is really quite simple, for a team to win or accomplish a task they have to be motivated to. However, team motivation is affected by many factors. According to experts, the clarity of purpose, the present challenges, the existing leadership, the camaraderie and the growth opportunities present in the team can affect its overall performance.

Clarity Of Purpose

One of the most important factors that can keep a team motivated is clarity of purpose. As long as the members of the team share a common goal or purpose, they will have the motivation to work together.

According to studies, team motivation is at its highest when all the members of the team fully understand their purpose and strongly believe in what they are doing. To achieve clarity of purpose and to give each team member a sense of ownership over the team’s goals, everyone should be involved in the decision making process.

Moreover, involving everyone in setting the directions of the team is very important. This makes sure that everyone knows where the team is heading and what specific roles are they going to play for the team to achieve its common goal.

Present Challenges Can Increase Team Motivation

Team motivation may be determined by the present challenges faced by the team. In most cases, teams work well and have the highest level of motivation during crisis and extreme challenge. According to studies, human beings have the natural capacity to fight and defend.

This capacity to fight and defend is greatly enhanced if done through team efforts. To keep up high team motivation level, you need some challenges to test the ingenuity, courage and stamina of you team members.

The human needs of the team members are very important. Everyone needs to feel that they belong and that they are an important factor in the team achieving its goals.

According to studies, highly functional teams do not just work together; they also play and have fun together. To improve the interpersonal relationships between team members you should practice:
* Openness
* Respect
* Honesty

A team is like a family. If you lie to or cheat members of the family, you are bound to get into trouble.

Good Leadership Is The Key To Motivation

Above anything else, leadership is very important to maintain high team motivation level. A team needs to have somebody who can keep things together and do the dirty works every now and then.

A good team leader is like the head of the family. He or she should take full responsibility of everyone in the team. When choosing a team leader, you should take into consideration the capacity of the person to inspire loyalty, trust, and respect from the other members of the team. A good leader should have a lot of experience in the task at hand so the team members have faith in their abilities.

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Team building has been around as a corporate training technique for decades, but recently it’s fallen into disuse. Why? Because many of the techniques of team building seem more like play than work, perhaps.

Or because managers decided that the team building they’d already done was enough to make the group cohesive and maximize their productivity.

However, team building is a continuing process. As the military has found in decades of trial and error, when you have units of people playing and competing together, they grow closer, start thinking as a group instead of as individuals, and find it easier to work as complementary parts rather than as units.

Communication improves. And almost like magic, a bunch of people are transformed into a functioning team.

How Team Building Works

Great team building exercises use a variety of techniques to build group cohesion. Communication is an essential part of team building, as are group focus on a single goal that requires strategy to accomplish.

Often, but not always, it helps to have separate teams competing against one another.

One especially effective method is the scavenger hunt. The manager conducting the team building exercise takes into account the individual strengths and weaknesses of each team member and includes challenges that will exploit both of these for each member.

Team members have to work together at times to accomplish certain goals, like using landmarks that different members are familiar with as markers for the hunt. And the reward at the end must be applied equally to all.

Paintball is used by the military to bring units together. This exercise requires not just physical fitness and good aim, but the more important and hard to train skills of strategic thinking, communication, and learning to bond.

While the sport is a little rough and tumble for many offices, it can be a great teambuilder for the right group.

Other great team building exercises can include things like round-robin quiz games, word puzzles, and ordinary sports. That office softball team? It can be fun and also a great team builder.

Including Team Building Into A Meeting

Team building exercises are generally fairly involved and take a considerable amount of time. For this reason, they are inappropriate for most meetings outside of office half-day or full-day retreats.

For these longer meetings, get away from the office so creativity can flow and natural barriers are broken down. Start the meeting with something relaxing and positive, then move into the team building games.

Only after the team builders should you get into serious work. Why? Because fresh from the team builder, your people will work better together and find fresh creative ideas. You’ll notice an immediate result, and you’ll begin cementing those new bonds right away.

When To Use Team Building

Every office with numerous workers who frequently do not interact directly should look into using team builder exercises. However, there are a number of situations that almost require the use of team building.

For instance, in an office where there has been considerable friction or small groups competing in negative rather than positive ways, team building can break down barriers and create rapport where only strife existed before.

This is really excellent if you can do a contest pitting upper management with the people in cubicles, between whom a natural and healthy rivalry already exists in most cases.

Also, in offices with high turnover a regular team building exercise can build bonds that will help slow that turnover rate as well as improve interworking relationships for new and established employees.

In this case, team building exercises when your turnover hits a critical mass of 10-15% new employees can help bring the new people into your current corporate climate.

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Changing habits is hard work. It has been said that it requires 21 times of doing something in order to make it a habit. Here are some ways to figure out how to turn unhelpful habits into positives.

1. Never Feeling Good Enough - Are you constantly evaluating everything you do and generally finding fault. Do you have an internal voice which critiques you on everything, seeing only the negatives, not the positives? This voice is often described as a “gremlin.” When you are feeling not good enough it can show up by your being indecisive, relying on others to direct you, using language of uncertainty and even having poor posture. Generally there is a feeling of self doubt.

