Videos for Team Building with Roger Reece

Barriers to Productivity and Teamwork
When the workload is heavy, communication often suffers, because people are simply too busy to make it a priority. But it is just when the workload is heavy and the pressure is on that improving communication becomes most important to the team. A lack of good communication is at the root of most of the barriers to productivity and teamwork that we encounter in teams. Improving the quality of communication - from one team-member to another as well as along inter-team and intra-team lines - can mean the difference between maintaining optimum productivity and refining team processes throughout an organization, or sabotaging a team's every attempt to do so.

Managing Teamwork Ecology
In any team ecology - your workplace, your home, your circle of friends - if one person's actions are harming the group, you can do an intervention to correct it. At the same time, it is good to be able to recognize when a person is trying to do an intervention on you. They may not go about it in the best way, of course; most people are just not very skilled at giving interventions. Most of the time, a person will not even be thinking in terms of an intervention when they approach you about a behavior - they're just bothered by something you're doing. But if you can manage to listen without getting defensive or reactive, there's usually something quite valuable in what they are trying to tell you. It's a fact of life that we all have a hard time seeing our own bad behaviors. It's because of this fact that the perspectives of the people working closely with us are so invaluable: they are our best opportunity to catch and correct those things we do that threaten the ecology of the team.

Team Building, Teamwork & Great Teams
What does it take to make a great team? In an interview, Peter Senge once said that when he asks people to describe being part of a great team, they say that what is most striking to them is "the meaningfulness of the experience. They talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative." For people who have been fortunate enough to be part of great team at some point in their lives - whether in team sports or the military, at work, or wherever - the experience is never forgotten. As in most things, the factors are many that influence whether a particular team will rise to greatness, and many of these factors are unique to circumstances. But it is still worthwhile to consider: Can the experience be recreated? For those of us who have been a part of something greater than ourselves, greater than the sum of its parts, what were some of the elements that made that experience possible? How could we foster those same elements, in our own teams, today?

Teamwork, Relationships & Ego - Part 1
When your ego is a barrier to teamwork: It is important to recognize that problems with "egos" can come just as easily from ourselves as they can from the people around us. Recognizing our own capacity for ego problem-behavior is a major step to improving team ecology: if we know the kinds of situations that are most likely to set us off, we can better prepare ourselves to manage those reactions. Of course, this is easier said than done. When our minds get set on an agenda, the hardest thing in the world, in that moment, can be to just shut up and listen - even when we know good and well that is nearly always the best way to get what we want.

Teamwork, Relationships & Ego – Part 2
When someone else's ego is a barrier to teamwork: We mean different things when we talk about egos, and about people whose egos get in the way. But what we can all agree is that the trouble we have with "big egos," or people with "ego problems," is really with the behaviors of the person who we say has the ego. The first hurdle to solving behavior conflicts with another member of your team is the tendency to project: "If I behaved that way, it would mean I was really full of myself - so that person must have a big ego." We can't afford to make assumptions about others' intentions if we want to improve teamwork. (And for that matter, any parent can tell you how easily bad behavior can come with the best of intentions.) Respect the individual and assume a positive intention; isolate the behavior and deal with it on it on its own terms. We may not be able to change who the person is - but we can change the way they interact with us, if we learn the right way to communicate with them.

Team Building Communication Activity
Trainer & coach Roger Reece coordinates a team activity emphasizing Communication, Teamwork, Awareness and Creativity. As the teams compete, Roger offers hints and strategy at various intervals, which lead to some surprising twists in gameplay. In the debrief following the activity, team-members discuss key moments of inspiration that shifted the way their teams operated. Roger leads this into a deeper discussion of team dynamics in the real world, inattentional blindness and the "Inspiration Curve," and a focus on the importance of fostering leadership sensibilities at every level of an organization.

The Ecology of Teamwork
The ecology of an environment depends on a balance of many factors. If an environment becomes unhealthy or polluted, the damage can usually be repaired - that is, with a lot of hard work, of course. But if nothing is done about the practices that caused the toxic atmosphere in the first place, the odds are that it'll just end up polluted again.

When the ecology of a workplace is unhealthy, the effects can sometimes be clear in a high turnover rate, or in things like a high frequency of Human Resources complaints. A far more harmful result of bad ecology, though, is in winding up with employees who do not actually leave - who do not quit or cause themselves to be fired - but who have lost their enthusiasm and sense of purpose for the job. This kind of attitude can spread like a virus through an entire organization, and it can send productivity in a spiral. The good news is that in most cases, the damage can be avoided, or repaired, by learning and practicing better ways of communicating.

Team Building Ski Activity
Speaker and trainer Roger Reece coordinates this team activity emphasizing the values of teamwork and communication among co-workers. The challenges were staged in relays over the course of a full-day training workshop on customer service and teamwork, presented for a national corporation's yearly convention in 2011.