Training Trends

Attract The Best

May 7, 2019

Business Think Tank, Training Trends

We have all heard about “personal branding” and how to make yourself have incredible value in the eyes of those offering employment. But the other side of the coin is that companies are vying for a limited resource called Human Capital. This in effect means that your company better be on the “best place to work top ten list” so that those talented humans out there go out of their way to be in the queue for meaningful employment at your offices.

It is extremely painful to attract the wrong people to your organisation and even worse, to let them in! Firstly they won’t fit and will cause internal strife for all and sundry and secondly, it will cost you further to get rid of them.

There is a big difference in what you sell and market to the world of consumers and what actually happens in your work place, and often a job candidate can become very confused in this process.

A prospective employee should not choose to work at your organisation because you sell great baked beans or have funky adverts running on the television. They should be attracted by your culture and your reputation. These are created by yourself and transmitted into the market by suppliers, current and past employees.

Thus, if your brand is not seen as a positive attractor, your recruiting efforts will be both challenging and very costly, and the best talent will search for companies with better reputations, because they can.

It’s not necessarily about facts but more so about perception. A good example is the perception of Google being a sexy, fast paced, entrepreneurial environment where you work exclusively with A-players and get to change the way people access information around the world. We’ve seen the intern movie and we are led to believe this is what you get when you arrive.

If you get a job at your “Google” and the workplace is as expected i.e. the brand delivered on their brand promise , it’s happy days for all.

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

Regardless of whether you can afford the best, if you want to attract the best then you may find this helpful:

1. Match the external brand with your internal brand. If there is a disconnect between your external image and your internal reality, it will cost you dearly in losing good people. Potential employees and “newbies” are smart enough to see through the glitz and glamour of commercials and marketing campaigns if they are not mirrored internally. The real future challenge will be to ensure your internal brand and the external brand are integrated and speak to each other.

2. The internal brand must be developed. A huge part of developing an sustainable organisation is to create a corporate culture whereby, values practiced, work ethics and corporate behaviour are all real and actually practised by all, especially management. This is one of the primary responsibilities of the leadership within organisations today, not the numbers, not the short term deliverables, but the long term sustainability of the organisation’s attractiveness.

3. Understand Millennials. Those attracted to your business are hopefully smart, can be empowered, and can be of all ages and diversities. This creates a new challenge for management. Where the management is Generation X or even Baby Boomers, they will find it somewhat “interesting” when young and demanding millennials come knocking on the door. There is not enough ink or paper to write the book on successfully managing millennials, but I suggest you go get one, or await my next blog.

The challenge of attracting the right talent is “Game on”, just getting a podium place won’t be good enough if your competitor’s attract the Gold.

John Ingram

Director of Training at the HiSide Group

TRENDING NOW:

March 6, 2019

Teambuilding Trends, Training Trends

The need to be a “High Performer” has always been a catch phrase in both sport and business. Everyone wants to be a market leader or best at everything! But how can everyone be in the top 15%? The answer is quite easy…they can’t.

Hiside Training has developed a new process to help your team focus itself on being in that top 15%. Just as an athlete would approach it, it’s about setting tough goals that stretch your ambitions, making sure your training schedule is just as tough and committed, and ensuring that the team skills are refined so that we are able to showcase our talent at the highest level of expectation.

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

This process becomes more critical when combined with the need to become “customer centric” as this is the ultimate reason why we need to be at our best. John Ingram facilitates this process by using interactive activities that show the delegates the impact of cause and effect as well as the impact that change has on improved outcomes. The activities are essential as it is through these activities that adults take their learning. Long gone are the 400 page books on Leadership or Change Management. Great reads but they don’t really change anything other than frustrate you because you are not like the “super heroes” in the book.

The process begins with a Team Climate Survey, which allows the team to see itself through its own eyes. This is then followed by the intervention, which takes the team through a journey to find what the top 15% do to be classed as Top Performers.

The link to our Customer is critical, as any change has to be directly linked to our customers’ expectations and not merely our own perceptions as to what will make us money.

The BIG challenge is in the commitments made as this is where most plans fail. It is critical that Management and the Team have a clear process of follow through and the link into the KPI and proper performance management is that critical link.

Simple as that? Give us a call and set the juggernaut into action.