Clearly a change is necessary. First, you need to become aware of your limiting beliefs and in what situations they occur. What actions do you take which might be perpetuating these beliefs?

Sam was recently promoted to a managerial position and was both excited and scared about his new responsibilities. He knew that a lot of his colleagues were envious of his promotion, which added to the pressure he already put on himself. He evaluated and re-evaluated everything he said and did, to the extent that he was immobilizing himself. His “gremlin” was in high gear.

Sam worked with his coach to identify what he needed to change and what action steps were necessary. The result was his “gremlins” went into retirement and he had strategies in place if they returned.

2. Avoiding Conflict - You are by nature a peacekeeper. You like everyone to be happy and agreeable. The problem is that in life there is always some level of disagreement and conflict and how we deal with it can become the problem.

In the workplace, managers need to be able to manage conflict. Your team members will not always agree or like each other. They might not agree with you or like what you are telling them. What if their job performance is interfering with the goals of the company or the team’s morale? How will you deal with it? Avoiding conflict could be an obstacle to your taking on more of a leadership role.

Joyce disliked conflict, but recognized that if she wanted to be seen as a leader she would have to step up. She worked with her coach to develop a 3 step action plan.

1. Acknowledge the conflict.
2. Invite the other person to have a say and listen to their perspective.
3. Jointly develop a game plan for change.

Acknowledging out loud what a challenge conflict was for her, allowed her to “own” it and make changes.

3. Poor Boundaries - We have all known someone who has trouble saying “no,” and therefore might get into situations where they are doing more, but are stressed and unhappy about it. Sometimes people take advantage of them because of this weakness. Being able to set limits about what you can and can’t do is an extremely important skill. Assess your team. Is there someone who has trouble saying “no?” If so, what can you do to help them?

There are other issues which also fall under the category of poor boundaries: being aware of when, where and with whom you speak; the issue of confidentiality. What is the forum and policy for discussing client information? At some companies conversations may inadvertently occur in corridors or at restaurants where talk might be overheard by others. At times there can be a fine line between sharing information and gossiping. Your job as manager is to help create the guidelines and structure, so everyone is clear.

Changing habits is hard work. I’ve just discussed a few ways to help you figure out how to turn unhelpful habits into positives. You can do it, all it takes is 21 times of doing something in order to make it a habit!

Copyright 2007, Gail Solish.

Gail Solish provides executive and personal coaching to managers, directors and executives focused on workplace development and relationship management. Claim your FR-EE e-course “Unleash Your Potential and Increase Productivity and Fulfillment” at http://www.ActualizeYourGoals.com

Although not really well known to the laymen, the term “Hawthorne effect” has resounded in the social science world since the late 20s in America. The Hawthorne effect is basically known as a study of how high worker morale equals better work output.

The morale is based a great deal on the social interactions between workers — more so than the actual type and quality of work that is being done. This will be a small touch on what some of the study found as well as some team building techniques that are used today that are popular.

The name “Hawthorne” does not come from the name of the scientist that conducted the study, but is actually the name of the company that the experiment was conducted on. In 1927 the Hawthorne Plant of the Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois was a stage set by scientists to watch a group of workers interact on the job over a span of about three years. The team of scientists was led by Elton Mayo, known as the father of the Human Relations Movement.

There were two parts to the study. First they conducted some physical and environmental pressures and changes to see the effects. Some of those tests were little odd touches to the room surroundings, such as shifting the room humidity and ventilation, piping in music and adjusting the brightness of the lights within the space of work to see how these variations affected productivity. But the most profound experiments were done on how each worker formed their group dynamic and how their group belonging resulted in what amount of work was done.

This test was done on workers who were building telephone relays at the plant. The measurement of production output was charted with all the environmental factors changing. But it was found that the small group’s ability to get along with each other and their immediate boss created a direct relationship to the output.

The Hawthorne studies deducted a lot of results that are heavily debated today, but it spurred the beginnings of team building and the importance of small group morale and how the automaton worker philosophy of yesteryear can only be taken so far. This postulated that acceptance in a group was probably the single most important factor in the group dynamic; and since we spend a majority of our lives at work, it was important to create a relationship not unlike a family.

Practicing to Get Along: Team Building Games

So what a lot of company executives have a tough time boiling down to is the concept of getting their employees to work with the most efficiency, balancing morale, or willingness to work out of joy and group acceptance from their work peers. One technique that has caught on recently is the team building exercise of corporate scavenger hunting. This is an example of breaking the body of workers down to groups.

The corporate scavenger hunt is one of many team building games that specifically engages each team member and extrapolates every skill type from nearly all group members. Scavenger hunts today are set up by organizations with serious intent for their team building clients. High grossing corporate clients like Amazon.com and Microsoft have launched hunts for various departments in the past.

Watson Adventures (http://www.watsonadventures.com/team_building.html) offers a unique series of corporate team building games by hosting scavenger hunts in many metropolitan areas across the U.S. The article was written by Art Gib, who is a freelance writer.