Organise
your Event in or around Paris
 We
have a proven track record in facilitating teambuilding events in English and French.
We find it very effective to design teambuilding events around three sets
of activities :
Know Yourself : What is my Personal Vision and What is My Value-Added
in the Team
A Playful Creativity Session Leading to A Team Action Plan, which will
help it to move towards the desired state
A Team Charter
The
first item on the agenda is an Introduction
by The Team Manager : He or she will explain the Current Reality and
the Vision for the team : What the team has accomplished so far, the short
to medium-term vision for the team and the goal for the Creativity session
(Which always starts with a "How" question : "How can we
improve...?"
Next
on the agenda is "Expectations" :
what are the participants expecting from the teamwork session?
The
facilitator then introduces the stages of team building : Forming,
Storming, Norming and Performing. "Build up, don’t knock
down."
This
is followed by a guided personal visioning exercise, during which
participants will make notes of what they have discovered about themselves.
The
next activity is to fill in a "styles" questionnaire. This
will take each participant about 15 minutes and he or she will discover
their their preferred style of influencing other people in the group
and will also give them their creative style and allow the facilitator to
create the most heterogenous small groups possible for the later group
work.
A
number of activities will then follow, such as :
-
My favorite subject at work and how I add value to
the team. A short presentation by each team member. This
is a Know-why session : each participant will give a brief
presentation based on four questions.
-
Expression of views about the present state of the
team and its competencies and challenges, through collages, drawings,
colours or whatever medium is most appropriate. The group will then
produce a composite image, representing the general view of the present
state and the desired state.
The
Second Part of the Teambuilding Event Kicks
off with the Manager introduce a team goal, usually in the format
"How to improve…" The facilitator introduces a number
of creative activities, explains them and then helps the team work towards
its goal.
In
the Third Part of the Teambuilding event, the facilitator helps the team
to develop a charter, based on values and behaviours. It will
lead on naturally from the second part of the teambuilding
event. Some teams like to concentrate on improving work-life
balance, others prefer to concentrate on reinforcing the right behaviors
in the team, knowing that a good atmosphere at work will help them to
enjoy life to the full outside.
Usually, the team easily generates the wished-fore behaviors after the
Traffic Jam exercise, however, if needed, the discussion can be stimulated
by looking at the charter from three perspectives :
From a People and Places perspective (i.e. what
behaviors could improve the space we work in and the way we interact with
each other on a daily basis ?)
From a Shared Vision and shareable Maps perspective
(how
do we need to continue to build a shared vision of the team's challenges
and how can we map the behaviours and the steps we need to get to the
vision?)
From a Self-development perspective :
How could
this charter be seen as an aid to self-development ? What short and
long-term self-development challenges for people can we identify and how
can they be made to happen to the benefit of the whole team.
The
Team Charter is then written down, based on the behaviors proposed by the
team : "These are the acceptable behaviors that we as a team want
to commit to." The charter is then signed and dated.
The facilitator will explain to the team that although this charter is
qualitiative, there are ways of producing a questionnaire based on
it. The questionnaire can then be used on a regular (six-monthly or
yearly basis) so that the team can give a quantitative opinion about how
well the charter is being respected by its members.
Depending
on the time available this can be followed by an outdoor or indoor
exercise : Create a Team Standard or Shield. The team must
create a flag or standard with messages about their values, goals or work
using whatever materials can be found in the surrounding area or from what
they brought with them..
Wrap-up
with comments from everybody in the team and end of seminar.
The
ideas for actions and action areas and the team charter will be gathered
up by Syre Consulting, who will type them up and send them to the
teamleader so that the team can start working on them as quickly as
possible after the seminar.
Above
we have presented one format for a teambuilding event, but we have used
and developed many others, in French and in
English. Our preferred way of working is to get to meet you and to
develop a format which will correspond to your needs.
Activities
can be built into the teambuilding event such as :
- learning how to play the drums (to the point
where the whole team beats in rythm)
- a regatta
- helicopter rides
- winetasting
- gastronomic tours
- team-cooking
- visits to museums and similar places of cultural
interest
In
our opinion it is always best to facilitate a teambuilding event around a
concrete objective and outcome, even if that outcome is limited to coming up with a
short action-plan and a charter. A few days
after the end of the meeting we send back to you a transcript of what
happened during the on-site or off-site meeting, with a record of all
actions or the charter behaviours which were decided upon by the group.
We have a
wide knowledge of meeting facilities, chateaux and activity-based locations
in the Paris area of France.
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So
that the team can become more integrated through the building of a shared
vision and an increase in mutual understanding and respect. The two days
will be built around a team goal, owned by the team leader, and a series
of exercises built around the question "Who am I in the team ?"
in which present patterns will be taken apart and then recomposed in the
need to move from one team state (the present state) to another (the
desired state). The seminar will end with the definition of an action plan
to meet the team's goal and with the establishment of a team charter to
which members can commit.