Are You in Or Out For Change? Building Team Spirit in a Nutshell

The inception of a team is as indispensable as creating a work of art. It needs careful planning and a lot of preparation.

Every team member will need to have the ability to flow with constant change in his or her work lifestyle.

Every day is a great day and a new opportunity to inject vitality into your team and organization and have it become a natural way of working.

The results of your efforts in building team spirit will not show in an instant. You need a persistent coordination with all members of the team so that all problems will be manageable and bearable for everyone.

So here are 5 fundamental ways to build team spirit.

1. Unlock your inborn creativity.
Learn how to solve any problem, overcome any obstacle, and achieve any goal at any given time. The use of imagination and resourcefulness is a must-have in any working experience. The drastic and dramatic changes we face these days always results in the kind of working life we lead.

2. Be prepared to climb from peak to peak.
As you achieve one success, immediately start working on your next new goal. In this way, you will be making a continuous effort to build up and strengthen your performance.

3. Get around the right people.
You become a part of what you are around so surround yourself with winners. If you are always dealing with the positive thinkers, you will have the tendency to become just like them. Remember, you are who you're friends are.

4. Be decisive and action oriented.
Successful people think things through, and then make a decision, and then act. Base your good decisions on knowledge, priorities and awareness of risks.

5. Most importantly, never allow failure to be an option.
Always believe and know that you can do it. A team member who has the right amount of confidence to battle every disaster that drags him down will be successful.

In any given situation, a team member who keeps the team spirit alive and does not take accomplishments and resources for granted will be highly productive.

These guaranteed team building techniques point toward success. They all require embracing change. Are you in or out for change?

By : Jo_Romano

A Chain is No Stronger Than Its Weakest Link

Have you ever been in a situation where you have to push someone to do what he or she is supposed to do but afraid to get their feelings hurt? And no matter how you tried, you just can not get the fire burning in them.

It is so frustrated to have people like that especially in a team, you are given a specific duration of time to complete a project but it seems like goal is far too ambitious when that person are not doing his or her job properly and what is even worst, is they are not even aware of it!

For this topic we will be using "pet turtle" to describe these laid-back friends of ours.

So here is how you should approach these pet turtles, and start seeing progress and a glimpse of hope in your deadlines.

Ask what their priorities or would like to have at work- there are some instances where your employees capabilities and skill are just not fitted for the tasks he have, he might be good at something else inside the team, so do not hesitate to ask them, in that way, a boss that wants to know his employees well, will give them a feeling of importance in the team. That is a good start.

create a goal for the team and be authoritative about it! It is okay to be nice and gracious but make sure that your sense of authority is not being push to the side.

Be straight-forward about what you want to accomplish at a certain point and monitor each work being done.

You just can not let few people sabotage the overall productivity of your team. Set goals and deadlines for your pet turtles and we will see from there if they are really capable of what they are doing.

Do what you preach. You as a boss cannot be a plain talker or motivational speaker, you should always always be the role model for your employees. Your work ethics will be the voice for your expectations from your team.

Put a finger on their face- off course not in literal terms but to pinpoint their accomplishments, once in a while people want to be recognized for the extra effort they have imparted on their task, do not be such a cold-heart, let them feel and see that you are noticing their hard work and be appreciative about it. It is a very nice way to rekindle the fire among your team members.

Offer them career opportunities and promotion. Again, you have to know what work or tasks interest them the most and how long do they see themselves doing that work.

In that sense, they will be more motivated to improve or to better themselves because they will think that it is not hard to be successful on something that they really love doing at the first place.

There is a lot of rooms for improvement- it is critical that you know what your employees are good at, and then give them the materials and training to further develop what they already have. In that manner, you are empowering your work force at the same time, your putting your money on the right place.

Lastly, understand that sometimes being too nice is not an option at all- if your power to persuade them is not working, it is not a question of your leadership, there are just some people that is not good at teamwork or just being a plain follower, they might excel better on their own, so do not be afraid to let them go.

In that way your are opening opportunities for them to go after what they really want and opportunities for those who really deserve their position.

So limit your nicety and be more firm with your conditions. It will better your company and it will better their work ethics as well.

So there you are, I hope you find this article helpful. And I hope that the next time that I will be viewed, it will come from someone who was referred by you.


By : Mariaclara_Mayumi_De_Filipina

Stop the Blamers

What do you do when someone on the team is unwilling to own up to anything? If there is a mistake or some other kind of problem, this person almost always blames something or someone else for causing the problem.

