Can Cultural Differences be a Big Issue to an Organization?

Talking about the incorporation of diversity in work spaces, CEO of Society of Women, Karen Horting said, “Diversity is not an issue that just affects minorities or women. Diversity is an issue that affects the entire workforce.” Cultural differences refer to diversity of race, ethnic backgrounds, gender disparity and religious discrepancy which can all influence a company at large. According to a research about cultural diversity in workplace, company can make better decisions by 87%. Moreover, McKinsey & Company believes that inclusivity of cross-culture can enhance your financial performance by 35% compared to others. 

In 2019, you simply cannot neglect the impact lack of diversity in workplace can have on your business. Recently, Jeff Jones, the president of Uber stepped down from his position after the employees complained of feeling harassed by the HR due to lack of acceptance of differences. On the other hand, Indeed Survey in 2016 shows that 24% of people have felt discriminated against in their workplace. Many cosmetic companies and clothing businesses have also faced backlash due to racist comments or misogynistic conduct in the work place. 

At Instructure, Jeff Weber, the senior vice president of people and places has noticed that it is not only millennials or Gen-Z people who confront companies upfront about their efforts towards inclusion. According to him, “We’re hearing this from white, straight men in the Midwestern United States.” So, what are the steps that an organization can take to resolve the cultural differences? It is not enough to hire people from diverse groups if you or the team does not value their viewpoints and input with empathy. 

Besides hiring people from differing cultural backgrounds, you can also enhance their role and position by ensuring that they are treated the same as everyone else. In fact, your Human Resources team should be diverse to address any problems or uncomfortable experiences faced by your staff with diverse backgrounds. In addition, you can organize fun team building activities Singapore that will promote empathy and progress in your company. 

Fun team building activities Singapore can make a huge difference in your workplace. For example:

§ Pair two members of different groups together for a discussion and make them write about the experience other might face because of their racial, ethnic or religious background.

§ Set up a bias jar so anyone who is detected being biased has to put in a dollar and face confrontment in a healthy way to resolve their ideas.

§ Set up the ‘I am, I am not’ game where you distribute paper that can address stereotypes such as, “I am Black but I am not criminal”.

§ You should assign one project to people from diverse groups so they are working towards achieving a common goal. 

These are a few fun team building activities that can promote a more inclusive and tolerant working atmosphere. If you are a manager, you can take the lead by showing acceptance towards diverse groups and trusting people with tasks against the stereotypes of their background.

What's the End Game of your Failing Leadership?

Failure is undoubtedly one of the most commonly relatable and widely shared experience. And ironic as it may sound, success and failure are inseparable. An individual cannot expect to gain long lasting and phenomenal success until and unless he or she has had their fair share of crushing failures' in life. 

Why do leaders fail? 

Many would argue that tumbling leaderships can be blamed entirely on a wrong move at the wrong time or just a terrible turn of fate. But it takes more than bad luck to fail as a leader. According to business experts, following are some of the reasons that explain why do leaders fail; 

Lack of adaptability 

Failed leaderships can often be attributed to inability of the leaders to adapt themselves and their strategies to the changing needs of the world around them. An idea that might have made huge profits in the past would probably fail to deliver in a current scenario. Thus, the rigidity to alter their old ways and the failure to constantly learn, renew and improve their action plans have lead many to an irreversible downfall.

Lack of accountability 

Leaders that have tasted huge success often fail at handling all that sudden surge of power and praise. They begin to consider themselves infallible and cannot be bothered about constructive criticism and accountability for theirs actions, which again is a fatal flaw. 

Lack of communication 

There is no ‘I’ in leader; which means that leaders are nothing without their teams. And leaders that lack proper and effective communication between their teams often fail to explain the members what is expected of them and what should be their goals. All that remains is ambiguous instructions, faulty discussions, lack of focus and below par performance; which not only reflects bad on the leaders but also undermines the growth of their team members. 

Bouncing back from a failing leadership 

Turning massive failures into massive successes is a skill that only a few have mastered but it's not entirely impossible. Many people have made some outstanding comebacks just by accepting their failures', realising their flaws and making an honest effort towards self improvement. 

Henry Ford, the man who revolutionized industrial production in 20th century went bankrupt five times and built two companies that were a complete failure before establishing one of the most successful car companies in the world. 

Steve Jobs too wasn’t an instant success. It took him a humiliating resignation from a company he himself founded and several years of crushing failures to regain the leadership of Apple and introduce the breakthrough technical innovations like the iPhone, iPad, iPod etc. 

