Are Your People Working as Well Together as they Could Be?
Great teams deliver great results. They produce even when they face challenges.
In an effective team, everyone understands how to contribute in ways that create results above and beyond what any individual could accomplish alone.
But teamwork isn’t easy. Even the best teams, with the most well-intentioned colleagues, can encounter problems that hinder their collective accomplishments. Most of the time those problems come from people with different behavioral styles not getting along.
The Olympia Teambuilding and Leadership Workshop will help your people learn how to work together better, so they can turn a mediocre team into a productive team and a good team into a great team.
An example of how the International Luge Federation Team worked together even the day before the Vancouver Olympic race. Just like the Three Musketeers, “All for one and one for all.”
Ruben getting ready to compete at the Vancouver Olympics with his teammates from China, Moldova, Bulgaria, Chinese Taipei and Slovenia.
Teamwork on the Road
to the Olympics
Ruben trained for years as part of an international team made up up lugers from many different countries. They had completely different behavioral styles, different customs, and they spoke different languages. But they set their differences aside and focused on the team’s objective – getting as many of the members to the Olympics.
Even though they competed against each other at World Cup races, European Championships, World Championships and the Olympics, they understood that their best chance was to work together and help each other out during the training week.
This is because they were competing against powerhouse teams from Germany, Italy, Russia and Austria that would eat their lunch if they didn’t stick together. You will always accomplish more working as part of a team than trying to be a lone wolf.
Wouldn’t you like your teams to be committed and sold out to your mission so they would accomplish and produce more? That’s what they will learn to do at the Olympia Teambuilding Workshop.
What Your People will Experience at Olympia
“Ruben hits you with the absolute truth about what it takes to succeed in the real world.”
– Jim Rohn
Learn How to Create Winning Teams
Ruben shares what makes an effective team and how understanding peoples’ behavioral styles will help them create a better team. He includes personal examples from his NCAA Division 1 College Soccer team and his International Luge Federation team.
Different people have different needs and different behavioral styles.
Understanding Yourself and Others
First, participants will learn how to identify their own behavioral style through a quick test.
Then, they’ll learn what drives them to excel, what their strengths are and what their blind spots may be.
They also learn how to communicate effectively with people that have different behavioral styles from theirs and how to motivate people of all styles to excel.
Finally, they are shown that by focusing on their strengths, becoming a role player, and creating teams of people that complement their strengths, they can achieve much more than by woking as a lone wolf.
“Use Ruben’s knowledge and apply it to your own life.”
– Don Green – Director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation
Luge and aviation have a lot in common – focus, attention to detail, and maintaining proficiency are keys to success in both. Ruben is a private pilot. He’s gotten to fly aerobatics with an instructor in a WWII Stearman biplane over the pacific.
The Zenith 750 STOL (short take off and landing) is the plane Ruben is planning to get. It will take off in about 100 feet at sea level.
Putting What You Learned to the Test
Ruben runs an exercise specifically designed to get the participants to apply what they just learned – working effectively with different people.
The participants are divided into five-person teams. Each team is made up of four people with different behavioral styles and one person observing and taking notes on what they see. Each team has 60 minutes to build a complex rubber-band-powered airplane weighing less than a quarter of an ounce.
The planes must be built to exacting specifications because they will later compete for the longest timed flight.
Unless the people divide the workload and assign tasks based on each person’s strengths, in other words, unless they work as a team, they will run out of time.
During the exercise, Ruben throws a couple of curve balls (a corporate restructure and budget cuts). This is done to challenge the teams to make adjustments in order to finish strong. Just as they would have to be able to do if faced with those challenges in the workplace.
When properly built, balsa planes like these have incredible flight performance.
Building a high performance balsa plane is an activity that forces people with different behavioral styles to work together as a team. If they don’t, they may not finish their plane in the allotted time and even if they do, the plane may not perform well at the competition.
The magic happens in the debriefing session. That’s when the participants internalize the lessons learned while building their planes.
Debriefing Session
Just like Air Force Pilots debrief after every mission and luge racers debrief after every run, we have a debriefing session after building the planes.
Ruben facilitates the discussion, the team members that observed and took notes on their teams’ performance lead the discussion and everyone else is encouraged to share their thoughts.
We discuss what worked, what didn’t work, what they would do differently next time, what advice they would give another team working on a similar project, what the participants learned about themselves, and how they can apply what they learned at home and at work.
It’s common for participants to be hit so hard and personally with insights from the debriefing session that once they get back to work they experience breakthroughs in the workplace.
“Ruben’s teaching is applicable to anyone’s professional or personal lives.”
– Richard Bennion – Executive Vice President – HomeStreet Bank
Flight Competition
After the debrief, the teams compete to see which planes fly the longest. Properly built planes should fly 30-45 seconds.
When the participants see their planes fly for so long, they are always amazed and filled with pride in what they have just built. This drives home at an emotional level what can be accomplished when you work together.
The competition is always full of energy, enthusiasm, adrenaline and fun. It gives everyone a chance to let off some steam after the focused and serious debriefing session.
Flying the planes, either indoor or outside (if it is completely calm), is exhilarating.
Awards Ceremony
We end with an awards ceremony where the three teams whose planes flew the longest win Gold, Silver and Bronze medals.
“This was a fantastic lesson on leadership. Ruben is a real example for us to follow as business leaders.”
– Caroline Basyn – CIO – Bacardi
“If you will listen to Ruben speak your life will change.”
– Lou Holtz
Mass Launch
We position all the teams in a huge circle and have a mass launch. This is always a lot of fun and a great video-op.
The workshop ends on a high note to insure that this profound team building experience will be a catalyst for change.
Video of an indoor mass launch. The mass launch is pure fun. Everyone, no matter what age they are, becomes a kid at the mass launch.
The principles I used to make it to the Olympics four times will help your people become Olympian both in the workplace and in life.
Taking it to the Next Level
In order to insure that your people will continue using the principles they learned at the workshop, Ruben encourages you to enroll your people in the Becoming Unstoppable, Ruben’s online personal development course. The Becoming Unstoppable is designed to create daily habits that lead to success.
When purchased in bulk for your whole group, Ruben offers a very generous discount.
