The Transformative Experience Boost You Didn’t Know Your Team Needed

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm Claire Hayek. Some of you know who I am. I'm team culture strategist and the founder of MSP Team Building. And I'm here today to talk to you about the transformative experience boost that you didn't know your team needed. We're talking about experiences that are so impactful that they result in a boost of Team cohesion, productivity, morale. And they stick with your people. They move them. They carry these experiences with them at the workplace and have a positive impact on the day-to-day. All right. So, I'm very happy to be here. And again, I'm gonna kind of divide this in 3 sections. All right. So, we're gonna talk about how important it is to have meaningful experiences in a team setting. I'm also gonna talk about 2 activities that we do specifically at MSP Team Building that we found they do miracles. And always, always interested to talk about research that backs all of this, right? Because we want to understand where this is coming from, what other studies have shown, what actual case studies are out there about this. So I'll be very happy to share this research as well and link it to transformative Leadership. So just so you know, I'm all about transparency. I was panicking 5 minutes before I go live because Restream wasn't restarting. All of a sudden, nothing was working. Camera went off. Do you feel like sometimes this happens at the most important time when you have a presentation to give? Well, it doesn't happen often, I gotta say, but it happened just now. So I'm a bit baffled and trying to kind of gather myself here. Together so I could be focused. But I'm so glad this is working now. Um, and so I know this is working and I don't feel like alone out there in the universe. Um, I'm gonna ask you to share, um, where you're joining us from today. Uh, please put it in the chat. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to see where you're from, where you're dialing in from. And, uh, because I'm going to be throwing a lot of questions your way as well. We're gonna keep this interactive. Some of you that have been to some of these conferences that we give, actually I give those now almost every week, same time on usually Wednesdays at 11:30 EST, 8:30 PST. It's occasionally today because yesterday wasn't available. Anywho, details. Let's go to the chat. And, uh, and see where you're all joining us from. Uh, hey Connor, we have Connor joining us from New Hampshire. Please keep it coming. Please do, um, put it in the chat. Okay, I want you to engage. This is important. Otherwise, it's a one-way conversation and this is about interactivity and learning from each other. Okay, so let me just go back here. Uh, as I continue, if you do join us, Please do put in the chat where you're joining us from. And I'm going to just continue on because we only have 30 minutes. And we're going to have time for a Q&A right at the end. So, but do put your questions in the chat the whole way, right? Because then I'll go back and be able to address these. All right, here we go. So, why is it so important to have transformative experiences when it comes to teams and team building exercises? Because people want the wow factor. And what we found out even more during COVID than ever, that impactful experiences where people feel engaged and 100% emotionally, physically, mentally, soulfully, if that's a word, engaged, it sticks with them. Something happens. It triggers something in the brain and it actually affects How they connect with one another. And it's not about the experience itself, what you're actually doing, but what the experience does, the result of the experience. Okay? And I will clarify that as I explain to you what this is all about, right? I'll give you 2 examples that we, like I said, we've seen that have done miracles and had such a big impact on teams, small teams or larger teams, that our clients are still talking about it and saying, Claire, we still hear people talking about this. And this is the effect that you want your team building exercise or team building activity to have. Okay. So deep connections foster collaboration, innovation, creativity, and those deep one-on-one connections. So let me move along here and ask you a question. The next question. Has your team ever had a similar experience where a team building activity seemed to change the team dynamic positively? Okay. Yes or no. Easy peasy. Put it in the chat. Again, I really want to hear from you. Please do engage. It makes the whole experience way more pleasant for me because I don't feel like I'm talking to a screen or a camera. It's already kind of hard as it is to talk to a screen, and I'm sure you all can relate. So please do engage. Okay. So let me tell you about mosaic vision, what mosaic vision is about. And I wanted to share with you some visuals, but with my technical difficulties, we'll do this another time. Okay. I'm just gonna focus on telling you storytelling here. Okay. So bear with me. Mosaic Vision. It's all about getting people to connect in such a different, unique, innovative way. Let me explain further. So what