by Tiffany Dahlberg

One of my favorite tools that I use when I teach college students or train Project Management, Business Analysis, or Leadership for organizations is the Team Contract.

The team contract is a document outlining agreements about how the team will work together. Team contracts contain topics such as “Commitments,” “Participation,” “Communication,” “Problem Solving,” “Decision-Making,” “Conflict Management,” “Use of Technology,” and “Meeting Guidelines.”

Looking at the group dynamics of Forming, Norming, Storming, Performing, and Adjourning, the team contract speeds up the Norming phase and helps prevent/mitigate the Storming phase, so the team can get to the Performing phase faster–making your team more efficient.

The team meets and decides what agreements, ground rules, and behaviors they want to abide by with each other. Going through this process formally and quickly outlines the “norms” of acceptable behaviors.

When the norms are documented, it serves as a reminder and communication mechanism for how that team operates together. The bonus is that since the team creates the contract together, the team enforces it together.

Creating a team contract also serves as a team-building exercise and helps new members get up to speed more quickly. But remember that the contract belongs to the team. Each member needs to participate in its creation and sign off that they agreed to it or it will not be effective.

This simple yet highly effective tool will promote understanding among its members, and consequently can help your team performance improve dramatically.

Tiffany Dahlberg, MA, PMP, president of Achievement Consulting and Training, Inc. (a solutions provider for project management, process improvement, and employee training) has 20 years of experience in helping organizations improve their processes, better manage projects, and implement positive change.

by Zoe Training staff

Would you believe part of the Zoe cadre is a team of horses? According to Christina Haxton, who occasionally integrates them into her training sessions, horses are ideal teachers: they are responsive beings with acute awareness of and sensitivity to their surroundings. Like people, horses have individual personalities as well as physical abilities and limitations. And horses very accurately sense a person’s level of trust, confidence, awareness, and interpersonal skills.

In one of her team-building courses called “Lessons from the Herd,” participants have an opportunity to get in an arena with two to three horses – without having to ride them – to learn team-building skills directly from the animals. With more than 20 years of experience owning, training, and showing her own horses, Christina incorporates her management experience and expertise as a marriage and family therapist with knowledge of equine behavior to offer a unique perspective to businesses and organizations.

Following are Christina’s responses to our interview questions.

What are your most popular presentation topics?

“How to Avoid ‘Lizard Brain’ and Turn Conflict into Opportunity” and “Lessons from the Horse: The Art & Science of Building Trust with Your Herd.”

Three words that describe your presentation style:

Creative, Engaging, Content-rich.

What are your favorite groups of people to work with?

Painfully left-brained engineers, scientists, and physicians who are recently promoted and motivated to learn “how to” quickly build trust with their new team.

What’s the most unusual location (or circumstances) you’ve presented in?

In a dirt-filled arena at a gorgeous guest ranch in the mountains of Colorado with six horses as co-facilitators for a senior level leadership retreat for 40 doctors.

What are some things that surprise you or inspire you about your interactions with clients/participants?

Clients, individually or in teams, discover THE most perfect, brilliant solutions when they arrive at the perfect intersection of fun, a little urgency, and connection.

Do you have a favorite quote? What/why?

“… we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!” – Jonathan Livingston Seagull. A seagull who was outcast because of his “strange” ideas about having the courage to follow his heart discovers the power of doing so, and the power of forgiveness. My Mom gave me this book when I was nine and was going through a very scary time in my life. Reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull helped me feel she was with me, even though she wasn’t, and also gave me the courage to believe in myself.

Tell us a recent book you’ve read and would recommend:

Drive by Daniel Pink.

What’s one thing on your “bucket list” you hope to do in the next year?

Win the Western Slope Reining Horse Association High Point Rookie Champion Saddle & Buckle.

Standard Starbucks order:

Boring, but consistent: Grande Brewed Coffee with sugar-free vanilla, one splenda and cream.

Inquire about Christina Haxton

by Zoe Training staff

With the employment situation in flux in recent years, Paul Unks’ career management expertise has come in handy for many people who need to regain their footing by either clarifying their career objectives or identifying new career options. And because career ups and downs can be the source of so much stress, Paul is also there to help individuals understand how stress impacts our daily lives and what we can do about it to alleviate the potential negative effects. In this interview, Paul talks about the joys of teaching his favorite topics and the mutual benefits that are gained by working together with participants.

