Teams that perform at a high level are foundational to the success of organizations today. Collaboration and effective communication are the primary benefits. Teambuilding has become a primary vehicle for helping individuals work better together to accomplish important results. Most people who have experienced teambuilding talk about how it benefited them both as individuals and the team as a whole. Teambuilding is a vehicle for ensuring that individuals work together harmoniously, productively, and effectively to maximize task accomplishment and goal achievement. Teambuilding provides participants with skills and knowledge that will increase their personal effectiveness and ultimately, the effectiveness of the entire group.

Since teamwork involves participants interacting with one another, it makes sense that the primary focus of the teambuilding is on having team members actively engage with one another to understand team issues and to work collectively to develop action plans on how best to resolve them. It is an established fact that adults learn best by doing. So, teambuilding capitalizes on this fact and utilizes structured and engaging activities, discussions, and action planning for people to interact with one another to share their experiences and insights. In teambuilding, participants take an active role in jointly experiencing an event, reflecting on it, and sharing what they learned from it.

Overall Teambuilding Objectives

Two realities have helped shape organizational life today: first, all organizations are faced with a primary challenge to produce consistently superior performance. Second, superior teamwork and high performing teams have been demonstrated to be a consistent strategy for producing superior performance.

Teamwork is what leverages the potential of an organization into superior results to:

• Create awareness and understanding of how cohesive and collective leadership more so than individual management, is required to drive successful department and organizational objectives.
• Promote the value and benefits of teamwork, cooperation, and effective communication among participants.
• Provide participants with an understanding of the principles needed for effective teamwork and effective communication as well as the characteristics of high performing teams and team members.
• Clarify how the current state of the team compares to the desired future state of the team.
• Develop agreement on what the team needs to do to effectively foster high levels of cohesion, collaboration, communication, and teamwork within the team.
• Foster commitment, trust, candor, and constructive dialogue within the team.
• Create a high level of engagement and interaction among team members.
• Provide an opportunity for participants to develop meaningful relationships with one another and to understand how to best work with one another given their individual personality types.
• Conduct a variety of team activities and interactions that foster a stronger sense of teamwork, collaboration, and effective communication among meeting participants.
• Engage team members in active problem-solving of issues affecting the team.

A Few Benefits of Teambuilding

• Teamwork - learning how to work together effectively will create efficiency and knowledge on how to manage each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Communication - good communication is vital for a high performing team. Team building can help break down barriers in communication and also how to better utilize both verbal and non-verbal forms of communication.
• Leadership - all teams need leadership from one or all members in a team. Structured teambuilding activities will identify leadership qualities in individuals and highlight areas where all staff can contribute as leaders.
• Bonding - bonding is important as it can create that sense of looking out for each other and helps to build trust among teams. Teambuilding provides the opportunity to learn about each other and grow respect for each other in a non-threatening and fun environment.
• Trust - through the tasks and exercises in a teambuilding program, participants will learn more about each other. They will learn strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, and fears, with these learnings contributing to a deeper relationship and trust among team members.
• Morale - a positive and enthusiastic team will create good morale in the workplace. Team building programs can often identify barriers to positive morale and highlight strategies to create more fun and positivity in day-to-day work.

Partial List of Teambuilding Testimonials

• “Jeff: Thanks so much for the job you did for us.  I am still getting positive feedback from our folks about the worth of the teambuilding program and the great job you did.  I know that the results of the event will be realized for years to come!
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  Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do to assist you in the future. Also, my staff and I will definitely utilize you in the future!”
  
  ‍Bob Ramsey, Chief of Police, Fontana Police Department
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• “Jeff, I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you did for our team.  Your passion and excellence are evident and greatly appreciated.  I have been to three of these events and this was by far the most beneficial and truly focus driven and applicable.  You dealt with a very eclectic type A motivated energetic group and fit right in!!  Forever grateful for the impact you had on our team!”
  
  Angela Stover, Captain, Fontana Police Department
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• 3 months later…2^nd teambuilding for Sergeants
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  ‍“Jeff,I had the honor of attending the teambuilding event this week and just wanted to say I had a great time working with you and the other members from my department.  I know from talking with my peers that we all walked away with a positive outlook and a renewed interest taking our department to new heights.
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  On aside note, I took a book to read after the sessions called "TheMartian."  It's about an astronaut who gets stranded onMars during a space mission.  The folks at NASA and JPL are put under extreme deadlines to bring the astronaut home and have no choice but to work together as a "High Performing Team."  Anyways to make a long story short, I found it interesting and coincidental that the story emulated and reinforced many of the points discussed during our workshop.  The importance of communication, trust, and empowerment to name a few, are necessary to complete the mission. 
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  Thank you again for a great workshop that undoubtedly will have a lasting and meaningful impact on our organization.  I hope we will be able to work together in the future.”
  
