Managers and leaders are encouraged to create procedures and policies that encourage people to follow proven "trails" to create a measurable outcome, maybe a sale, or a product. Mangers spend time working to make people be at their most effective.
How often do mangers, individuals, and teams push themselves out of their discipline? How often are individuals and teams given the opportunity to safely practice pushing that comfort zone, to walk a different "trail"?
Once a manager, individual, or team pushes past a comfort zone and prescribed roles they then have the ability to view a procedure or policy through a different lens.
This change of lens empowers the team and manager to create policies and procedures that can raise the effectiveness of those on the team. The manager when pushed past a comfort zone may now see that the procedures and policies themselves are an evolving and dynamic process, full of synergistic solutions.
This change of lens has the ability to illustrate that there is an abundance of ideas and creative solutions to be seized upon, and all it takes is changing you perspective pushing past the prescribed roles and comforts of the daily routine.
Within a team building program participants are encouraged to do things that scare them, to push that comfort zone to create and connect new brain based synapses and discover new ways of approaching and solving problems. To empower yourself and teams to see people and feel experiences in a way that at one point seemed impossible. An example of something that is scary to participants does not have to be dangling off a rope 60 feet in the air. This has little to no applicable references to the work environment. An example of a brain based push past set limits can be a leader truly quieting and listening to the team.
To some leaders this is the change in lens that is needed. As leaders we tend to feel that our lens is clean and that others are the problem.
The outside is the problem, pushing and opening yourself up to listening to team members whether you are a leader or not is a frightening push into discomfort. A leader may hear from their team that it is not the outside that is the problem it is inside, the leader and the current environment that is the problem.
An effective and long term team building plan is to create an open environment for team members to speak their piece have their voices be heard and respected, while at the same time having commitment to the success of the team. This can be accomplished and it takes work, a push of the comfort zone of daily routine.
The brain and mental push past limits of comfort for leaders and managers alike is a more challenging zone to break. Several of us push physical limits, how many managers and leaders push their intellectual limits and team limits?
What an effective team building facilitator is capable of doing is facilitating an environment to challenge these intellectual limits. When the facilitator leaves, your team is smarter and has new lens with an enhanced perspective on what the team is capable of accomplishing!
Are you and your team ready to break comfort limits and achieve greater results? I have customized team building programs to accomplish just that - Physically and Mentally!
-Michael Cardus: is an adventure & Team Building consultant for Create-Learning-Team Building located in Buffalo NY.