What’s your favorite topic(s) to present on? Why?

1) Career Life Transition and Development, 2)Managing Stress and Wellness (“The Joy of Stress”) and 3) Communications and Team Building

I love teaching and facilitating workshops on these three topics.

I get a great deal of satisfaction from helping people to identify and then achieve the career position where they will be: fulfilled, very productive and successful, and in the right environment.  Career Life Development knowledge and skills are increasingly important and needed in our world today. Whether someone has been laid off through no fault of their own, if they are seeking a clearer direction and path to a more rewarding career, or if they want to further advance their career proactively in their current organization, they can benefit greatly from three key areas: 1) Assessment and Goal-Setting: Knowing how to do a clarifying self-assessment that accurately identifies their unique individual strengths and priorities (not artificially force fits them into one category that most traditional tests attempt to put people in). Then they need to know how to use the results of their assessment to see how their priorities best fit into the current job market segments in order to establish goals that are both desirable and viable. 2) Research and Confirmation of their top potential career goals; Knowing how to effectively research and conduct the early stages of networking so that they can be at peace with what they choose, as well as that which they choose not to do.

3) Setting up and Executing an effective Marketing strategy to attain the goal: Knowing how to prepare and deliver a clear and compelling message to their targeted market through networking, in their resume, letters and in some entrepreneurial cases, their website, as well as interviewing and negotiation. Being good at these aspects and knowing how to leverage key differentiators goes a long way to helping them gain an advantage in a very competitive market.

There are many aspects involved in each of the above areas, but it can all be more concisely boiled down to helping people address three questions:

1) Who am I? 2) Where am I going? and 3) How am I going to get there? It is by effectively addressing these questions that we can become more who we are.

I also love to help people better understand and manage their stress and wellness. I like to help people get a better handle on their most significant sources of stress, the major things, as well as the smaller seemingly less significant things they might otherwise overlook. And then it is important to understand how these different sources of stress impact on us both mentally and physically, how it can negatively effect our thought process, communication, performance and health. Once they have a good understanding of the progressive sequence, or chain, of mental and physical stress reactions, and where they are individually in that sequence, they are in a much better position to effectively manage their stress. We also take a look at the benefits and blessings of stress, and how to use the good kind of stress to combat and defeat the negative effects of distress. Finally we end on selecting from a long list of many things we can do to protect ourselves from the damaging effects of stress, prevent potential problems, or when required; how to get out of and reverse a downward unhealthy spiral someone might be in. Each person in the workshop leaves with an individualized assessment and action plan to protect themselves from their greatest risks and to proactively promote greater health and wellness for themselves. As a result, they have a much greater awareness and control over their unique stress situations and health, and are able to perform better as well.

Teaching and facilitating interpersonal communication and team building I find both rewarding and fun. I enjoy helping people gain greater insight to their own and others’ naturally preferred ways of working and communicating, and how these can present challenges, as well as be leveraged as advantages to the team so they can more effectively achieve shared goals.

I like to teach a simple and successful four-step team building model they can use to clearly see where they are strong and where they are vulnerable. They can also use the same four-step process to more effectively solve problems and mange projects as well. I like to include a key piece in this highly interactive workshop I call “The Power of Active Listening.” Very few people have ever had a class on listening skills. But it is one of, if not the most important communication skill of all. Yet it almost always gets short shrift in our education and training system. Once each person on the team has a better understanding of their own and each others’ main tendencies, what each finds easy and difficult, they are in a much better position leverage their strengths, and better accommodate each other. Where previously they might  have seen a certain team mate’s particular tendency as purposely being annoying, they now understand that he or she just comes by it naturally. There are many ways people can have fun in this workshop and become more enlightened in the process. One of the take aways I like participants to get out of the workshop is an enhanced sense of trust in each other and more enjoyment in working together.

Three words that describe your presentation style:

Dynamic, Engaging and Authentic

Do you have a favorite quote? What/why?

“Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

I also like, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” – Dr. George Draper, founder of physiological psychology in America. Therapist to Franklin Roosevelt and supreme court justice William O. Douglas. Both of these famous men credit Dr. Draper with helping them overcome their respective phobias and fears.

by Zoe Training staff

Perfecting Connecting© – what Sarah Michel calls her networking strategies to promote personal and professional success – aptly describes her expertise on the art of intentional connecting. And Sarah should know the power of networking: as a cancer survivor, Sarah’s network helped save her life. And now as a speaker, she shares the lessons she learned from her inspirational journey to motivate her audiences to connect not just for the moment, but for life.

What’s your favorite topic(s) to present on? Why?

NetWORTHing™, which is the new way to network if you want to build social capital in today’s reciprocal business climate.  I teach people how to communicate their value proposition to their network to grow their networth.  I’m all about connecting so my topics are focused on ways to improve your connection to your customers, coworkers (team building), and colleagues.  I’m a certified practitioner with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and help people discover the power in personality differences to encourage innovation, networking, creativity, and problem solving.

Three words that describe your presentation style:

High energy, Interactive, Humorous

What are your favorite groups of people to work with?

Professional Associations, Nonprofits, Healthcare Organizations, Entrepreneurs

Do you have a favorite quote? What/why?

‘You can have anything you want in life, if you help others get what they need first.” – Zig Ziglar

This is the mantra of a true connector, and if you stand in the intersection of your life looking for ways to connect people, opportunities and ideas, you will experience true happiness and reap rewards beyond your wildest dreams.

What are some things that surprise you or inspire you about your interactions with clients/participants?

I’m surprised and delighted when someone tells me they always thought of themselves as a “bad networker” or someone who “hated networking,” but after hearing me speak, they discover a whole new way to look at. I love when they tell me they had a complete paradigm shift and now walk away with a whole new game plan for how to approach their network and for the first time, feel like they can be successful at it. I’m always inspired when my story of how my network helped saved my life when I battled cancer five years ago, inspires someone to reach out to their network for support. There is no better feeling for me then to think my story will positively impact someone else’s healthcare challenge.

Are you involved in any community projects/issues?

I’m on the board for Partners in Housing in Colorado Springs which helps homeless families achieve self-sufficiency and ultimately home ownership. It’s a two-year program commitment and we have a 75 percent success rate with our partners. I have been an active volunteer for over a decade and on a mission to end homelessness in Colorado Springs. I’m also involved with our school district and special education services because I have a daughter with learning disabilities.

by Tara Powers

“Trust each other again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.” – David Armistead

“Trust is the denominator of efficiency.” I heard this quote from a company leader that I am working with as we discussed the impact of trust on manager-employee relationships, relationships with customers, and efficiency between teams. This quote hits the nail on the head when talking about any type of business improvement. Nothing is going to improve long-term if trust does not exist.

Everyone knows that it’s not easy to build trust, but it’s very easy to destroy it. Trust is what creates a workplace where people hold themselves accountable. Trust creates a workplace where information is shared freely and openly, silos are non-existent, and people are involved in designing their own jobs and creating systems to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Trust is about sharing information, caring about other roles, opening yourself up to constructive feedback, communicating with integrity, asking for what you need, and providing support even when it’s not your job.

So HOW do you build trust? Here are ten ideas you can put to use immediately:

1. Managers act more as mentors and coaches rather then task masters.
2. Share leadership on the team.
3. Provide ongoing feedback on progress.
4. Readjust meetings to create more openness, sharing of feedback, creative thinking and risk taking.
5. Share ideas with the team or with an individual on what needs to be done and then ask for voluntary participation to make it happen.
6. Encourage team members to share mistakes so that everyone can learn from it.
7. Use a problem solving and decision making process that everyone can follow individually and as a group.
   • Example: Gather data, analyze data, identify issues, decide on solutions, implement solutions, analyze results, start process over if necessary.
8. Encourage each team member to share their personal vision for their role.
9. Ask team members to serve their internal and external customers as they would like to be served. Then trust them to do the right thing.
10. Have frequent discussions as a team what it would look like to appreciate one another, put others first, openly communicate, etc.

As you review this list consider if your corporate culture imposes more authority and control or operates from a high level of trust where people are free to do their jobs to the best of their ability.  What would it take to begin trusting your team to do the right thing? What would need to shift to make this happen? Focus on one idea listed in this article each month to improve the level of trust on your team and expect amazing results.