John Ingram

Director

HiSide Group

john@digitalcloud.co.za

0837274536

How to manage work “load” shedding

January 9, 2019

Teambuilding Tips, Training Trends

It’s 2019, and Eskom persists in keeping us in the dark and draining our treasury of its limited reserves. But there is a bigger threat than being left in the dark, and it’s work overload caused entirely by yourself.

Yes, little old innocent workaholic YOU! One of the biggest threats we face in achieving success is our ability to overload ourselves with tasks and underload ourselves with clear focus. I see the impact of this in most of the work I do with teams today, from the bottom of the pack admin clerk to the high fliers at the top of the food chain. They just cannot say no to work, more work and even more work.

The reason is varied but often has to do with FEAR, yes FEAR. It’s the FOMO of modern business, the need to keep your finger on the pulse, to be seen as irreplaceable, to know what’s “cooking” and more. The egocentric beings at work just keep on taking on more and more until the boasting becomes excuses;

I am up to my eyeballs!
This place can’t do without me!
I worked till 22h00 last night!
Be great if everyone else chipped in some time!
Sorry, I just had too many reports to finish!!
Again, just me and the boss working till late!

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

The symptoms of overload come rapidly, and the quality of one’s work drops off very quickly. Once superb work suddenly becomes average and often incomplete or ridden with mistakes. Deadlines are missed, and the excuses become more and more fictitious. The rot has set in, and it’s very difficult to get out of this downward spiral. Self-pity abounds, and you become a pain in the butt to work with.

So how does this happen and how do we avoid it? A good boss will see it long before it happens and re-allocate work to ensure proper efficiencies and maintenance. But I said “good” boss? Most bosses just love to see team members exhaust themselves with overtime and over commitment, so why stop it; it’s going to make them look good, not so?

Wrong! The overworked team eventually will implode and will need surgery in the near future.

Plan number 2: it’s all about YOU!

It’s only you who can decide what’s best for your capacity and only you who can shape your work ethic. The following will help you stay meaningful at work and ensure your standards don’t slip:

Never start or accept work without clearly understanding WHY it’s beneficial to the organisation and why YOU need to do it?
Is there someone in the organisation who is better equipped to do this work?
Once it’s clear that it needs to be done, and by you, make sure you understand who will benefit from it and WHY?
Take time to ask that person how they would want that work presented and whether there are any time constraints.
Clarify time deviations and communication requirements.
Set clear standards for all your work, schedule your work on a critical path basis.
Creating a critical path simply means scheduling all your deliverable dates, prioritising the importance thereof and ensuring you work backwards to guarantee enough time is allocated to each task. If there is any risk of missing deadlines or clashes of priorities, then report this and or delegate to others who are competent enough to help.
Refresh your thinking every evening.

This is a high-performance discipline that will ensure you promote your personal image and brand in the business and remain a meaningful player in any team.

Several of our teambuilding packages may seem like just a fun day out of the office, but in actual fact are riddled with activities that promote critical path analysis (Manic Motion), force teams to delegate effectively (Ubuntu Challenge) and ultimately urge participants to understand time constraining factors (Movie Maker).

Team Dynamics: High Performance or Not?

October 10, 2018

Business Think Tank, Teambuilding Tips, Training Trends

Ever wonder why the simplest situations end up in a chaotic, argumentative, unnecessarily confrontational situation? Never happens to your team…then don’t bother reading any further, you are already the Bomb!

Team dynamics are the unconscious, psychological factors that influence the direction of the behaviour and performance of a team.

A team gets better on its journey to becoming High Performance by working through various stages as described later by the Tuckman’s Model.

Let’s look at the stages that one should master as you become High Performance.

Step 1: Forming

The transformation from a group to a Team starts with everyone understanding how everyone else “clicks,” what we like and dislike, what we believe is good and bad, what we think is right or wrong, true or false, and so it goes on. Alongside this, we need to understand just how sensitive are our beliefs in these matters.

This will be the first step to respecting others, which is an important phase in establishing both your own persona, Emotional Intelligence, and ultimately a team maturity.

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

Step 2: Storming

As the name suggests, this stage this is when we are confident to express ourselves on opinions and points of view, knowing that they may be different than others. The only way we can do this is if we know and trust our team members “response” and maturity levels.

If we don’t get the forming right, this storming phase usually ends up is chaos, dysfunctional outbursts and worse.