Blaming is a behavior that hurts teamwork. First of all everyone starts worrying about being blamed. Trust among team members declines. Communication erodes. Fighting increases.

Second, blame keeps us from what we are trying to do. Our goal should be to identify and solve problems. If our energy is focused on who to blame, it is not on what happened and how we might prevent it from happening again.

If blame is a problem on your team, I recommend working hard to do something about it. Here are three actions you might take.

* Evaluate the environment. You need to figure out why people are blaming others. What happens to people who make mistakes?

Are people rewarded for blaming others, reinforcing the bad behavior? What is it about the system that makes this behavior acceptable?

* Point out the behavior. Sometimes, as we defend ourselves, we turn so quickly to blaming that we are not conscious of the behavior.

Provide the person with feedback about his or her blaming behavior and inquire about the cause for it. You might learn something important while helping the person gain a valuable insight.

* Shift the frame. Help people understand that we need not find someone to blame, but might better use our time understanding what happened so that we can learn from it and hopefully prevent it from repeating.

By : Tom_LaForce

Executive Team Building - Resolving Communication Breakdowns on Teams

Success in business is a team effort and in order for teams to be successful they must be able to communicate effectively.

In spite of the best attempts to keep teams performing at a high level, executives are often faced with communication breakdowns when building teams.

Communication breakdowns can be caused by a number of reasons. Let's look at a few of the major reasons and what can be done to prevent them.

The first reason why communication fails on teams is lack of trust. When team members trust each other there is a free flow of communication.

Trust starts with having confidence that all team members are committed to the goals and objectives of the team. So, the first step to building trust is to establish a team direction..

Once the team direction is established the team has a unifying target to strive after. Having the team work together to establish the direction is important.

Everyone should feel they had a hand in setting the goals for the team. Having everyone involved is also a great way to establish buy-in.

After establishing the team direction, continue to build trust in a variety of ways. Sometimes it's as simple as team members going out to lunch with each other.

You could also have special meetings that team members work together to create or special team building sessions.

The bottom line is when the team trusts each other, they communicate more effectively with each other.

Team conflict is another reason for breakdowns in communication. Actually, it is not the team conflict, but the failure to resolve team conflict that creates the breakdown.

Conflict on teams will occur. Conflict is good because out of conflict usually comes the best ideas, plans, solutions, action items, etc.

However, when there is unresolved conflict, communication fails. One way to resolve conflict is to have a set of core values that the team will govern themselves by.

Establishing core values lays a foundation for decision making and team interactions. Sometimes it may take the leader to get involved, but most conflict can be ironed out by simply referring to the team's core values.

Stress is often a factor in communication breakdowns on teams. Stress is difficult to judge because everybody has a different tolerance for stress.

What might be stressful to one person is not stressful to another. Most stress is caused by time pressure.

While you can't always eliminate time pressure, there are some things you can do to minimize it. Planning really effective way to minimize stress. Setting realistic aggressive time frames from the get go can prevent major stress later on.

Communication breakdowns will occur even with the best efforts to keep it at bay. Let's face it, in six thousand years of recorded history, we as human beings still have not mastered the communication challenge.

However, if you will implement some of the above suggestions, you can keep your teams on target to reach their goals.

By : Shari_Roth

Is Life Path Unlimited Right For You? - Everything You Need to Know

If you've been doing your research on LifePath Unlimited you already know there's a lot of noise online, a lot of hype and misinformation going both ways.

Half the reviews you read are screaming "LifePath Scam!", while the other half make it sound like God's gift to humanity. There are a lot of LifePath complaints, particularly from new distributors who didn't get the training or coaching they needed. And then there are glowing LifePath reviews from veteran up-liners.

So how do you get past all the noise and just get the truth?

My goal is to cut through all that nonsense and just give you the straight facts about LifePath Unlimited, so that you can make an educated business decision for yourself.

Before you start any business - online or brick-and-mortar - you owe it to yourself to get all the facts up-front. Start up costs. Monthly costs. Training. Coaching. Systems.

And you should have a crystal clear idea of exactly what you'll need to do in order to build a successful business in terms of marketing strategies & techniques. Not theoretical fluff or "rah-rah" motivation. I'm talking about detailed, concrete action steps that you can take every single day.

Here's a simple detailed breakdown of exactly what you can expect with LifePath, so you can make up your own mind whether or not it's a good fit for you.

