PlayTime Inc. Team Building & Leadership News

Welcome UW Executive Programs at our NEW Sleeping Lady, Leavenworth, WA course!

It was great to work again with Melanie Reynolds and her new team, Mary Larson & Kathy Foster.

This was our first event at the amazing retreat center, Sleeping Lady, and it is another spectacular course, from mountain top panoramic views to a cache on the front door of a radio station.

This was a great session that brought many team building and leadership topics, such as alliances, trust and the real time use of strategy to achieve goals.

Here are some of the quotes from the event:
"Good thing to do prior to beginning the planning for a big project"
"Great teambuilding experience and gaining stratgeic commitments from individuals provides a "take away""
"Exciting and adventurous!"
"Real life. Both the experience plus John's ability to pull the leadership principles out were a terrific package"
"It was great--good learning experience. Easy to take back to the company."
"Excellent way to explore your true comfort zone--how you do something is how you do everything."
"It is an amazing learning experience that I'd love to repeat."
"Good especially for multi-facilitation in a division to collaborate outside of their immediate group."
"Good treasure hunt where you learn more about your teammates."
"Useful and fun way to learn strategy, teamwork, planning and active learning"
"Great way to learning about others and their style in group participation"

Participants in this program included senior manager from Weyerhauser, ActiveLight, Mikron Vinyl, & Quadrant Homes. If you need a venue for your next team building event, we HIGHLY recommend The Sleeping Lady!

http://www.sleepinglady.com

F5 Global Sales Team joins the geoteaming family!

PLAYTIME Inc. welcome F5 to our growing family. We completed a 1/2 day event on our Seattle Pike Place Market Course, with great photos such as a team member actually catching a REAL fish at the Pike Place Fish Market while learning how to collaborate and lead on a much bigger, cross-team scale.

"Great team building event that makes you think outside your normal realm."
"It's a way to understand yourself better and others--especially as it applies to working around and with others.'
"Fantastic team sport/team building activity!"

"PLAYTIME Inc. tailored a team building outing directly in line with goals I'd set for the event, providing key learning for my sales team. Many on the team said it was the best team building experience they've had and we had a lot of fun. Thanks PLAYTIME Inc."

Ananta Hejeebu
Global Sales Director
http://www.f5.com
F5 makes cutting edge software for monitoring and keeping uptime on critical web servers.

We hope your company is next to join!
http://www.playtimeinc.com

HALTS - Restoring Your Greatness Now

Are you having a bad day? Is something not going your way?

HALT!!!! - Stop whatever you're doing now and listen to this leadership tip from my past coach and incredible leader, Matt Beucler of Extraordinary Living. http://www.extraordinaryliving.com

If you're uncentered, not feeling well, or just having a bad day, HALT! Stop what you're doing. Take notice of yourself now and check...Are you:
Hungry?
Angry?
Lonely?
Tired? or
Stressed?

Matt Beucler, executive coach to over 1,500 clients, teaches his clients to HALT what their doing and take the time to restore their greatness.
If you're Hungry, eat.
If you're Angry, release the anger.
If you're Lonely, love someone.
If you're Tired, recharge and refresh.
If you're Stressed, release the stress.

When you feel good, you do good. When you feel mediocre, you do mediocre. If you feel bad, you'll do bad. Life is precious, make sure you choose wisely and get the most joy, success and fulfillment humanly possible out of your time here on earth.

This simple exercise is a pattern interrupt that can take as short as 1-3 minutes. By breaking the pattern, dealing with the issue and reconnecting to your greatness, you can easily gain return on your time invested by higher productivity.

Make sure you ask yourself, "What is the best investment of my time for the next hour or two?" and then just do it with passion!

So HALT and restore your greatness now!

Going Small To Go Big - How To Kick Start Your Team

This tip has shown up in multiple events, so I thought it was time to share it. There have been at least 3 occurances where I've seen a team who is solely focused on getting the highest revenue (and thus more difficult sites) first comes back with one of the lowest results. With all the focus on aim high, go big and set big goals, how can this be?

Here is the KEY distinction that would immediately help these teams - Go Small To Go Big. The concept is, if you're going to go big, make sure to get some small wins along the way. Even getting one small win gives your team immediate feedback about what they are doing well, that they can achieve success and that they can move on to the harder, more challenging goals. Nothing is more demoralizing or destroys momentum then to go for a big goal on the first shot and fail. Much like the process of learning, a team needs to get that hit that their process is working and that they can do better.

This is backed up in Rudy Gulianni's book "Leadership". This strategy was used as soon as Rudy took office. He took a seemingly small problem, NY City Window Washers, you know, the street people who come up with greasy rags, spray & clean your window, then demand money for their services. This was a key point from the voters and from out of town tourists who did not like this. With his staff, they found a jaywalking law that made the window washers illegal, then they went to enforce it.

Within a week, the window washers were gone. People and press took immediate positive notice and Rudy's team went on with the confidence and momentum that comes with even a seemingly minor and small win.

Next time you put together a team with big, big goals (and BTW I think you should have big goals), then remember to ask yourself, what's a small goal that we can achieve along the way to kick start our team.

I hope you enjoy these TEAM tips and I look forward to seeing you at your next event.

-John Chen
CEO, PLAYTIME Inc.
Infusing Team and Leadership Skills Through Technology and Adventure
http://www.playtimeinc.com