Step 3: Norming

Without conflict, we cannot grow, so the results of our storming will eventually end up with the team agreeing on some matters of importance. It is because we start to dump our emotive egos and allow clear logic and our link with our vision to guide proper decision making.

Norming allows us to benchmark standards of doing things so that everyone buys in and understands their worth.

Step 4: Performing

When we have a team of superheroes, that respect each other powers, and have clear guidelines as to how we should do stunts properly….hey presto…you get magic.

Here are a few strategies that can be followed to boost team dynamics:

Listen carefully to the team dialogue

Listen to the conversations your team has, assess the level of assertiveness and whether people are tolerant or not. This will indicate whether you need to wind things back to stage 2 or 1 again.

Introduce debrief sessions

After any activity, event or project, carry out a proper debriefing and review session to look into the good, the bad, and the ugly. If done properly, this will provide objective input to how the team assess both their competencies, understandings of the process and most importantly; the appropriateness of the behaviour or the team.

Stress the importance that everyone on the team must talk and

When you see that a team is over-talking each other either through excitement or over assertiveness, introduce the ball process, whereby you have one squeegee ball, and only the person holding the ball can speak, the others must listen. You can, however, only expect to hold the ball for 30 seconds; this ensures team members think about what they are to say and not waffle for the sake of it.

Developing a well-oiled team is a journey…enjoy it or stay at home.

Beyond Teambuilding is committed to offering training on team dynamics to any team who may be experiencing problems in such areas. Allow us to transform your team dynamics from dreadful to dazzling with our training services.

Successful teams do what other teams are not prepared to do! Are you ready?

At the HiSide Group, our HiSide Training team make it happen.

Contact us for forward-thinking planning, dynamic team development programs to stimulate meaningful change.

How to Develop Personal Integrity

August 22, 2018

Teambuilding Trends, Training Trends

What you say and do in the workplace has a tremendous impact on whether “others” want to work with you, will trust you or will even listen to you.

Our experience has taught us many dynamics that will make you more ‘attractive’ to work with; here are a few to consider.

Genuinely greet people in the morning.
Ask questions and listen.
Show concern to matters other than just work.
Make an effort to visit your colleagues and don’t assume they will come to you.
Never have a cell phone in your hand when talking to someone.
Never leave your cell phone on a table while engaging with others.
Never allow yourself to be sidetracked or interrupted by others.
Be conscious of where your relationship is with others; don’t rush into familiarity too quickly. Wait to be invited.
Keep your conversation directed to that person you are engaging and not others.
Ask others for their opinion and listen.
Ask others what you could do for them to make them more productive.
Always deliver what you promise.
Apologise when you make a mistake.
Never make someone look foolish in front of others.

Written by John Ingram, Director of The HiSide Group/Beyond Teambuilding

Successful teams do what other teams are not prepared to do! So what are you prepared to do?

Take your team beyond its limits with Beyond Teambuilding’s exciting events, activities and challenges that push boundaries and guarantee loads of fun.

Team Building for Management and Executives

August 15, 2018

Business Think Tank, Teambuilding Tips, Teambuilding Trends, Training Trends

When we think of embarking on teambuilding exercises in the workplace, it’s usually not the management teams or executives that come to mind. Or rather, they are bundled up into the exercise with their subordinates.

While that is also an essential part of teambuilding and building good working relationships with their co-workers or those that they are in charge of, managers and executives are also part of other teams which are supposed to steer the company to success.

Here are a few ideas for teambuilding exercises for those at management or executive level to foster leadership skills and share new ideas.

Share the financials

It is something that many people think must be kept hush-hush or that the company’s financials are only for those few employees that are “in the know”.

However, being open about the numbers and sharing these vital statistics across the whole company can build trust among your staff. Communicate these numbers in a way that everyone can understand it.

Everyone should be aware of the company’s deadlines, goals, responsibilities, and progress. It will also help each employee to be aware of each group’s objectives.

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

Encourage creativity and sharing of ideas

Very often, people are unsure of speaking up and sharing their ideas. In Jake Mohan’s “When Groups Don’t Think,” he discussed three valuable methods of encouraging people to be more confident when presenting a new idea.

Model constructive dissent.Play devil’s advocate and disagree with a unanimous decision. You’ll encourage a reluctant but wise person to speak up.
Have a brainstorming group write ideas on unattributed Post-it notes.Why? No one knows whether an idea came from top brass or a low-level player, so people back ideas with merit regardless of source.
Encourage team members to do self-affirmations.Listing one’s skills and accomplishments before meeting with a group enhances one’s ability to let colleagues shine.