All this accounts for the fact perseverance, dedication and the intellect to learn from past mistakes can work wonders for any one who promises to never give up.

Righting the wrongs: How can leaders help their teams 

An effective and powerful leadership is bound to improve team performance, motivation and growth. In order to push their teams to give their very best leaders should do the following: 

1) The first thing leaders can do to help their team is to allow them to fail and provide them the confidence to learn from their mistakes while being innovative and practical. 

2) Empathetic leaders are the most successful in getting their teams to perform better. If the members know that the leaders have their back and they could easily relate to them, it could make a world of difference in company’s culture. 

3) Having an open and honest communication with the team members is extremely important for establishing a stellar leadership. Effective communication helps to outline collaborative and focused goals, eliminates workplace politics and accounts for better team role assignment. 

Thus, if you a leader struggling to overcome the towering pile of workplace problems and feel that a good rapport with your subordinates can help ease out the situation then you should try out Jambar team building Singapore. We specialise in team building activities for work that are not only uniquely interactive but can guarantee a marked improvement in team engagement and coherence whilst helping to build a positive workplace culture where the leaders and team members work collaboratively to pave way for collective success.

What is Team Building?

The interaction of the employees on a routine basis and their positive engagement to achieve a common goal can be easily termed as team building. Team building brings people together by encouraging collaboration and teamwork. In fact, a major part of the success of a team is due to team building and cohesive working relationships. The rest obviously depends upon communicating to the group members about project goals and training them to devise strategies to optimise their individual strengths and talents. 

How to do effective team building?

1) Establishing Strong leadership

A strong and well engaged team that has the potential to make its way through the challenges of the corporate world largely depends upon an effective leadership. In order to excel at team building leaders should learn to develop a close understanding and loyalty between themselves and the team members. Just bossing around and dictating a list of orders isn't going to get the job done. A leader should act as the backbone of a team, supporting the group members and helping them at every stage.

2) Valuing individual opinion

Every member in the group has something to add or contribute when it comes to working together in a team. Silencing the opinions of the team members and not allowing them to have a voice can be fatalistic to a team building effort. An openness for self expression won't only make the make the employees feel valued but it would bring in a great deal of innovative ideas which could be used to help ace team projects.

3) Preparing to achieve a common goal

The primary reason for team building is to prepare a group of people towards achieving a common goal. But many a times team members are left ambiguous clues and pointers that accounts for a confused team and unfruitful results. Being clear when communicating the brief and clarifying directives at every step is extremely important. When the team members have a good idea as to what is required of them, they could easily accomplish goals and achieve periodic milestones. Lastly, encouraging trust and cooperation among employees on your team is the key towards success. Give them a chance to interact with each other and the team lead to discuss possible issues and constrains to eliminate last minute problems and glitches. 

Using External facilitation for team bonding and team building ideas

Learning about the steps to build a strong and functional team might be beneficial but to achieve excellent results you would need to go the extra mile. And using external facilitation to improve your team’s interaction and cohesiveness isn't a bad idea after all. That's where Jambar team building Singapore can help you out. We can assist your company in organizing corporate team building events and engaging your workers in team building games. Visit our website today to scour through a wide array of team building ideas and activities that encourage team bonding within the employees and the leaders. These are specifically designed to overcome deep set insecurities and break personal and professional barriers in a fun and stress-free environment. Thus, giving the team members the ultimate opportunity to positively engage with their co workers and polish their team work capabilities through making a joint effort. To explore more options and organise corporate team building events that are fine tuned according to the requirements of your company, visit our website now. Our team building experts will help your team to reach the summit. Give us a chance!

Corporate Team Building

Teamwork and team building, the hot business topic, is now recognized as a major factor in many group environments where performance is dependent on how well the group unit works together. Consequently, many businesses and associations offer team building seminars, events, sports day, and many other fun activities. Organizations spend millions on such programs annually.

The purpose of these team building events is to bring out the best within the team to enhance positive communication, good leadership skills, development and progress both for the individuals and for the group as a whole. Additionally, the ability to work together as a team to achieve a goal, reach a set target or to resolve issues is increased.

How to develop a “RIGHT” Team:

A company's employees or the corporate team can literally make or break its business. Creation of the right team is usually both decisive and highly strategic to the particular business. Designing the right corporate team will need the assembly of a group of people who are willing to work together, without individual agendas.