we do, we get an artist, a renowned artist. It could be an artist, a local artist in your area to encourage obviously the community, right? So pushing SDGs in there. Right? We get the artist to sit with your leadership team and come up with a design or an art piece that speaks to the message that you want to convey to your team, to your organization, to the culture. Whether it's a project you're launching, whether it's your strategy for the year, whether it's a new mission, a new vision, it doesn't matter. So, we put that in a visual. So, it's literally, we're creating an art piece. But here's the thing. So, there's mockup of this perfect art piece that the very talented artist creates. Then, what the artist does, he does the outline of this art piece, of this design. And we divide it in mosaic, little mosaics that are basically dispatched to the team. And so, the team receives a mosaic, kind of like a small one, and sees like an outline but doesn't know what it is. Right? So, there's the intrigue, right? And then, they get to color it. They get to color it their own way, put their creativity in it, their innovation, their message, their essence. Okay? Once they color it, these pieces come back together and the whole art piece is put together now to display the actual finished message that we originally designed. But this time, it's different because this time, it includes every single one of your team members or your employees with their diversity, with their unique touch, with their innovation, with their message, with their color, with their taste, right? And now, it's still the same art piece but in a different way, in a unique way. It literally becomes the print, the imprint of your vision with your people engaged in it. And the message here is not just about the art piece and what it displays. The message is Every single one of these mosaics count because if one mosaic was missing, that's a white square right in the middle of an art piece and it wouldn't be the same. So, if you can just imagine that sense of belonging, the message of sense of belonging, that team recognition that we value your input. And the great thing about it when you zoom out and you look at it, it looks amazing. It looks like such an original timepiece that nobody can recreate. It's very unique in its own way. And what clients do is they exhibit this art piece in their offices and we take pictures of it. They can do merchandise like t-shirts, give away t-shirts with that imprint. So it becomes kind of your message, your— basically your visual for the year. It could be in your backdrop on your desktop. It could be on the mug, it could be on a t-shirt. Some of them print the actual art piece and distribute these to all employees. That is literally a limited edition by the artist, signed by the artist. And so, what they do as well is that now, it's in the headquarters probably on the wall. And if they have several locations, this art piece gets to travel to each location. And it gets— every location gets its own turn. And what it does, it brings people to the office. People love it. People walk in and go, hey, that's the square I colored. It's such a great impact, huge, huge impact on the morale, on the motivation, on feeling that feeling of belonging to an organization. And just a little detail here about Mosaic Vision. We do it virtually. We've done a lot of these virtually. So, no matter where your team is, they could be spread out around the world. Imagine the impact. It's all done with logistics. Okay? And it could be done in person, of course. When it's done in person, there's a lot more, even more engagement. And it's really sandwiched into 2 to 3 hours max, right? So, details that I'm not going to get into, but this is the impact of mosaic vision. And I'm going to share a link here in the chat if I succeed in doing so. Let me see. Uh, yep. Okay, so here's a link that I just dropped in the, in the chat, and this is a link for a playlist of mosaic vision videos that we've done for a lot of our clients. And, um, you see how the pieces come together and how the artist colored it, etc. It's pretty impressive. And the effect is that what we see is that one of the, actually, or 2 of them, what we've done is we've done the unveiling virtually. Okay? Others, we've done the unveiling, a video unveiling in person that we do. We filmed the whole process, etc. The one that was done virtually, we did a whole virtual session where everybody joined all over the world. And what we got people to do is engage in the chat and tell us what they think it is, what they think the art piece is. Remember, nobody knows what it is before it comes together. We're unveiling the final product. And then we got people to guess what it was and why. They got on camera. We interviewed them in front of everyone. I mean, the ones that wanted to, right? Some people just wanted to chat. The engagement was up the roof. People felt so special. And then what we did is we featured pictures of a lot of mosaics individually. Actually, we take a picture of each one and we featured some of them on the screen. And we've shared it in front of everyone. And we said, this was done by, I don't