Successful teams do what other teams are not prepared to do! Are you ready?

Take your team beyond with Beyond Teambuilding’s exciting events, activities and challenges that push boundaries and guarantee loads of fun.

Surprising Team Building Benefits for Your Team

February 22, 2018

Business Think Tank, Teambuilding Tips, Teambuilding Trends, Training Trends

Most organisations choose team building to encourage collaboration and teamwork through engaging, fun and motivational activities. Teams build vital skills like communication, planning, problem-solving, and conflict resolution through a series of planned events that drive results.

However, in this post, we look at the unsung heroes of the team building benefits, which have a positive impact on your team development. Can you guess some of these?

Networking

Socialisations and networking skills in the workplace are important. Internal working relationships are as important as the external connections the team develops with its clients, partners, and customers.

Not only does networking increase morale in the office, but it also allows for the office to work better and become more productive in solving everyday workplace issues. Put simply, it is a vital skill to have among employees.

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

Celebration

Sometimes teams overlook the importance of celebrating successes – and even those failures that lead to better things. When sports teams win major championships, celebration is part of the deal. Why wouldn’t team building offer this prospect?

Encourage celebration, fun and cheering attitudes through team building. Celebration brings positivity and motivation for employees to up their game both in a personal and business context.

Competition

Aside from cooperation and teamwork, team building activities can enhance competition through developing competitive behaviours that stand well in the place of business and have been shown to increase production.

Channel the competitive spirit of your team with engaging and inclusive team building activities where individual employees or teams are free to compete against each other and derive benefits from doing so in a structured manner.

A well-facilitated and engaging team building event will add great value and return on investment (ROI).

The team building experience, formal or informal, is not recreational and includes process facilitation, debriefing, and reflective questioning.

Successful teams do what other teams are not prepared to do! Are you ready?

Take your team beyond with Beyond Teambuilding’s exciting events, activities and challenges that push boundaries and guarantee loads of fun.

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Teambuilding Ideas for Beating the Office Winter Blues

January 26, 2018

Teambuilding Tips, Training Trends

When the weather turns colder, and winter is on its way, company teams become less energetic (read: less productive). Even with the mild winters here in South Africa, this can become a serious problem.

Contrary to what most organisation leaders believe, the cold season is a great time to engage your teams and devise a team building plan to keep the team spirits up and rekindle work collaboration and engagement.

Focus on Team Development and Training

Team development skills and training should be a constant focus of your organisation to keep teams engaged and performing at their best all-year round. Use the more lethargic cold season months to your advantage by revisiting the overall effectiveness of your team.

Devise specific coaching and training programs to highlight and improve certain team aspects where the team needs a push, whether it’s about effective communication, conflict resolution, collaborative techniques or general team dynamics.

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

Plan Fun and Energising Winter Activities

Moving indoors does not mean your team building will be less fun and exciting than a summer outdoor adventure. Most popular and creative teambuilding exercises can fit both scenarios – indoors and outdoors.

Choose activities that energise and unite the entire team such as Interactive Drumming or Interactive Gumboot dancing that involves movement and music and teach the participants how to play, how to listen to one another, and even how to perform together.

If you want to boost team cooperation and innovative thinking, a Murder Mystery Investigation uncovering clues is a good fit, or perhaps opt for fun challenges such as Minute to Win It or The Million Rand Moola Drop where teams have to go through extensive fun games and questionnaires.

Our latest team building addition, Manic Motion, is based on the popular Rube Goldberg machine that needs to be activated through sequenced triggers that produce a domino effect. And did we mention it is perfect for an indoor winter team session?

Host a Winter Retreat

Companies can even bring their teams together, strengthen connections and hit refresh on productivity with a well-thought company winter retreat.

Not only it is the perfect excuse for a cabin-style getaway, but this time can be used to brainstorm, plan for the rest of the year, and work on current team dynamics and current issues (see above) through effective training and coaching (psst…we know a great facilitator).

And if you are still thinking about a more rustic and inclusive retreat for your team retreat, our Hadeda Creek camp can fit both indoor team building activities and relaxation in nature to give your team the best of time and care, even in the chilly season.

