Management Blog

Succsessful Team Building

When done properly designed  team building activities are a great way of increasing workplace Productivity, however certain criteria need to be met to insure maximun ROI

Related articles

Team Building - Why Do You Need Team Building in a Recession?

This is why I enjoy my drive home. The inspiring Brecon Beacons last evening

Talent and Winners - How Much Does Talent Count?

Research report by Peter Doskoch in Psychology Today indicates that:

... a mere 25 percent of the differences between individuals in job performance ... can be attributed to IQ (personality factors, creativity and luck are said to contribute to the other 75 percent.)

Doskoch reports:

Louis Terman, the legendary psychologist who followed a group of gifted boys from childhood to middle age, reported that "persistence in the accomplishment of ends" was one of the factors that distinguished the most successful men from the least successful.

And in the most-cited paper in the giftedness literature, University of Connecticut psychologist Joseph Renzulli, director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, argued that "task commitment"—perseverance, endurance and hard work - is one of the three essential components of giftedness (along with ability and creativity).

Renzulli says the evidence that these nonintellectual factors are critical to giftedness is "nothing short of overwhelming."

Grit - what they mean by it

So if pure IQ accounts for only 25%, what is this grit, which along with luck, accounts for the remaining 75% of success? Duckworth and  Seligman describe it as "the determination to accomplish an ambitious, long-term goal despite the inevitable obstacles." Its component parts appear to be:

• Persistence
• Passion
• Ambition
• Self-discipline
• Optimism

Persistence - sticking at it, perseverance, working hard

... experts often speak of the "10-year rule"—that it takes at least a decade of hard work or practice to become highly successful in most endeavors, from managing a hardware store to writing sitcoms—and the ability to persist in the face of obstacles is almost always an essential ingredient in major achievements. The good news: Perhaps even more than talent, grit can be cultivated and strengthened.

Passion - single-minded, having one's imagination captured by something

Although extremely persistent people are usually passionate about their work, that doesn't mean that the passion always comes first. Perseverance, notes Duckworth, can itself foster passion. Often the most fascinating aspects of a topic (particularly a highly complex one) become apparent only after deep immersion, to a level "where you understand it and are enlivened by it."

Ambition - setting long term goals, knowing where you want to go

Truly gritty people ... tend to set especially challenging long-term goals; one of Duckworth's recent students confidently stated that he planned to become a U.S. Senator.

Self-discipline - not wasting time or energy, not giving in to whims

... whereas perseverance implies the ability to keep doing something, self-discipline primarily implies the ability to refrain from doing something—to stop drinking, goofing off or straying from one's diet. It doesn't embrace the ambition and zest needed to tackle a challenging goal. "Self-discipline is probably necessary for grit," Duckworth says, "but it's not sufficient."

Optimism - not getting despondent, a positive frame of mind, belief in the future

... a trait that Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis finds is extremely common among high achievers. "It helps them hang in there in times when they have to overcome all of these obstacles," he observes. "They just really believe in the end that they're going to win, and until they do, they're just going to keep on pushing, keep on making the phone calls, writing the letters, whatever they have to do."

Extract taken from our Development Academy website.

Call of the Wild We Are......

Call of the Wild are not boring, irritating, inattentive or unprofessioanl. But we are (or we like to think we are)
For more information about our services including Institute of Leadership and Management courses then visit the Call of the Wild website.

Call of the Wild's Training Courses 2013

Here is a list of our training courses in 2013. This is not a definitive list but gives a flavour of the type of courses we have available this year whether it be for leadership, team building, management training or realted matters such as coaching.

If you wish to see a more definitive list then please do give us a call to discuss your exact requirements.

Click here to see the list of our training courses for 2013

Swansea City Capital One Cup Winners - What Does it Mean for the Local Economy

So what is a cup winning football club worth to its local economy? SWANSEA CITY FC's first season in the Premier League was worth a staggering £58m to the local economy, an in-depth study has revealed. What now will that figure increase to as they approach the end of their second full season and as cup winners?

An estimated 400 jobs were created or protected according to a study commissioned to look at the economic impact of Premier League status on the city and Wales. The report says that while the majority of the economic value was created directly by the football club, most of the jobs created and safeguarded were from non-footballing activity.The most significant element of this was the spending power of visiting fans who visited pubs, clubs and restaurants and stayed in hotels as a direct result of attending games at the Liberty Stadium.

Some of the key impacts estimated in the report by the Welsh Economy Research Unit of Cardiff University include:

• The total economic value to Wales of the Swans' first season in the Premier League was an estimated £58.6m
• £50.6m of the economic benefit was generated by Swansea City FC, safeguarding or creating an estimated 125 jobs.
• The economic impact on the city of Swansea was an estimated £55.3m.
• The non-football club activity generated around £7.9m of economic impact, creating or safeguarding an estimated 295 jobs, most of them in Swansea.