know, Paul. Paul, can you— are you here? You want to tell us about this piece and what you were thinking when you colored it? And it was all about fun jokes, deep connections, and each person felt valued and heard and seen. And that is what mosaic vision does. And when we did the unveiling and people were just I'm getting shivers talking about this. It's so impactful. And I often get shivers when I talk about these things because I've lived it and I've seen what it does. And what happens when people see the actual final art piece, I mean, comments we've got in the chat were like, this is such a great initiative. Thank you so much for this wonderful surprise. We're such a good team. I'm so happy to be part of this. That's so great. I'm so happy to be part of this team, part of this organization. Thank you for taking the time to do this for us. It's just all about gratitude and that sense of belonging. And the thing is, what that does, it stays. It stays. Like I said, 3 years later, I'm still hearing about one of the art pieces that we've done and how it affected people's morale and how people still look at it and talk about the surprise and how impactful it was. And it basically is, what I'm saying. I cannot tell you. I think I cannot express more the impact that mosaic vision has. And the cool part is that it's something that is physical that lives on. So, it's an activity that you invest in with a huge ROI, huge impact that trickles on, that has a ripple effect across the organization for years to come. Years to come. And affects everything on every single level: communication, collaboration, cohesion, sense of belonging, team recognition, etc., etc., etc. So please do click on that link later, or it'll be in the chat anyway after this, and you'll be able to watch the videos about these experiences. Now, I want to go and move on here to the next question. I'm curious. I want you to name something that you think is crucial to any team building. You know, I mean, it could be anything. That's something that you really feel that each team building activity should absolutely have. Okay, and I'm just gonna scroll here quickly. Oh, okay, there's some comments here, which is great. I'm gonna get back to that in a second, but let me just continue on. And again, please do engage in the chat because I really want to hear from you. Now, another one that is very impactful called Innovation That Rhymes. And what Innovation That Rhymes is about, we get, and we do this a lot with leadership teams, by the way, we get the team to, we take a very popular song and we get the whole team to become singer-songwriters for an hour, an hour and a half, 2 hours for the workshop. And during this workshop, they get to rewrite the lyrics of a very known song. We're not reinventing a song, okay? We're just rewriting the lyrics. And we're rewriting the lyrics with in mind, keeping in mind that we want to write a team song. A song with lyrics that speak to our culture, speak to our why, our purpose. Why? Why we care? Why do we even bother showing up at work? What's the purpose of what we do? How does that affect the bigger scheme of things? And how does it really change the world? How we feel about our teammates, how we feel about just basically our little task every day and how that affects things. Basically, it's all about our message. What are we all about? Okay. And what's our essence? So it becomes our anthem song. And the cool part about this is that we brainstorm those keywords together and we get you with the help of a singer-songwriter such as myself. Some of you know that I'm a singer-songwriter. I have had a career in music for 20+ years and still have a career in music. And we recruit the best singer-songwriters out there to facilitate this a workshop and we have a studio technician. What the studio technician does is that we bring an actual live studio and in this live studio, we record you interpreting that song live where you are. You don't have to go to an actual studio. The whole venue where you are becomes a studio. And what happens is that that puts you out of your comfort zone. It tests your team courage. It tests your collaboration skills. It tests your sense of cohesion. And what happens is that people really regroup and they stick together and they actually succeed in this amazing feat. Because who would think that one day as a team we're gonna write a song together and not only write a song, now we're gonna sing it and we can't sing and we have no talent, right? So here is the challenge. So the challenge is about when you are faced with something that puts you completely out of your comfort zone, how are you gonna react as a team? Are you gonna take on this challenge? Are you gonna step up? Are you gonna communicate, collaborate better? How is this gonna affect you? And are you gonna succeed? And are you able to overcome this little roadblock and going, this is impossible, that's just impossible to do? So that's what Innovation That Rhymes does. Again, it's not about the song. It's about the challenge. And this experience I can tell you, we've been doing it for almost 10 years now. And what it did, what it does, still does is it