The first thing you want to understand is that before you can earn commissions from selling LifePath Unlimited, you first have to buy the products yourself, and there's 3 products: Discovery, Breakthrough, and Destiny.

Discovery is a home study course they ship to your house. It comes with audio CDs, a journal and a workbook. And there's also a 45 minute DVD which is like an introductory promotional movie. The price tag on that is $1,695.

Breakthrough is a 3 day conference that will cost you $8,995. For that you get to attend seminars, listen to motivational speakers, and take part in various mind/body exercises leading up to the main event, which is a fire-walk.

Destiny is a 5 day conference with live events and self development training, and it ends in a big costume party. For all that, they want you to pay $14,995.

You're not required to buy all 3 products up-front but if you want to earn the commission you have to spend the money. So, realistically, you're looking at an initial investment of $25,685 to get started with LifePath Unlimited as a home based business.

And that's not including a marketing budget or training platform.

$26K is a pretty big chunk of change, and here's the question: "What do I actually get for spending all that money?"

The basic LifePath pitch is that by joining the program, you're getting access to great personal development strategies and teachers that will help you achieve a real breakthrough in your life.

Now, I'm all for personal development and community-building amongst like-minded people. And many of the speakers involved in the LifePath Conferences seem very energetic and fun to be around. But I look closely and you'll see that none of the big names in personal development are involved with LifePath Unlimited. Not the ones that major Fortune 100 companies trust, guys like Jack Canfield or Marc Victor Hanson.

And here's the thing. I can go to a live 4-Day Tony Robbins event (including coursework, CDs, and the whole fire-walk experience) for only $600. I mean, compare 4 days live with the number one reigning personal development guru of our time, Tony Robbins, for $600, versus a 5 day conference with lesser-known speakers for $15,000.

The bottom line here is that if you're looking for elite personal development, you can get far superior training, products and services, for a lot less money.

So when it comes to LifePath at $26K, you have to ask: why the big mark-up?

And the answer is simple. That's how LifePath pays out their commissions.

If you were to pay $26K to buy all three products, 60% of your money would go directly to your sponsor in the form of commissions. In other words, it's a bloated price-tag to pay the distributor, and the product itself is not worth anything near what you pay for it.

So let's be honest here. LifePath Unlimited is essentially a business opportunity to sell a business opportunity. And I'm not saying that's wrong. Certainly some people do okay in that business model.

For me personally, it's important to promote a reasonably priced product that provides real value to my customers and a very lucrative money making opportunity for myself and my team.

But the biggest flaw with LifePath Unlimited is the lack of online marketing savvy. This is an old fashioned company that doesn't embrace cutting edge marketing techniques.

They're still teaching new distributors to buy leads form a lead broker, send prospects to the corporate replicate site, and pitch their "warm" market of friends and family.

They're not familiar with advanced marketing techniques, and there's no comprehensive training platform or duplicatable marketing system in place for new team members to learn how to become successful marketers.

The lack of coaching and mentorship regarding online marketing strategies and techniques is probably the number on reason for all the LifePath complaints. And it's a valid point. How can you build a successful business if you don't know how to market effectively and leverage the power of automated systems?

At the same time, everyone is responsible for their own decisions, and a little due diligence would have uncovered that info before the seed money was spent. So you have to take all the complainers with a grain of salt.

To be perfectly fair, Lifepath Unlimited does not represent itself as something it's not. There's nothing underhanded going on here. It just is what it is.

So is LifePath Unlimited a Scam? Absolutely not. It's a legitimate business where some people make money.

But just because there's no Life Path Scam doesn't mean it's the appropriate business for you.

If you're serious about working from home and building a real online business, you can find business opportunities where you can earn a significant income without having to spend a small fortune just to get started.

There are sleeker more lucrative opportunities available where you can promote a reasonably priced product with great value and earn a six figure income in a manner that is honest and ethical.

In addition, you can join a mentor who knows how to market effectively online and will teach you the strategies tools and techniques you will need to build your business quickly and efficiently.

Will Schwartz is a professional marketer, author, and mentor who trains serious entrepreneurs on the skills and techniques to be successful in network marketing and direct sales.

Will teaches comprehensive integrated Attraction Marketing strategies using SEO, Social Media, Video Marketing, Article Marketing, AdWords and PPC, Team Building, Personal Development and Advanced Closing Techniques.

By : Will_Schwartz