Once the right corporate team has been selected, Excellent development procedures to promote the quality are required. And this is done through customized, team-building sessions conducted by a qualified, experienced, and strictly neutral, third-party Facilitator.

Qualities of a Facilitator:
    
A team-building Facilitator essentially works like a referee who creates the rules, corrects the team interactions and to make sure that team members are not harming each other, and they are playing on the correct field.
A few important duties typically conducted by a neutral, facilitative, team-building Professional include the following:

1.To gather appropriate background data to determine the problem or opportunity, its duration and actions taken before. What measures or solutions are needed to overcome the problem?

2. Designing Appropriate procedures while keeping in mind the people involved, culture and climate of the organization.

3. To set the agenda for meeting to review the situation in general and in specific terms. Providing a big picture view of the situation, purpose and desired result of the whole project.

4. Employing meeting rules, such as, Attendance and timeliness; Holding one conversation at a time; Judging affirmatively when evaluating ideas.

5. Supporting the Team in Managing conflicts; Valuing everyone's opinion; and, Being transparent in discussions

Conclusion
Corporate teams that participate in quality, customized sessions with an experienced, neutral, team-building Facilitator; tend to be more focused,goal-oriented, responsible, open-minded, and satisfied with their ultimate objective outcomes. Facilitated teams also incline to cooperate more, provide higher levels of commitment, and tend to be less controlled by habitual behavior, resulting in more successful results. 

Hence, Effective corporate team building is a vital procedure that can result in a measurable, competitive edge for the modern business.

Jambarteam building has plenty of things to offer you  in Singapore to strengthen your team bond like https://jambarteambuilding.com/big-events/,  Activities to emphasize on team effort like sports day https://jambarteambuilding.com/portfolio-item/sports-day/, or arranging a dinner and dancedaydayhttps://jambarteambuilding.com/dinner-dance-team-building/ and much more. Remember, having team building activities is vital for a healthy unit if you want to get things done smoothly.

Innovation and Team Building

There's more to innovation than discovering new ideas, methods, and making known some new ways by which things can be done. Innovation also entails approach to changes so as to achieve better products and services and the modification of business models. Being innovative is simply putting one's creative ability to work.

Innovation has been proven to give every company an edge over others, gives them opportunities to penetrate faster into markets and open them up to bigger opportunities. Innovation also increases the growth rate of a company making the company more aware of the originality of some concepts.

Innovation involving teamwork is mostly on the part of leaders. Their job is to assemble teams and lead them in getting optimal outcomes. Listed below are ways by which a leader can foster innovation with their teams.

1. Trust yourself so well, so you can trust others: Transparency is needed for every member of the team more than they have ever been because innovation requires bringing new ideas and schools of thought instead of the old ones, every member must trust themselves so they can trust each other, this fosters bonding & brings understanding and makes one patient enough to listen to others and understand their point of view.

2. Work together and discover: To collaborate doesn't necessarily have to do with working together alone but also taking steps together to discover and then get possible outcomes of new ideas and inventions. No one knows which innovation would bring influence and impact on the company in the marketplace.

3. Always communicate to learn: A team needs enough communication to always achieve their aim because, without it, a team would not get each other and would not bond. It is through communication that a team gets to collaborate, work together and discover innovations needed for the company.

4. Be a courageous change agent: Every leader should inculcate the habit of critical thinking into each member of the team and make them see improvements in whatever they do. Only a courageous person would see through the lens of improvement.

Exciting fun innovative activities that bring out innovative ideas in people

The Drone Challenge: it's about putting a team's collaboration skills into test in a flight. As a group, you will discuss, plan and build obstacles for drones to pass through. These obstacles will need to meet the given requirements by the Flight School so as to ensure safety for the drones and 100% fulfillment for your team because your obstacles will be challenged by other teams. 

Team building activities in Singapore

So it is now time for your team to work together to design and construct obstacles within the requirements but tough for others. This activity always ends with the highlight: your team (yes, every one of you) can fly the drone and put your skills to test. Your team will have to display precise and stable flight control while maneuvering through other teams’ obstacle courses. Of course, you can also earn some bonus if you display cool stunts along the way. Many people had complained that it's too difficult, so most of them end up running from it and some said it is easier once the transversal had been mastered.

Cardboard boat building: Cardboard boats are a fun modeling project. You can make boats that are small enough for one person to fit in and sail. To make a cardboard boat, you will need a cardboard, waterproof tape (duct tape is best), box cutter/scissors, newspaper, something to draw with, an idea and necessary decorations, paint which is optional. 