just gets people just to bond instantly with one message that vibes and gels with their core beliefs as human beings, as well as colleagues, as well as an organization. And when they interpret the song, the empowerment, the feeling of empowerment that comes out of it is amazing because they feel they've achieved this and they have no talent. Why are we able to achieve this and succeed singing this song? Because we're singing together. So imagine a singer on stage and a whole crowd, right? When the singer, you know, hands that mic to the, to the, you know, points the mic to the crowd and the whole crowd sings, We've all had that feeling or have seen it on TV anyway. The whole crowd sings in unison and it sounds perfect. And that's what we're recreating is that feeling of collaboration and the strength in working together. And it's not in words and in a conference, it's in doing. It's in feeling it in our body. And this is why it's impactful. This is why it's transformational. This is why people at the end Share things such as, I can't believe we wrote a song together and we sang it and we cannot even sing. We have no talent. So next time we think we can't overcome a challenge or we're having trouble communicating, maybe we should look back on this experience and use it as a reference. And that is the point. This is where transformation comes in. So this is Innovation That Rhymes. Actually, I don't have the link for that one. But you can definitely find it. A lot of videos on that also on our YouTube channel, as well as on our website. Now, let's move on to the next question because I want to hear from you. I've been talking for a while. So, here we go. Name a challenge that your team faces that you think could be addressed by a transformative team building experience. So, a challenge that you're facing, that they're faced, or you think you'll be facing in the future. It could be anything from collaboration, communication, cohesion, synergy, lack of engagement, lack of belonging, sense of belonging to the organization, stress, tension. I mean, just name it. Name it in the chat. Again, I really want to know what you guys think and see how we can address this. Hopefully I can address this in the next 10 minutes. All right, so moving on, just grab a quick water here. Let's talk about the research. Okay, so the impact of transformative experiences is a big deal, and research— actually, there's research that backs it up. Excuse me. Like I said, it has a ripple effect. This is why it's so important. It basically, this ripple effect, as I mentioned, it has this lasting impression, lasting feeling in how people and teams communicate. They collaborate. They perform. And studies have shown that high morale and engagement actually encourages is encouraged by such experiences and improves and enhances significantly productivity, innovation, and job satisfaction. Believe it or not. Okay. Actually, I believe it. I've seen it. So I just trying to show you what it does and trying to give you the research behind it. Okay. So it's important to understand that employee morale, it's important to understand the impact of these transformative team building exercises and their impact on team morale. Okay. High morale that comes from engaging activities and meaningful activities is kind of like a driving force, a catalyst to enhance collaboration and creativity. Actually, let me read here something for you. According to an article on employee morale, from the IIE Institute. And I'm going to drop the link to this study. It says that engaged employees who feel valued and recognized are more likely to be productive and innovative. And this is what these experiences do, right? So, and this engagement will encourage a positive work environment where collaboration is just Happening, naturally happening. We want to collaborate because you like each other. You feel that you belong and you you have a connection with each other, and communication is just simply very easy. So let me copy this link here and put it in the chat for you. So this is the study that I was just talking about, and moving on to another study. Actually, let me see here. Do do do do do. Another one. Yeah. Give me one second here. Yeah. According to a study published in the Future Business Journal, it says that transformative leadership behaviors such as idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration significantly boost team members' intrinsic motivation. This is from the study that I'm reading. And this motivation directly correlates with improved work performance, great emotional and situational stability. And enhanced problem-solving ability. Okay, abilities, sorry. This is from a study that was done. Let me just copy the link here as well. If I can find it, I'll copy and paste it later. It's done from Regent University. Okay, and the Springer Open. So this sense, actually, it says that this sense of empowerment and deep connection that come from these transformative experiences help teams to adapt quickly to changes. So resilience, that helps them to innovate and maintain that high level of productivity. Again, this is a study done by Regent University. I found the link and