As this year comes to a close, encourage your employees to take stock of what they’ve created in 2010. Encourage them to think about what they would like to see happen for themselves, their team, and the company in 2011. Ask them to ponder one small shift they might make in their life that could bring them more joy, peace and happiness. Ask them to ponder one small shift the company could make that could bring more joy, peace and happiness to your workforce.

These are important conversations that build a foundation of trust with your employees. They demonstrate a level of caring and show that you are interested in them and their aspirations. More importantly they will begin to trust that you truly have their best interest at heart.

© 2010 Powers Resource Center

International trainer, consultant, and founder of The Toxic Workplace, Tara Powers partners with organizations interested in improving their company culture to boost their bottom line. If you’re ready to make changes in your business that will make employees happy AND make you money, get your FREE tips now at PowersResourceCenter.com.

by Ashley Andrus

I recently took 7 little boys to play laser tag for my son’s 8^th birthday.  As I was headed out the door my friend and team expert Nora Burns (who very politely declined an invitation to come along) said, “I suspect there will be some life lessons learned with this adventure…”  She was totally right.

It’s not so much that there are brand-new lessons to be learned, but the experience was a good, solid reminder of what you can accomplish with sheer, unstoppable energy and a “you’re goin’ DOWN, Mary!” attitude.  You don’t need a college degree.  You don’t need to have read all the latest business best-sellers.  You don’t even need a driver’s license.

Here are the 3.5 reminders I walked away with:

1. DON’T QUIT.

You’re going to get tagged.  So?  5 seconds penalty then you’re right back in it.  Your parents told you not to quit.  Your high school counselor.  Your coach. Your teachers. Your best manager.  They were right.  Never-say-die doesn’t solve all problems, but it’s a pretty effective strategy for lots of real world endeavors.

Take negotiation.  Remember how you used to negotiate when you were a kid?  The high-level G8 talks went something like this:

YOU: Can I have some ice cream?
MOM: No.
YOU: But dinner isn’t for an hour.
MOM: No.
YOU: Dad would let me.
MOM: No.
YOU: But it’s like 90 degrees out.
MOM: No.
YOU: Please?
MOM: No.
YOU: Please please?
MOM: No.
YOU: Mmmoooommmmmm.  Come on.
MOM: Ok but only because you are driving me insane and you have to eat it outside and you can’t have ice cream again for a week and if you ask me for anything else today you are grounded until you are 12 and I mean it.
YOU:  Deal!

When’s the last time you negotiated like that in real life?  When’s the last time you said, “Come on, life…hit me” then you took the hit, shook it off, and jumped right back in the deep end of the pool?

2. WORK AS A TEAM.

You’re little.  You’re less experienced.  Your target-to-body-mass ratio is way less favorable.  But when four of you stick together and stalk a larger target (say…I don’t know…a slow-moving adult in a strobe-lit black light laser tag maze), it’s easy to turn the tables.  Most likely, your prey will run away, making it easy for you to shoot her in the back.  Even if the prey chooses fight over flight, honestly, she can only hit one of you at a time, while the other three of you fire at will.  There’s something to be said for throwing a sheer mass of resources at a project.

And another thing: you don’t need to be best friends to work together as a team.  Heck, you don’t even need to KNOW the other team members.  Size up the situation: other kids you don’t know playing?  Well, of COURSE the kids are going to team up on the adults.  They don’t have to have been best friends since kindergarten to instinctively know how to work together.  Futurist and trends expert Warren Evans observes “a core competency of tomorrow’s workforce will be the ability to work with strangers.”   The world is changing.  You aren’t going to work with the same folks for the next 15 years.  You may not even work with the same folks for the next 15 weeks! The Shift Happens folks have a thought-provoking video entitled “Did You Know?” about the future of technology and tomorrow’s workforce that’s well worth the 5 minutes to watch.

3. FOCUS ON YOUR GOAL…

…but stay flexible enough to shift targets rapidly. During the laser tag games the kids utilized the patented Amoeba Attack Strategy.  Those of you who have seen young kids play soccer may know it as “swarmball.”  It goes something like this: Follow an adult.  Fire mercilessly. Hit the target, wait the 5 second penalty, shoot again, take him down again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Oops, adult escapes through the maze. Find new adult.  Return to step 1.

