How to Do Team Building with Children

Recently Training Touch conducted a week-long team building session for children. These are some things to consider and to take into account when dealing with them especially during a group event:

1. Remember that these are children and not adults. The concept of team is not as easily understood by children, even when those children have played on sports teams or done group activities.
2. Designate a different team member to run each warm up at a sports practice, or have her design a new skill building exercise to teach to others. Go over the exercise with the child beforehand to make sure it's appropriate. Through teaching, each person learns the importance of supporting others.
3. Use murder mystery games or similar challenges where you divide the children into teams and give them a problem to solve by working together. Make sure the teams change with each game.
4. Do a circle talk. Sit down in a circle. Focus on a particular team performance and discuss positive results and things the team needs to work on. Then go around the circle and ask each team member to say something positive about the team's performance or about another individual.
5. Play basketball with co-ed teams, but emphasize passing, rather than shooting, to build teamwork. Make a rule that neither side can take a shot unless the teammates first pass the ball around four times.
6. Hold relay events to foster teamwork and physical fitness. The key is to continually change partners on each team so everyone gets to know each other.

Talk For The Sake of Talking – The Common Disease In A Team

Yes, the title says it all. It happens a lot everywhere in the world. I would like to share with you two incidences:

1. In one of the teambuilding sessions I facilitated, I met a participant whom we shall call ‘A Man’. He was very enthusiastic, and with a high promoter-ish energy. In the beginning, he was perceived by many of his team mates as a leader because he likes to talk a lot and at least I thought he was quite funny. As the session moved along he wanted to have a say in everything. It started to get annoying. At this point he was just talking for the sake of talking. When any of the other participants stood up to share and make a point, he had a point to that point. By him doing that, he did not allow anyone in the team to speak-up and gain value from the session. The other participants knew that. Then came the feedback session. Well, you guessed it! From the moment my lead facilitator said ‘GO!’ Everyone zeroed in on A Man, waiting to give him feedback about how he behaved. After the feedback session, we still had one more day to go for the teambuilding session. A Man was calmer. He only spoke when he really needed to. We were amazed with that immediate change.

2. Last week, we had a new apprentice we’ll call ‘Miss B’. We were in our weekly Work In Progress Meeting (WIP) on Thursdays, and at the end of every WIP we always have a feedback session. Each and every person will have an opportunity to say something. So, when it came to “Miss B’s” turn and this would be the third day she’d been with us. When she opened her mouth, she started saying why she could not work for long hours and continued giving excuses about her ailments even before she began the real work. This was just warm-up. She continued blabbering about these excuses and until a point she realized what she was saying did not make any sense at all. This is exactly what she said at the end “I don’t know what I am saying. This is how I am”. Another example of talking for the sake of talking. For every individual who joins our organization, we will explain our company’s working culture and a choice is given before joining and yes she agreed to it. Miss B did not show up the following Monday. And that evening was the last we saw of her.

I’d like to share with you a few things you should do & not do to prevent you from getting this disease:

1. Think first before you talk or say something.
2. Use common sense.
3. LISTEN and observe first before making a point.
4. If you have ailments, especially minor ones, don’t make it an excuse not to perform a task. People don’t care.
5. Lastly, always be responsible for your communication.

Walk The Talk!

I’m going to make this week’s blog as simple and as easy as it possible can be.

I’m always excited to be involved in public training as it will bring together a group of Individuals from different organizations with different values.
This week I had the privilege to facilitate the Customer Focus Selling Program organized by ATCEN at the ATCEN Learning Center. Ten individuals from various Sales background and organizations came together to learn and share valuable knowledge in regards to Effective Customers Service and Sales.


We came together, shared experience, spoke about a few sales theories, and most importantly we had fun. Now, one may wonder what does this have to do with Team Events?

At the end of the Training, the group of 10 individuals participated in a Team Challenge that would require them to put everything they had learned in to practice. Prior to that, a few of the individuals had a conversation with me in regards to the importance of having more theoretical methodology to increase sales performance.

And what do you know? It was these same individuals who were so insistent on theories that caused them to fail in the Final Team Challenge.

The results speak for itself, It’s easy to talk about theories, it’s the implementation and practice that counts. They had an amazing breakthrough after the activities. Walk your talk!!!

Talking about teambuilding can be cheap. Over the past few days I’ve learnt that It will take an individual to really care about and give their all to make a team effective.

One individual can make a difference to the team. The choice is yours!

Corporate Teambuilding : Which One You Would Prefer, Indoor or Outdoor Activities?

In the past few months, I’ve been dealing with companies wanting to conduct teambuilding and it’s very exciting when finding out their needs for teambuilding. Some people talk about what their company wants, but some talk about what they want. There’s also the question as to whether the activities should be more to indoor or outdoor.

Both indoor and outdoor activities have its own advantages. Indoor activities are more relaxing but it can be challenging as well. For instance, the electric maze, straw tower and mental challenge puzzles or math questions. Although it’s not physically challenging, it still requires team effort to get the task done and within the time frame allocated.

Some examples of outdoor activities are white water rafting, flying fox, rope course and the Amazing Race. These activities bring the participants totally into the moment. I’ve seen awkwardness, fear, trust issues, intensity and the process of how they overcome these challenges. Action can destroy fears.

I personally feel it’s not about indoor or outdoor activities that the focus should be on. The most crucial thing is whether the activities can meet the companies objectives of teambuilding or not. Any kind of teambuilding will provide experiential learning to the participants.

This is because all teambuilding activities (either indoor or outdoor) help the group to work together in team, how they communicate with each other in order to get things done, encourage problem solving & decision making, build trust, increase the value of the team members, sharing knowledge as well as relying on each individual’s ability, skill or expertise.

In the end, they’ll get to know each other better and the team will strengthen their bond. I suggest that a combination of both indoor and outdoor activities will be more fun and meaningful to the team.