Not much enthusiasm? Not much cooperation within the team (or with the outside world)? Too much gossip? A culture of blame and recrimination?

These are common problems with teams and our aim is to increase delegates' self-confidence, to encourage open, assertive communications and to improve the level of trust. Delegates will develop their basic communications skills and their abilities to: contribute effectively within a team; encourage participation; make group decisions; recognise their own weaknesses; build on their own and others' strengths; avoid preconceptions; and handle conflict positively; increasing effectiveness, cooperation and energy. We can do this with a course designed to cover specific areas or we can provide a Team Booster Workshop.
Another angle, which can be very beneficial to a team's performance is the Effects of Attitude Change workshop.

We base all our team skills training on "doing" backed up by theory instead of the other way round. We use improvisation, role play, theatre games amongst many other techniques. Team work courses can last between a half day 'booster' session to a full three or four day workshop depending on the needs of the team.

We start with simple actors games such as name games, eye contact exercises and energy games. This has the effect of breaking the tension, helping us to learn their names and opening up their minds to 'playing'. Basically, we try and get them to loosen up and have a bit of fun.

We then start exploring the areas of teams where communication tends to break down - preconceptions (the sillier the game, the more effective), trust (play around with trusting each other in a physical sense and then move it onto the emotional areas), giving and receiving feedback, etc... We always keep the idea at the front that openness is paramount, this is linked directly with the preconceptions element as it tends to be on this crux that open communication cracks. Misleading preconceptions lead to conflict and a breakdown in the communication links.

We carry out exercises with group discussion, role play and brainstorming to explore and resolve group decision making and problem solving. We also use the "Play-in-a-Day" concept (and variations) to give the group a common cause. This sort of exercise can also be linked to the way status works with groups and (again) people's preconceptions of what skills they and others have. There are many status games which can be adapted to work on these areas.

Top of Page