The main goal never changes: take down an adult.  But the specific target—the precise individual—changes.  That happens in business, too.  Your organization’s objective might be to deliver world-class service. To manufacture cutting-edge products. To find a cure for cancer.  The top-line goal and strategy don’t typically change very often.  The specific tactics and tools available to you do.  Make sure you remain flexible enough to shift from lane to lane, going 80 MPH, without running off the highway.

3.5 HAVE FUN.

Really, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  When you’re little, you plan the theme of your birthday party. You know exactly where you want to have it and who you’re going to invite. You envision the whole experience, and it’s awesome.  You smear icing on your face and gorge on ice cream.  You make funny faces with your friends.  You blow out your candles and make a wish. You laugh. And then you grow up and you forget that you still have that control.  You get to choose your career. The people you hang out with.  The attitude you bring to the table.

And if those things aren’t making you happy?  It’s never too late to start a new game.

Ashley Andrus is President of Zoe Training & Consulting. Her passion is making HR folks and meeting planners look like *rock stars* by providing one-stop access to 90+ speakers, trainers, facilitators, coaches, and consultants.

by Ashley Andrus

“Tell me and I may forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.”—Confucius

You can learn sitting in a classroom. You can learn listening to somebody talk to you. You can learn watching a webinar or listening to a teleconference or sitting around a conference room table or reading a manual. But it’s not the only way you can learn.

Why not invite some “fun and games” into your meetings and workshops and daily office routine? Incorporating some get-up-and-walk activities with your sit-and-talk sessions can be an effective catalyst in taking the team and the discussion to the next level.

You don’t have to take your team to a ropes course, white-water rafting, skydiving, or high-speed driving to benefit from experiential activities. Those experiences are exciting and can be very effective, but if your budget or timeframe doesn’t allow for that possibility, consider some alternatives that can be done closer to home.

INSTRUCTOR-LED OPTIONS include program like:

• In Hi-Tech Treasure Hunt, teams use handheld GPS systems to race around a geocached course. The challenge level rises as participants progress from one station to another.
• In Lessons from the Herd, horses—perhaps the ultimate team animals—teach valuable leadership and team lessons. No riding required!
• In Adventure Past Kilimanjaro, teams travel to Africa and encounter lions, elephants and hippos—without ever leaving the conference room.
• Team Work & Team Play utilizes games, improv activities, and more to demonstrate the power of laughter & leadership.
• Juggling Master is an innovative program in which participants learn to juggle in the process of learning lessons such as “count on dropping the ball” and “you can’t learn to juggle for somebody else.”

Continued advances and price decreases in technology have paved the way for a wide variety of GAME-BASED AND VIRTUAL-ENVIRONMENT SCENARIOS. MSNBC reports that Hilton Garden Inn is rolling out a program called “Ultimate Team Play” that offers timed scenarios to give employees a chance to practice job skills before interacting with customers. Scenarios include everything from housekeeping and maintenance to front desk operations. (Article here). Kansas City-based Assurant Employee Benefits rolled out a series of online training video games called “It’s Your Business” with a “CEO vs. CFO Smackdown Challenge.” (Article here.)

Full-blown hands-on workshops aren’t the only option, of course. There are endless SHORT ADD-ON ACTIVITIES that require no materials and only a few minutes of time. For example:

• The warmer weather of spring provides a perfect opportunity to take some of your team meetings outside.
• At the start of your next regular staff meeting, take a few minutes and have everyone introduce the person next to him or her as though you were newly-formed team.
• To get a team’s energy level up, incorporate a scavenger hunt into the start of one of your meetings.  Give the team 5 or 10 minutes to find items such as an out-of-state driver’s license, a cell phone less than 2 months old, someone who took a Psychology class in college, 2 people whose ages add up to 100, a 2009 quarter, etc.

Ashley Andrus is President of Zoe Training & Consulting. Her passion is making HR folks and meeting planners look like *rock stars* by providing one-stop access to 90+ speakers, trainers, facilitators, coaches, and consultants.