Employees get to know each other better and have a common experience to talk about back at work.

Team building events are very popular with companies looking to launch a new business plan or motivate their team. There has never been a more important time to maintain high morale.

Team building and planning events and activities have the potential to bring the people you employ a strong sense of direction, a powerful feeling of belonging with and on the team and clear, strategic customer-focused values.

2009 is going to be a particularly challenging year for undertaking essential business activities. However, much can be achieved with low key events, stretching a budget and linking activities to business objectives without compromising on enjoyment.

The companies which will make the most out of this challenging time are those which think in terms of the opportunity. Winning companies recognise the need to keep morale, performance and productivity high.

Properly planned and executed, team building and planning sessions heighten morale and motivation.

They deliver the results expected with strategic direction on daily tasks and goals. Employees take firm steps toward accomplishing key action items and ensuring important procedures are completed.

So when your next team building or off-site planning event is due, although relevance to business is important, our team building tours have one common feature, FUN!

Which approach to team building would you prefer to institute in your organization?


Putting Fun into Theories.

From Leadership Skills to Employee Motivation and introducing new teams.

Tours can be created around team building activities when the objective is to have fun together and strengthen bonds.

The tour guides with whom we work are all chosen to suit our own approach, professional yet fun and motivating.


We have a variety of tours designed to give your team the advantage within a responsible budget and business objectives. A well organised event can help companies to gain the competitive advantage by motivating their employees and focusing minds.

Choose from our tours:-

"MYSTERIOUS MELBOURNE"

There are many secret mysteries hidden among the lanes and alley's of Melbourne's historic past that our guide will unravel for your entertainment. From the whimsical and the quirky - to the downright scary. Read More Here:

"MARVELLOUS MELBOURNE"

You will enjoy this entertaining tour across modern Melbourne and through its arcades, laneways, and malls.

Start your journey back in time with majestic buildings built during the 1880’s Gold rush boom time and travel to the present. Read More Here:

"HISTORICAL MELBOURNE"

Meet your professional tour guide near the site of the first settlement of Melbourne and learn the interesting and important history of our city. Read More Here:


Getting Your Corporate Teambuilding Event Planning Right
Tours for corporate team building events

You could hold your conference in a venue with an event in history which ties to your theme.

Current events in some companies may lend themselves to the sites of the last World changing downturn in history and how their company survived!



History
The theory was developed at the Henley Management Centre by analysing what made teams successful during a series of management games. During this analysis, nine team roles were identified. We are a combination of all nine roles, however, generally two or three will be more prominent. These nine roles can be broken down into three categories as follows:

Cerebral

- Plant, Specialist and Monitor Evaluator

Action

- Shaper, Implementer and Completer Finisher

People

- Coordinator, Teamworker and Resource Investigator

The Nine Belbin Team Roles summary:


1. Plant
Creative, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves difficult problems. However tends to ignore incidentals and be too

immersed to communicate effectively.

2. Resource Investigator
Extrovert, enthusiastic, communicative. Explores opportunities and networks with others. However can be over optimistic and loses interest after initial enthusiasm has waned.

3. Co-ordinator
Belbin's Co-ordinator is a mature, confident and a natural chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision-making and delegates effectively. However can be seen as manipulative and controlling. Can over delegate by off loading personal work.

4. Shaper
Challenging, dynamic, thrives under pressure. Jumps hurdles using determination and courage. However can be easily provoked and ignorant of the feelings of others.

5. Monitor Evaluator
Even tempered, strategic and discerning. Sees all the options and judges accurately. However can lack drive and lack inspired leadership qualities.

6. Team Worker
Co-operative, relationship focused, sensitive and diplomatic. Belbin described the Team Worker as a good listener who builds relationships and who dislikes confrontation. However can be indecisive in a crisis.

7. Implementer
Disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient. Acts on ideas. However can be inflexible and slow to see new opportunities.

8. Completer-Finisher
Conscientious and anxious to get the job done. An eye for detail, good at searching out the errors. Finishes and delivers on time however can be a worrier and reluctant to delegate.

9. Specialist
Single minded self starter. Dedicated and provides specialist knowledge. The rarer the supplier of this knowledge, said Belbin, the more dedicated the specialist. However can be stuck in their niche with little interest in the world outside it and dwell on technicalities.

