Serious Team Building

Our facilitators are trained to run meetings—with or without team building activities. This means they provide a professional and impartial meeting facilitation process for moving through your agenda and keeping everyone on track. We have experience in mediation as well as training and facilitation techniques, and have the skills to keep discussions moving and goal oriented. We have facilitated meetings in international settings as well as within the United States.

Leadership Training Programs

How can you help people to become good leaders? We provide our unique blend of fun, engaging activities combined with serious content. This keeps people energized, participating, and learning by doing. Each person takes a turn leading the group through a series of team challenges. After each one, there is discussion about what the leader did well and what the team might have needed from the leader in order to achieve a higher level of success.

Our programs promote a group comfort level where everyone is there to help and support each other learn to become a stronger leader. There are no stupid questions or ideas, and we continuously encourage open and honest communication. The exceptional team challenges make it fun and “experiential.” Choose from a variety of learning modules, including:

• Clear Communication for Leaders
• How to have more effective meetings
• Working with Challenging Team Members
• Conflict Communication
• Time Management Skills
• Can a Leader Also Be a Friend?
• What Makes a Good Leader
• Getting the Most from Your Team

We offer half day and full day programs.

Team Development Programs

Corporate Games trainers have exceptional skills when it comes to focusing people on what they have in common and building trust. This ultimately helps a team to move forward with positive, realistic goals that they can all agree upon.

We offer half, day, full day and quarterly programs so that you gain momentum and keep it going. People do not change in a day. Depending upon the goals and obstacles your group has to overcome, we recommend varying lengths of programs. No matter what, we always give you a follow-up list in order to keep your team moving ahead.

Half Day Team Development Program—SAMPLE AGENDA

I           Ice Breaker (15 minutes)

II          The Star Profile (45 minutes)

III         Communication Warm-Up

IV        Team Assessment/Solutions Session (1.5 hours)

V         Communication Skills Training (60 min.)

VI        Wrap -up and Next Steps

“How You See Me” Ice Breaker

This is a fun, and revealing ice breaker, where people place an adjective describing the other participants—on a sheet of paper that is pinned to each person’s back. This starts the process of making people think about the positive traits that other team members bring to the group. 

The StAR Profile

The StAR Profile is a tool that was developed at Corporate Games, Inc. that allows people to get to know each other, discover things about themselves, learn how to value diverse styles of thinking and operating, all in a fun, entertaining manner. StAR stands for Styles, Abilities and Reactors. The StAR Profile is a quick questionnaire that each participant fills out. For each team member, the StAR Profile:

• Provides a look into the qualities and characteristics you value in yourself.
• Builds insight and awareness of how your styles, abilities and motivations influence others, who have different approaches.
• Provides insight into how you are perceived by other members of your team.
• Identifies the talents and contributions that every team member brings to your work group/environment.

The StAR Profile session allows a team to understand how to work more effectively together by sharing the strengths of each team member. It’s fun, because people will be getting up and moving around the room. It’s not just a pen and paper exercise. This segment takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Communication Skills Warm-up

Improv (to improve listening and appropriate responses)

This is a great way to loosen up, practice communication skills and have fun too. We divide the group into small teams. We start out with easy warm-ups and get progressively more challenging. For example we have each group tell a story. Every person on the team is involved in the story, but no one knows exactly when it might be their turn. The resulting tales are always entertaining!

Our Team Assessment/Solutions Session

This is a great way to see how the team is doing—according to them. Our facilitator provides a positive process for:

1. Breaking down barriers
2. Encouraging communication
3. Focusing on the characteristics of high performance teams
4. Starting the group problem solving and teamwork process
5. Providing real solutions to teamwork obstacles and operational issues.

These assessments are done in small groups of 3-4 people per group. In a non-threatening structure, every single person will share their ideas and feel great about being “heard.” The team will assess its own strengths and opportunities for improvement as well as provide concrete ideas for implementation that will improve their ability to perform as a team.

Communication Skills Training

“Seek to Understand Before Being Heard”

This is an excellent training session on how to diffuse arguments, approach difficult conversations and move forward positively. The basis for this discussion comes from Stephen Covey’s book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” They will learn skills that are great for professional and personal use. Concepts, tools and phrases are given and practiced. Improv and role play situations are hilarious yet meaningful. We provide the initial scenarios, but the group will come up with its own, original scenarios, based on their own experiences.

This skill is so important when working on boards where progress seems particularly slow, circumvented by personal agendas or communication and learning styles. Participants will learn the importance of assessing and listening first in order to ascertain how to be in agreement with someone who appears diametrically opposed to begin with.

Wrap-up and Next Steps

This is an essential part of the program, and it helps to insure that the meeting was not a waste of time. Everyone is engaged in recapping the day’s events and lessons. Plus there is emphasis on what happens next. No one wants to end up with a Wish List that never again sees the light of day.  

Team Intervention

We work with dysfunctional teams who have a history of ongoing problems and have not been able to find resolution. We have developed a program that addresses the concerns and attitudes of each team member. Each person is interviewed separately to ascertain their individual perspectives. We then bring the team together in open discussion. We teach new communication skills, including “active listening” and “effective ways to provide feedback.” We encourage a “team mentality” by finding common ground and by prompting behavior and attitude shifts. This is a program that is monitored over a period of four months.

Workshops

Corporate Games provides a number of workshops that target a variety of business skills and issues. Here are our most popular:

• Telephone Communication Skills— more important than people think. This is usually the very first impression your customers get about your business. Who is answering your phone?
• Meeting Facilitation Skills and How to Get More Out of Your Meetings.
• Communication Skills for Team Leaders
• Communication Skills for Great Customer Service
• Active Listening– the Key to Communicating
• Using Games to Accelerate Learning

It is not always just a game with Corporate Games

Corporate Games, Inc. is in the business of Team Building, Training and Meeting Facilitation. This means that our facilitators can provide entire programs or workshops that include interactive lessons along with a thorough debriefing and wrap-up. They are not just there to run and referee an entertaining game (unless that is what you want).