Fun team building activities Singapore

Then next to do is to get a basic shape you'd love to make use of, draw it and then cut it out. Next is to create the walls, strengthen it, decorate it, make the head, and set a sail for it.

Virus challenge: the virus challenge is a challenge where teams compete to save humanity from outbreaks of deadly disease. This board-game-based team building exercise is an excellent way to get your team talking, bonding, and forging new relationships. 

Team building games Singapore

Jambar team building offers innovative team building activities in Singapore for companies, gatherings (corporate or others) and organizations and we’re proud to work with clients in adding custom content to all of our activities.

How to Incorporate Team Building into Corporate Dinner and Dance Activities

Music helps us get away from the pressures of our daily lives. Over the years people have realized the importance of music and discovered a way to fuse it with dinner and dance. Problem is, this trend has become somewhat overused. The Dinner & Dance themes have become a cliché as people already know what is about to go down. At Jambar team building, we do understand that music and dance workshops are best when forming bonds. Our dinner and dance package is a way to get your employees/colleagues out of their comfort zone shells and communicate with one another. 

Our Dinner and Dance package gives everyone a chance to express themselves. Team building activities in Singapore under this package will help develop skills such as creativity, collaboration, and adaptability, whilst building positive relationships amongst colleagues. The old and done format will be pushed aside as your employees participate in the activities that will enhance communication, and interpersonal skills.

Group and team sizes that will benefit from corporate dinner and dance teambuilding.

At Jambar team building we believe that this form of team building is most effective in a group of twenty people. Should you have a bigger team or employees, we have the right structures in place to ensure that the corporate dinner and dance goes off without a hitch.

Dinner and dance themes.

Dinner and dance themes are a crucial part of any successful corporate dinner and dance teambuilding. As seasoned experts in the field of team building, we have unchallenged experience in coming up with themes that will get your employees or team in a good mood. This will make the team building process to be rather easy and fun filled for your employees.

How can I book a dance or music themed team building activity?

Booking a dinner and dance team building package is rather easy! Visit the Jambar team building site and get your free quote. You can also call us on +656635 7741 where our representatives can give you more information on this. You can also drop us an email on info@jambarteambuilding.com where we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Visit our site for more information on dinner and dance teambuilding. Feel free to also explore our other packages.

How to Decide Which is the Best Team Building Event Experience For Your Corporate Company?

At Jambar Team Building we have discovered one important thing after delivering over 1000 events: there is a difference and it’s important.

Well, both bonding and building are designed to be fun, but that is where the similarity ends. Bonding can be anything where there is limited learning or facilitation.  For example, paint balling, art jamming, archery tag, terrarium making or escape the room.  As a company you turn up, split into teams, have the rules explained and off you go. 1 hour later there is likely to be a winning team and you are done.   The hope here is that the activity alone will encourage bonding, fun, getting to know colleagues better, which it does to a certain extent, but that is where the benefit ends.  Team bonding doesn’t address communication skills, interpersonal issues, learning from the activity or specific outcomes like corporate values that your company may have.

Not long ago at one of Jambar team building events we were told that 2 specific people couldn’t be put in a team together because they had had problems at the office and weren’t talking to each other.  As a facilitator at the time, I had a chat with both of them for 5 minutes before the start of the event and then, before the main activity began, Jambar’s Chain Reaction Challenge, the whole group discussed the benefits of working together.  While I don’t expect they became best friends, by the time we got to the debriefing they were talking and cooperating. A huge improvement according to the management.  If the group had gone paint balling instead, it’s likely they would have just aimed at each other and nothing would have improved in their relationship.

Hence, what’s the key difference.  Well there are two things, one is the activity type and the other is the quality of facilitation.

The team building activity: In general, the activity needs to encourage real team interaction, where people have dependences on each other for a good outcome.  Art Jamming and other bonding activities don’t usually provide that. In Jambar’s ‘Change it Up’ negotiation activity, teams can’t do well unless they there is good communication and collaboration with both themselves and other teams.  A big difference.

The facilitation:  hand in hand with the activity is the facilitator.  It is the facilitators’ job to weave learnings into the experience from the moment (and arguably before) the event starts to the final debriefing.  Encouraging the teams to think for themselves, inviting each individual to be curious about themselves and others, and considering what it is they learn from this experience, while at the same time keeping the fun!

If all you want is fun, look at team bonding, if you want fun, real learning outcomes and improved relationships look to Jambar's big team building activities.