Recently, a Swiss ad agency’s team building exercise of walking across hot coals sent 25 of their employees to the hospital.
Of course, the intent to motivate employees wasn’t aimed at hurting them. That said, as a facilitator of retreats to improve performance, I see this as a metaphor for what companies need to reinvent when they set out to help people and end up hurting them.
Adding stress is cruel and inhuman. Period. Employees need gentle, healing, slow solutions.
We are in a new era of work, and nothing will ever be the same. Companies need to be more thoughtful and strategic than they have ever been in order to produce results with the teams they employ.
Retreats and trainings are held to ignite self-improvement, build confidence and increase the bottom line. The understanding is that this helps people reach those goals.
Nadya Zhexembayeva author and Founder of the Reinvention Academy says, “You cannot treat change as a project. You have to start falling into a process.” Your employees will come to this conclusion when they are engaged in a safe and open manner.
A powerful tool to start this conversation is found in the Reinvention platform. It’s called the Future Fit Framework. On a single piece of paper participants begin the mindset and culture work necessary to measure where everyone is. The Future Fit Framework moves employees from the weeds of their daily work into the big picture and asks them when it comes to the work they do:
· How it was? · How it will be? · What are the priorities moving forward?
Future fit is emotionally constructive. This creates a context for the work to be done. This creates movement.
Exercises like this create alignment and showcase where to put the focus for improvement.
Why not carry out an exercise that is less painful and more collaborative and is found on a simple piece of paper?
Reinvent how you support your employees and message me if you want to have a complimentary consultation around the future fit framework.
I LOVE sharing this because the results are FAST!