  ‍Brian Heaviside, Sergeant, Fontana Police Department
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• "Jeff: I want to let you know how effective your Teambuilding Program has been for our staff. We were experiencing difficulty communicating and the staff and management appeared to be drifting apart and losing continuity. For whatever reason, the dynamics of our team were changing and creating pockets of turmoil, frustration and confusion.
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  Due to the complex nature of our campus and the demands of our client, we cannot be successful without good communication and continually strive to learn and excel at all that we do. Your understanding of the essence of the team dynamic was apparent and you customized a teambuilding program which addressed our specific needs.
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  Through your efforts, we spent a productive day refreshing and rebuilding the elements of a successful team to get back to where we need to be. Great job!"
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  Glenn Wickliffe, Chief Engineer, Colliers International
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• "Wolf Management Consultants did an excellent job designing a two-day teambuilding event for my organization. We had several new colleagues join our team recently, and I had a sense that a retreat was needed to enhance internal communications. I asked Susan to design a workshop that would help to integrate the new members into the existing group to create a very high-functioning team. Susan did a very thorough job of interviewing staff members so that she had a clear sense for our organizational culture and challenges. She tailored the workshop to our unique needs and was also very flexible whenever on-the-spot suggestions were made to modify the agenda she had planned.
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  Feedback from our team after the workshop was extremely positive, and we have seen improvements as a result of the workshop. I would definitely useJeff and Susan again and highly recommend them."
  
  Amy Short, Chief Operating Officer, The Chicago Public Education Fund
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• I asked Wolf Management Consultants to design a one-day teambuilding event for my finance department. Although we are a relatively young group, we've been together for almost two years and had accomplished a lot during that timeframe. I asked Kay to design a day that would not only reinforce what we had accomplished but would also demonstrate how much more was still available to us by growing further as a team.
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  She did a wonderful job of meeting with me ahead of time to understand what my goals were, and what I wanted us to learn and take away from this day. She took that information, along with information from the rest of the group and designed our event. The result was a day that was interactive, challenging, insightful, motivating, and above all else fun! Jeff, thanks again to you and Kay."
  
  Steve Kelley, Director of Finance, TransWorld Media
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• “Our firm recently worked with Jeff Wolf and Russ Day, both to co-deliver leadership training with an internal presenter, and to develop and deliver a full day experiential event that would challenge the participants to "live" the theory they were learning in the classroom.
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  Jeff and Russ did an outstanding job becoming familiar with the underlying concepts of the material and weaving insights throughout the training and the experiential event. Jeff was extremely flexible in working with his co-instructor and added great value by keeping the class on track and sharing his extensive leadership experience with the group. He built a great rapport with the participants in the session, and the participants found significant value in the pairing of the outside perspective with the in-house experience of our internal presenter.
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  The experiential event exceeded my expectations. The level of challenge provided was appropriate, and at the same time, the participants really enjoyed the session, while learning all the while. I'm still hearing positive comments about the boat races!
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  I was very pleased with how flexible and accommodating Wolf Management Consultants was as we planned the session together and look forward to future projects.”
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  Mary Farias, Manager Leadership Development Programs, BDO Seidman, LLP
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• “Wolf Management's teambuilding program couldn’t have come at a better time for our company. After a recent reorganization, teamwork and departmental tensions were running high. After talking with Jeff Wolf, we decided to focus on reestablishing the strong bond and teamwork that had existed before the restructuring.
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  Asa result, Jeff wove a teamwork and trust theme throughout the various working sessions and managed to share tidbits of knowledge and insight that every employee could relate to the overall goals of our organization, as well as his/her new role in helping to accomplish those goals. His enthusiasm was absolutely contagious …I’m certain we’ll have him back again. Well done, Jeff!”
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  Rick Lundy, Director of Business Development, SiteLab International Inc.
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• "In construction, clear and constant communication can often mean the difference between success and failure. Taylor Frager, Inc. recently hired Wolf Management to facilitate a 2-day workshop for our Senior Management team. We walked away closer as a team, understanding very specific techniques to communicate at the Senior Management level and how to communicate to our employees.
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  Our second day led us through a series of exercises to extract some very definable goals for the next year. We are currently using this new set of tools as a platform for developing a long-term strategy forour company. Without the leadership of Wolf Management, we would be years behind where we are now."
  
  ‍James M. Frager – President, Taylor Frager, Inc
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• "Jeff Wolf conducted a teambuilding program for our entire management team. Not only did everyone learn key concepts that they could immediately apply to their groups, but we grew closer as a team through the experience.
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  Since our program, I’ve been getting a steady stream of positive feedback from the team. There is no doubt in my mind that we will see a tremendous performance benefit from our training, and we are already clearing our calendars for another workshop later in the year."
  
  John D. Fish, CEO, Hubbard One