Welcome to WM8C's Team Building Guide
Teamwork Free Team Building Games Article
. For a permanent link to this article, or to bookmark it for further reading, click here.
You may also listen to this article by using the following controls.
Team Building Celebration Plan -- Perfect For Any Time of Year
from: Denise OBerryCopyright 2005 Denise OBerry
When was your last team celebration? Have you been way too busy to bother? Sometimes we get so caught up in day-to-day work that we don't take the time to step back and celebrate success. Some teams may even consider team celebrations as "silly."
It's critical to celebrate success if you want your team to maintain their high performance. Successes are the "motivating fuel" that keeps all of us pushing toward achieving the "bigger and better" goals that we set.
What types of team interaction and discussions normally occur on a day-to-day basis with your team? If you're like most businesses, it's along the lines of the following:
- What's going wrong with the current project.
- Recovering from changes that impact your product or service schedule negatively.
- How to satisfy a disgruntled customer.
If all of your team interactions focus on what's wrong with your business, what happens over time? Team members lose sight of the positive things they do. This can have a demoralizing effect on a team and your business.
Team celebrations help a team bond together. This helps the members maintain focus on their common goals and direction. And, celebrations often help team members deal with stressful changes and prevent "burn-out." They provide revitalization for the team.
Has your team celebrated any successes lately? What did they celebrate? How did they celebrate? For some teams, it's necessary to add structure to the celebration process to ensure that they make the time. To do this, use our three-step process:
1. Identify What To Celebrate
2. Determine How To Celebrate
3. Create A Celebration Action Plan
1. Identify What To Celebrate
It's important to determine what events or activities the team should celebrate. These can be major events or events that help the team reach a milestone. Get your team together and brainstorm a list. Your list might look like the list below.
- Identifying and solving a major roadblock (e.g., customer or quality related issue).
- Taking on added responsibility.
- Adding new team members.
- Dealing with a project crisis.
With the group together, determine the activities your team wants to celebrate.
2. Determine How To Celebrate
Next, identify how you could celebrate. Again, with your team together, brainstorm some celebration activities. These don't have to be major. They could be fun stress relievers or activities that help make your team more visible to upper management. Some ideas are included below:
- Create a presentation for upper management highlighting the team's achievement. Present with all team members in attendance.
- Have the entire team meet with a customer during an on-site visit.
- Invite a senior manager to your team meeting.
- Bring snacks to a team meeting.
- Put congratulatory posters on the wall.
Determine how your team would like to celebrate. Remember, team celebrations don't have to be expensive, time consuming, or difficult to plan. Team celebrations can be formal or impromptu. The key of the team celebration is that it must be sincere.
3. Create A Celebration Action Plan
Create a celebration action plan for the team for (at least) the next six-month time frame. Once the action plan is created, have your team plan the first celebration that will occur in the coming months. This gives them something to look forward to while accomplishing team objectives.
It will take a little effort on your team's part to complete this process, but the pay back in productivity will be worth it. Get going. It's time to celebrate!
About the Author
Denise O'Berry (aka 'Team Doc') provides tools, tips and advice to help organizations build better teams. Find out more at http://www.teambuildingtips.com
Teamwork Free Team Building Games News
Teamwork emphasized on CCHS Special Olympics basketball team - ThisWeekNews
 ThisWeekNews | Teamwork emphasized on CCHS Special Olympics basketball team ThisWeekNews ... a special olymics basketball game on Feb. 1. Buy This Photo By Sarah Sole Some Central Crossing High School special needs students are building teamwork skills while participating in the school's recently created Special Olympics basketball team. |
AP Enterprise: US Olympic's London gym nearly done - Fox News
AP Enterprise: US Olympic's London gym nearly done Fox News A sparkling new 21 million-pound ($33.2 million) gym at the University of East London is just about complete and will host the US Olympic team during the games. In a few weeks, it will be ready for everyone from stars like swimming's Michael Phelps and ... |
NLL Notebook: Westervelt Excels at Indoor Game - Lacrosse Magazine Online
 Lacrosse Magazine Online | NLL Notebook: Westervelt Excels at Indoor Game Lacrosse Magazine Online The coaching staff and leaders on the team have done a great job instilling that we have to buy into the system.'' Teamwork, and not solo heroics as might have been the case last year, is the key. ''The team this year has a whole new look to it,'' says ... |
Kentucky smothers Florida, cements itself as national title favorite - Yahoo! Sports (blog)
 Yahoo! Sports (blog) | Kentucky smothers Florida, cements itself as national title favorite Yahoo! Sports (blog) They used their length and athleticism to smother a Gators team that had won seven in a row entering the game, building a 12-point halftime lead and never letting Florida back within single digits after the opening minute of the second half. |
Carrington dance team makes history at state - Jamestown Sun
Carrington dance team makes history at state Jamestown Sun This season the Cardinaires danced for all home games, an invitational in Bismarck and the state competition in Grand Forks. The team has practiced every school night since early October and even on some weekends. “There are some long nights and long ... |
1 Number of overtime games the Thunder has had this season - Thunder.com
 Thunder.com | 1 Number of overtime games the Thunder has had this season Thunder.com He's known for hitting ties and game-winners and stuff like that. We just kept pursuing, kept helping the helper and I think this was a great win for us. I think we can build off of this and just keep going. It's a great team win. |
Maryland vs. Clemson: Terrapins hold off Tigers for first road win of season ... - Washington Post
Maryland vs. Clemson: Terrapins hold off Tigers for first road win of season ... Washington Post CLEMSON, SC — Maryland had played this game, it seemed, so many times this season — building double-digit leads on tenacious defense and explosive scoring bursts only to let its opponents seize the upper hand down the stretch. In the last week alone, ... |