here it is, sharing it here. And I actually encourage you to read it. It's very interesting. And backs it up. And what's really cool about this is that they correlate this to transformative leadership. They talk about how transformative— transformational leadership has a profound impact on organizational outcomes, including job satisfaction, commitment, and performance. So again, I always talk about leaders and their influence. And these types of activities help leaders basically in their initiative to be transformational leaders and help everybody get engaged and collaborate and communicate. This experience comes to support these leaders in the transformation. So, you see how that correlates? It's actually all wonderful. It's all very good. And I'm just very excited about sharing these 2 activities with you and telling you more about it. Now, of course, I do want to hear from you. I do have a lot of questions. Knowing me, I do ask a lot of questions. So here's another one for you. What is one change you'd like to see in your team's dynamic after a team building event? Okay. So please do share in the chat. And I'm gonna just keep moving on here and check the chat to see if there's any questions from the audience today. But you don't seem very chatty today. Conor, thank you for being here. And thanks for sharing all these links as well. And it's all right. So maybe this is a bad day for a live, but it's all good. If you're listening to this later, do comment, do chat. We'll come back to these comments later and, you know, we'll address any questions you may have. So as you see on the screen, if you have questions about these experiences, Please, again, if you're here or you want to, you know, you're watching this later, do put it in the chat so I can get back to you. I'd love to tell you a bit more about it. And we've shared a lot of links in the chat so you can go and check them out on your own. And again, if you're joining now, check that YouTube link that I've shared right on top there with actual videos of one of the activities, Mosaic Vision. And I believe there's also the links for Innovation That Rhymes. So let me wrap this up. We only have 2 minutes left. I just want to remind you that we have an upcoming conference next Wednesday. So again, reminder, usually it's Wednesdays, Wednesday at 11:30 EST. And I'm going to be talking about a lot of subjects. This is our way to add value to our clients, our partners. We're excited to share our knowledge, what we've seen, our experience when it comes to team activities and team building or team performance, team productivity. activity, team training and development, leadership training, all of the above. Because it takes a village to— I'm not going to say raise a child, but to build an organizational culture and a company culture and basically be a winner when it comes to employee retention, attracting talent, and helping people grow within an organization. feel that they belong and they feel that they're growing. And as well as they feel that they're valued and they're productive and performing. And they want to— they're just happy. They're mentally— their body, their soul, their mind is all in connection. And it's healthy, right? Because at the end of the day, our employees' health and our people's health is very important. Without our people, we have Nothing, right? Without our team, we got nothing. We have no business. So next Wednesday, it's the conference on how to maximize team performance on a budget. I'm gonna teach you, give you tips, and teach you ways to do this on your own with little to no budget. And so you can keep that boost in productivity, boost in performance, and boost in good healthy well-being at the workplace and avoid these yo-yo effects that could be caused by team building activities. So, a lot of stressful times that there's a dip in morale and then team building comes in, it brings it back up and then it slides back down. We want to avoid that, right? So, this conference next week, next Wednesday, 11:30 EST will help you. We'll give you tips on how to maintain Once you do a boost, how to maintain it and build on it. Okay. So do scan the code here in order to RSVP. And quickly, June, June, actually July 10th will be on how to maximize team performance. And I'll go back here. I think I did a mistake in the title. I am so sorry. Give me a second here. July 3rd. What's July 3rd? Oh, so sorry. Okay. July 3rd is Why Your Team Building Results Don't Stick and How to Fix It. That's what it's about. And July 10th is How to Maximize Team Performance on a Budget. Okay. So again, July 3rd is Why Your Team Building Results Don't Stick and How to Fix It. And I will definitely be showing you tips on how to do that. Okay. So without further, you know, taking longer here, I'm going to wrap up. Thanks again for joining. And if you're listening to this at another time, do put your questions in the chat. Please do engage. And I'd love to be able to answer any questions you may have. And if you know how to find me, connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an email, claire@msbteambuilding.ca. Have a wonderful afternoon and I will see you next Wednesday.