People in every workplace talk about building the team, working as a team, and my team, but few understand how to create the experience of team work or how to develop an effective team. Belonging to a team, in the broadest sense, is a result of feeling part of something larger than yourself. It has a lot to do with your understanding of the mission or objectives of your organization.

In a team-oriented environment, you contribute to the overall success of the organization. You work with fellow members of the organization to produce these results. Even though you have a specific job function and you belong to a specific department, you are unified with other organization members to accomplish the overall objectives. The bigger picture drives your actions; your function exists to serve the bigger picture.

You need to differentiate this overall sense of teamwork from the task of developing an effective intact team that is formed to accomplish a specific goal. People confuse the two team building objectives. This is why so many team building seminars, meetings, retreats and activities are deemed failures by their participants.

Leaders failed to define the team they wanted to build. Developing an overall sense of team work is different from building an effective, focused work team when you consider team building

Twelve Cs for Team Building

Executives, managers and organization staff members universally explore ways to improve business results and profitability. Many view team-based, horizontal, organization structures as the best design for involving all employees in creating business success.

No matter what you call your team-based improvement effort: continuous improvement, total quality, lean manufacturing or self-directed work teams, you are striving to improve results for customers. Few organizations, however, are totally pleased with the results their team improvement efforts produce. If your team improvement efforts are not living up to your expectations, this self-diagnosing checklist may tell you why. Successful team building, that creates effective, focused work teams, requires attention to each of the following.

•Clear Expectations: Has executive leadership clearly communicated its expectations for the team’s performance and expected outcomes? Do team members understand why the team was created? Is the organization demonstrating constancy of purpose in supporting the team with resources of people, time and money? Does the work of the team receive sufficient emphasis as a priority in terms of the time, discussion, attention and interest directed its way by executive leaders?



•Context: Do team members understand why they are participating on the team? Do they understand how the strategy of using teams will help the organization attain its communicated business goals?

Can team members define their team’s importance to the accomplishment of corporate goals? Does the team understand where its work fits in the total context of the organization’s goals, principles, vision and values?



•Commitment: Do team members want to participate on the team? Do team members feel the team mission is important? Are members committed to accomplishing the team mission and expected outcomes?

Do team members perceive their service as valuable to the organization and to their own careers?

Do team members anticipate recognition for their contributions? Do team members expect their skills to grow and develop on the
team?

Are team members excited and challenged by the team opportunity?

Want to make your next team building activity or team building exercise live up to its true potential?

Integrate the team building with real-time work goals. Establish a systematic workplace integration and follow-up process - before you go on the team building adventure. You need to make the good feelings and the outcomes from the team building activity last beyond the final team building exercise.

Impact of Team Building Events
Without this attention to integration, corporate team building or planning events are, at best, a short term boost to employee enthusiasm and positive morale. If they are planned and executed well, people feel good about themselves and about each other.

A frequent expectation from team building activities is that they build trust. Team building events have little to do with building trust, however, unless company planning, that is carefully followed up on and yields real results, is part of the team building or retreat.

Team Building Downsides and Risks
At worst, team building sessions help employees become cynical about their organizations. This occurs when the team building events are held outside of the context of the company’s normal way of doing business. If you send people off to a team building event, as an example, but all rewards in your company are based on individual goals and efforts, the team building event will have no lasting impact.

People will lose productive hours complaining about the time and energy invested in the team building or planning activities. Unhappiness, management criticism and employees complaining to each other sap energy, productivity and joy from the work day.

An event that is not followed up with meaningful activities in the workplace should not be held. They harm trust, motivation, employee morale and productivity. They don’t solve the problems for which they were scheduled and held. You will eventually lose the people you most want to keep – especially if they don’t see your organization getting better as a result of off-site team building and planning sessions.

If the team building event has no follow up, people become jaded about such events as a waste of time and energy. In fact, I don’t lead team building events that are just for team building without a business purpose, in addition to, or to build the event around. With recent organizational downsizing and cost cutting, people feel as if they are already doing more than one job. In this context, team building for team building’s sake has lost popularity.

Team Building Success Factors
The success of a team building or of a strategic planning activity begins well before the start of the sessions.

Use a team to plan the event since you want to model the behavior you seek from the team building sessions you schedule. The likely long-term effectiveness of a team building event or corporate retreat is enhanced when you incorporate annual team building events into an overall company structure. This cultural framework of philosophies, values and practices is designed to build the concept of “team” on a regular basis. In this environment, team building sessions can yield supportive results.

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