Winter is coming. What are you going to do about it? 😊

A well-facilitated and engaging team building event will add great value and return on investment (ROI).

The team building experience, formal or informal, is not recreational and includes process facilitation, debriefing, and reflective questioning.

Successful teams do what other teams are not prepared to do! Are you ready?

Take your team beyond with Beyond Teambuilding’s exciting events, activities and challenges that push boundaries and guarantee loads of fun.

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Teambuilding Under the Microscope

January 15, 2018

Teambuilding Trends, Training Trends

I read a good article by Michael (the other) Jackson relating to what he has learned from his involvement in 2700 conferences. The feedback is all very on point and inciteful to all those who are involved in conferencing.

As the CEO of an Eventing, Training and Team Development Group I am particularly interested in such feedback, and in this instance, honed in on his negative reference to “teambuilding”.

Teambuilding never does what it offers in the title

“The thought of a teambuilding session merely induces near panic amongst conference delegates. Quite frankly no-one wants to run through a wet forest, fire-walk, build rafts next to a lake or paint meaningless images. Often built in as an add-on, and intended to fire up the troops, such miserable attempts at generating camaraderie and teamwork regularly fall flat on their faces. It is far better to endeavour to build real dialogue, through conversation and engagement in an adult manner, using the strengths of the people in the room; yet this too seldom occurs.”

I can see that Michael is looking at this through a “cynic’s eyes” and I agree, but not to the extent of NEVER DOES, as this is a very definitive statement and clearly can be disproved even if only one team build intervention has contributed to the successful building of a team. However, this is not the real point.

The challenge for us “teambuilders” is to break from the poor perception that the Market and the Michaels (M&Ms) have witnessed over the years.

Firstly, as the ones in the industry, we need to own up to the poor reputation we have created, and ask why. Secondly, I would hope that we are constantly and collectively working on trying to improve the situation.

Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.

Please indulge my thinking on this subject.

The first obstacle we face is our denial, and that is not a river in Egypt, it’s a lot murkier than that.

Secondly, the customers themselves often feel they can order a team build from a brochure or product list conveniently found on Google or in their in-tray.

The third problem is that we agree! It is so easy to say yes, take the client’s money and move on. It is a road to nowhere and eventually leads to the scenario that Michael has correctly mentioned above.

However, that very same client will most probably never come back, will be disappointed, and possibly badmouth your business and the industry…and all because you did not take time to do what a proper sales consultant should do.

You sold what your customer thought they wanted and you did not help your customer BUY what they needed!

Here lie the challenge and opportunity, all in one. Clients are generally not experts in your field, you are! So get out there and prove it. Take the time to ask the right leading questions that will lead you to find the magical WHY, namely:

Why do you think the team needs a “team build?” This question should be answered meaningfully; if not, keep probing. If they answer, “to have fun” keep probing as to why they need to have fun? Don’t they have fun at work? Why don’t they have fun at work?
If they say “to get motivated” then ask why do they think the team is demotivated, as this will lead you to the golden thread as to what is required in this team build.
The real answers should normally relate to a behavioural issue, an internal discipline issue, a compliance problem, or a cultural problem, all of which either happens due to poor structures or bad management.
The next step is to ask if they would like that particular problem sorted out?
They will hopefully stay on course and agree, and this is your invitation to unleash your years of pent-up knowledge and competency as a business psychologist and human behavioural scientist!
Whatever you put forward can still be fun, but it must solve the real problem or the cause of that problem. If not, then recommend someone else who can, and do not commit yourself to something you cannot deliver upon.
Any team building activity can be used to help demonstrate a team dynamic or behaviour. If you cannot help your client understand it through the activity, then outsource a competent facilitator to add this value to the program. You will look good, and your client will be impressed.

E.g. What can a team learn from walking on hot coals?

How to make informed decisions
Understanding consequence
Understanding the power of choice and the consequences of bad ones
How to communicate concerns
How to overcome perception
How to get out of Group Think mode
Self-trust issues
How to say no and not give in to group pressures
Situational leadership principles

Teambuilding is probably an overused word, and I prefer to use team development although it can be argued that one is splitting hairs. The bottom line is that all teams are vulnerable and need constant refining to be effective, efficient and productive. It can be enhanced with training (good training), consistent management interventions (good management) and teambuilding interventions (using reputable facilitation techniques and processes).

John Ingram, Director and Head Facilitator Hiside Group