Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most profound ones. As Confucius pointed out, "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complex." Using a simple, universally familiar verse as a metaphor for success, Matt Weinstein will show you how to increase happiness, reduce stress, find more fun at work, and enhance motivation, communication, teamwork, and satisfaction on the job. This session is based on Matt's book, Gently Down The Stream. Come prepared to have some serious fun!
Laughter is not only good medicine, it's good business. People who have fun on the job are more creative, more productive and get along better with co-workers. Putting Fun To Work is interactive, informative and entertaining.
The intentional use of positive feedback is a powerful way to build a strong team and to foster corporate loyalty. Loaded with practical examples and ready-to-use ideas, Managing to Have Fun is based on Matt Weinstein's business bestseller, Managing to Have Fun.
One way to work smarter, not harder, is to learn the skills of working like your dog. Dogs approach their work with dedication, loyalty, sensitivity and love, and also with joy, enthusiasm and a willingness to see their work as play. Based on Matt Weinstein's business bestseller, Work Like Your Dog.
The best way to survive in a stress-filled work environment is to take your work seriously and yourself lightly. Laughter, Stress and Self-Esteem offers suggestions for handling work-related pressures in an effective, productive and upbeat manner.
In any new group situation, most people are concerned with making friends, feeling accepted and feeling listened to. The Ultimate Icebreaker will help your participants to quickly overcome these normal barriers to creating community. This program is a fantastic way to kick off any meeting or convention by generating an unforgettable atmosphere of celebration.
Improvisation skills help a company establish bonds among employees and provide an out-of-the-box exploration of the creative process. You'll gain a new understanding of the team building power of improv theater and practical tools for coping with stress, burnout, and isolation.
When you and your customer have fun together, you create a bond that carries your relationship forward through time. What could be better for your long-term relationship with a client than to have them telling stories to total strangers about what fun it is to do business with you! Learn tools and techniques to build these lasting bonds.
In this upbeat program, have fun while learning about the pros and cons of stress: how to recognize burnout, what to do about it, and most importantly how to keep a "lighthearted" perspective. Participants in this session will gain a repertoire of specific group experiences to learn to harness the power of tension and to take the time to relax. In a unique blend of comedy and content, this program reminds us that in recognizing life's zaniness, we encourage flexibility and adaptability.
You can't expect your employees to provide "service with a smile" if you don't first give them something to smile about! For the past 20 years, the Playfair organization has been a laboratory for the development of "fun-centered" management skills that can have a profound effect on increasing employee retention and corporate loyalty.
Experiential Team Building Programs (available only in workshop format)
Sharing Your Vision is a hands-on team building experience designed to assist group members to identify their own vision for the organization and to creatively work together to represent a unified vision - using art materials such as pipe cleaners and modeling clay. Upon completion, participants reflect on their experience by completing a series of questions designed to assist them in deeper thinking about their work together.
The Egg Drop is a group problem-solving experience designed to support work teams in examining a variety of issues relevant to collaboration, leadership, decision making, and handling conflicts. Using materials such as raw eggs and toothpicks, participants work together to create a structure to protect an egg so it won't break when dropped from about eight feet high. After all groups have demonstrated their designs to each other, the participants reflect on their experience by completing a series of questions designed to assist them in deeper thinking about their work together.
The Ball Toss is a team building experience about continuous improvement and learning to think creatively under pressure. The participants, in groups of 8 to 12, must pass tennis balls across a circle in a set sequence. Time challenges are added, forcing a radical rethinking of the problem. By redefining their approach, while staying within the preset sequence, participants usually successfully solve the problem.
In The Maze, participants find themselves confronting a floor grid containing 54 squares. Some of these squares can be stepped on "safely," while others are "unsafe." The group members must work together as a team, nonverbally, using each other as resources to uncover the interconnected path of 'safe' squares, within a time limit of 20 minutes.
