Dedicated to Igniting Brilliance in Your Organization
Issue: 1
Summer 2008
Welcome to the first issue of SPARK!
We are excited to bring you useful articles and information that will engage your brain along with a bit of levity. This newsletter will SPARK! ideas, thoughts, and action to help you ignite brilliance in your organization.
In this issue, we review teambuilding and how it can help transform organizations. Have you ever wondered what motivates your employees? Check out the first article that reviews an exciting new model which helps translate teambuilding into employee motivation. Also have a look at our Spotlight that examines the benefits of experiential teambuilding in relation to organizational change.
Don't forget to test your Olympic knowledge. Take the Quiz for a chance at winning an iTunes gift card!
Are you ready? Please read on.
Teambuilding is Really About Employee Motivation
The Purpose: Highlighting research on the connection between belonging and employee motivation
A powerful model of employee motivation has been developed by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria and outlined in their 2002 book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. The model outlines four main drivers of employee motivation: a) the drive to Acquire, b) the drive to Bond, c) the drive to Comprehend, and d) the drive to Defend.
These four drives underlie employee motivation and addressing these aspects will pay dividends.
This comprehensive look at motivation provides a fresh perspective on teambuilding programs - they help employees satisfy their drive to Bond. Based on this, the typical thought process surrounding teambuilding programs should also change. Teambuilding programs should no longer just focus on people "letting off steam" or "having fun" but instead, expand to include how people interact and form relationships with one another and the organization.
Do your teambuilding programs:
Provide an opportunity for employees to effectively bond with other employees in the organization?
Create communal experiences that build lasting memories that add to the team's shared history?
Develop new "corporate" language that helps create a sense of belonging to the team? (this also plays into the drive to Defend)
Focus on improving how employees interact and bond?
Facilitate employee understanding of how their team can be more effective and productive by improving how their work processes? (this also enhances the drive to Comprehend)
At The Lantern Group, our focus is on creating team building programs that build on this motivational model - in fact, we've been doing it for years without knowingly following this framework. Our focus is always on making the teambuilding event one that highlights the team's sense of belonging to the organization, creates positive interactions that last beyond the event itself, and promotes opportunities to help employees bond.
Teambuilding is more than just fun and games - it demonstrates the team's potential when the drive to bond is energized.
The Lantern Group provides a wide array of teambuilding programs- from on-going team consulting, to multi-day excursions, to half-day workshops, to one-hour fun networking sessions. For more information click here.
Spotlight: Supporting Change One Fall and One Spider at a Time
The Goal: To Support Change Through Experiential Learning
The Lantern Group, Inc. has formed a partnership with a fast growing startup company, Endurance America during the past year. Our purpose in partnering with Endurance America is to assist and support their "Breakaway Performance Architecture" programs created by Michael Kerrison.
Endurance America works with companies to move them through transformational change. This change starts at the top of the organization and weaves its way through the rest of the organization using the five different phases of the Breakaway Performance Architecture. Each phase of the program incorporates a two or three day off-site workshop aimed at working with employees to establish the desired culture and mindset of this new, changed organization.
Our work helps break people out of their comfort zone and open them up to seeing new possibilities for their organization. As part of the transformation process, The Lantern Group facilitates several experiential learning activities; these include activities such as The Trust Fall, The Spider's Web, and The Electronic Maze. Our experiential activities are designed to help break through some of the fear, silos, and cynicism that exist in most companies. Our activities are interwoven throughout each workshop in a manner that reinforces key ideas, uncovers hidden beliefs, and creates bonding at different levels inside the organization.
Workshop participants typically receive a lot of new and engaging information during the sessions; however, by the time the experiential learning activities are conducted many participants are wondering if this time the "change" would stick so they can finally make a difference in their organization. Seeds of Hope are planted throughout the workshop sessions but the seeds of Fear, Apprehension, and Anxiety still remain. Despite this, it is obvious in their eyes and body language that even before the experiential learning activities start some pertinent and powerful learning has occurred.
Throughout the workshop sessions and during our experiential learning activities, participants definitely come out of their "comfort" zone and move into the "transformational change" zone that Endurance America wants to create. Change, especially transformational change, is not easy and does not happen overnight. It is only with top-quality programs such as the ones created by Endurance America's Mike Kerrison that an organizational-wide ground-swell will maintain the momentum and direction needed to embrace transformational change.
For more information on our experiential teambuilding activities click here and for more information on Mike Kerrison's programs, go to www.enduranceamerica.com.
Take A Quiz!
The Olympics
In honor of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, test your knowledge. The first person to e-mail the correct answers to
will be recognized in the next SPARK! newsletter and receive an iTunes Gift Certificate. Good Luck!
1. Which country's team always enters last in the parade of nations at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games?
a. Greece
b. The host nation
c. Rome
d. The host nation of last Olympics
2. Which team won the most gold medals in China's Olympic history? a. Chinese Table Tennis Team
b. Chinese Diving Team
c. Chinese Badminton Team
d. Chinese Gymnastics Team
3. The mascots of Beijing 2008 are ______, each representing one color of the Olympic rings.
a. Giant Panda Panpan
b. The Five Fuwa (literally "good-luck dolls")
c. Swallow
d. Fish Beibei
We hope you have enjoyed the first issue of SPARK! If you have any questions or just want to say Hi, we would love to hear from you.
Enjoy the rest of your summer and remember that igniting brilliance in your organization is just one SPARK! away.
Our newest addition to the team is Susan Stone, MEd. Susan is an Organizational Development Strategist with over 6 years of experience. We are excited to have her on the team!
Welcome Susan.
Something to Ponder...
"Individual commitment to a group effort, that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."
~Vince Lombardi
Resource Exchange
Want to learn more about Teambuilding?
Check out some of our favorite resources ...
Books
Teamwork & Teamplay by Jim Cain & Barry Jollif
More Games Trainers Play
by Edward Scannell & John Newstrom, Ph.D.
Contact Us
Kurt Nelson (612) 396-6392
Ash Fry (401) 595-7777
Susan Stone (952) 221-1773
Telephone: (612) 396-6392
Head Office | 2404 Pleasant Ave S | Minneapolis, MN 55404
A powerful model of employee motivation has been developed by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria and outlined in their 2002 book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. The model outlines four main drivers of employee motivation:
