Management Blog

National Team Building Company of the Year 2007

Call of the Wild are delighted to announce that we have been named as the National Team Building Company of the Year.

Winners of Tourism Oscars were revealed last Thursday night, by BBC presenter Huw Edwards, at the Visit Wales National Tourism Awards held at Bodelwyddan Castle, Denbighshire. Forty-six enterprises from across Wales were short-listed as finalists – and fourteen businesses were revealed as being the best of Wales’ tourism industry.

“We are absolutely delighted. It illustrates that our work in the fields of management training, team building and leadership development is recognised as some of the best in the country,” explained Geraint Lewis, Managing Director.

This year, the final adjudication was carried out by an independent judge, David Atkinson. He is an experienced travel writer with credits that include the Lonely Planet Wales guidebook. As part of the selection process he had already visited our offices in Seven Sisters. The winner was revealed by BBC presenter, Huw Edwards.

Promotional Video Featuring Alan Chambers and Llanelli Scarlets

During the last rugby season, 2006-2007, Call of the Wild organised a team building day for the Llanelli Scarlets rugby team. We arranged for Alan Chambers, polar explorer and one of our facilitators and motivational speakers, to speak to the Scarlets about team building. To complement this, Call of the Wild also created a less-than intensive team session to welcome back those players who had been on international duties. The Llanelli Scarlets didn't have too bad a season - making the semi-finals of the European Cup before being knocked  out by Leicester.

That day we made sure that we had still and video cameras at the ready. If you're a rugby fan you may spot some well-know faces including Stephen Jones, Alix Popham, Dwayne Peel, Dafydd James and Mark Jones. We hope you enjoy the result:

Recommended Reading - Leaders

Author: Warren Bennis
Publisher: Harper & Row
Publish Date: 1997
ISBN: 0887308392

Warren Bennis decided that the leaders he interviewed had four abilities in common. He refers to these as management of attention, management of meaning, management of trust and management of self.

• Management of attention is a matter of vision, not only the possession of one but the ability to turn it into action. It is a matter of a vision so compelling that other people adopt it as their own.
• Management of meaning is a matter of communication which for Bennis is not formal but a matter of metaphor that captures the imagination.
• Management of trust is that consistency of behaviour, of what other people have called 'walking the talk' that enables others to put their faith in a leader.
• Management of self is a matter being constantly ready to learn and of making the commitment to self-knowledge.

Bennis, like Reddin and others, firmly believed that leadership can be learned. In his view:

• Leadership is not rare.
• Leaders are made and not born.
• Leaders are very often ordinary people.
• Leadership is required not just at the top but throughout the organisation.
• Leadership is not about the tasks of management (perhaps as Henri Fayol listed them) but about inspiring others towards a common goal

Management & Motivation - A Book Review

Our on-line development academy contains regular book reviews. Click here for more info.

View Book Information: Management and Motivation Too many of the great writers on management are known only through what others have said about them. This collection of articles and abstracts shows what they actually said. We make no apologies for reviewing a book first published in 1970. Edited by Victor H Vroom and Edward L Deci, this a marvellous book and one that has justifiably been in print for over 30 years. It contains 26 extracts from the writings of great management thinkers - their original words. Much of this is unobtainable with any ease anywhere else and this book surely must be on your bookshelf as a result. It also contains summaries by Vroom and Deci which set the writings in context and explain their development.

The book starts with the formal writing of Herbert A Simon:

"We find then that those participants in organisations who are called its employees are offered a variety of material and non-material incentives, generally not related to the attainment of the organisation, in return for their willingness to accept organisational decisions as a basis for their behaviour during the time of their employment."

It continues with Maslow writing in 1943 at the start of the development of hierarchy of needs in which he refers to the need following physiological and safety needs as a need for love' - whereas today we use the weaker words 'social need' or 'need for affiliation'. Maslow is followed by Nancy Morse and Robert Weiss with one of the very few quantitative studies of motivation and work. They conclude:

"... for most men working does not simply function as a means or earning a livelihood. Even if there were no economic necessity for them to work, most men would work. It is through this producing role that most men tie into society and, for this reason and others, most men find the producing role important for maintaining their sense of well-being."

Management Thinkers

Kenneth Blanchard

With Paul Hersey, the originator of Situational Leadership which argues that the appropriate management style depends upon the situation, largely the maturity of the subordinates. They seem to have taken the work of Blake and Mouton and added the situational element, missing in the earlier work. There are four management styles in their model - Telling, Selling, Participating and Delegating - which form the maturity curve laid over the (fairly standard) four box model, created by a vertical axis of Supportive Behaviour and a horizontal axis of Directive Behaviour.

Subordinate maturity is analysed by answering questions such as "Is the individual or group able to set high but realistic goals?" and "Are they willing and able to accept responsibility?"

Blanchard is more famous as the main author of The One Minute Manager, a short but brilliant book published in 1982, that shows how situational management works in practice - praise people and set clear goals. He now runs a family consulting business with a turnover of about $40m.

The book "The One Minute Manager", which is basically a parable, demonstrates the sequence of setting goals and giving negative as well as positive feedback. It shows how to do this. Its emphasis is positive, however, with statements like "Everyone is a winner. Don't let appearances fool you." and exhortations such as "Catch someone doing something right." The importance of the latter comment is that most bosses check that people aren't doing things wrong, rather than seeking opportunities to praise people for getting things right.

Leading Teams

Each member of a team may contribute to its leadership and success in different ways. Complete the Working Together exercise. Consider what leadership you can bring to a team. Do make a note of your scores. In fact, we are going to ask you to keep a sort of Diary of your learning about leadership and at intervals, we will invite you to make notes in it with this symbol:

So much of what we see depends on how we look at things. Since there is always the possibility that we see things differently, perspective is vital for team building. Read the article, Power of Perspective.

Part of seeing things differently from - or indeed at variance to - other people is that we set priorities based upon what we see as our objectives. Very often such objectives are narrowly defined and do not include helping others or maintaining the team. To investigate this, we are going to ask you to complete a couple of exercises based upon customer service. First of all, complete the exercise Customer Response Profile and read the article, Responding to customers.

Make a note of your scores and be sure to understand the difference between:

• Empathy - accepting the feelings of others, helping people to feel better.
• Recommendations - telling people what to do.
• Asking questions - showing an interest by finding out more.
• Own concerns - satisfying your own needs and emotions.
• Challenging - arguing that the customer is wrong.
• Rejecting - avoiding involvement.

This is an extract from our On-line development academy. For more information visit the site