What is it like to capture the energy, passion and fervor of Olympic competition? What’s it like to break a Guinness World Record? World Record Breakers takes you there!  In this high-energy Olympic-style teambuilding activity, 12 brazenly hilarious events, never seen before by fans anywhere, challenge your team to go for the gold, again and again! Teams will have 12 records to break in 12 events being conducted – all at the same time!

And then, in the wild grand finale, each team competes against the rest of the world as they try to break actual Guinness World Records! If you can break a Guinness World Record, we’ll submit your winning attempt to Guinness and you’ll have earned fame and immortality as a world record-breaking team!

There are no barriers to entry, here. Everyone participates, regardless of physical prowess. Groups are divided into table teams, and each one is given a list of records to set and beat. Teams strategize, plan, prioritize and choose which records to go for based on their own strengths and interests. The catch is – everyone is trying to beat the same records!

And no record is safe for long, because the team next to you is working to break the record you just set.  As the game ends, teams gather around the official World Record Breakers Score Board to see who scored the fastest, longest, funniest, and zaniest attempts. As teams check their standings, you see that every team is a winner because they’ve had a great time!

World Record Breakers is an event definitely designed for groups who like measurable results. Not only are table teams competing against each other, they compete worldwide in the Guinness World Record Breaker round. Everything is put up on the record board for all to see. The high energy and passion from this friendly competition really rallies teams together. Teams enjoy the camaraderie and the great fun they have strategizing and working toward the Gold and becoming a World Record Breaker in this Olympic-sized event!

Depending on your needs, Quixote Consulting can customize key parts of World Record Breakers to fit ongoing company themes or something completely different. It’s your choice. Even the team building activities themselves can be tailored to fit your workplace routines, your industry, or your departments. Quixote Consulting can integrate your business into the event to provide a truly personalized World Record Breakers Olympic team building experience!

Debrief: If desired, World Record Breakers Olympic Team Building can include a debrief of team performance around communication, working together led by a Quixote Consulting trained facilitator. The debrief can be customized for your group goals.

Minimum/Maximum Group Size: From groups of 8 to 2000.

Program Length: 1-3 hours. World Record Breakers can also be the culmination of a full day of Team Quest team building or incorporated into a day or multi-day program using work-style assessments such as MBTI or StrengthsFinder.

Space Requirements: 20 square feet per participant with enough room for each team (6-10 people per team) to sit at a round table as well as open space.

Take Homes, Extras: Fun, silly prizes can be awarded to top-performing teams and people.

Benefits and Results

• Boost morale and team spirit
• Involve maximum participation
• Promote camaraderie
• Encourage friendly competition

• Communication
• Exploring challenges virtual teams face
• Problem-solving
• Creative thinking and innovation
• Getting to know each other
• Celebrate and have fun

I recently finished leading a series of Virtual Team Quest virtual team building activities for Latham & Watkins’ directors. I had the afternoon free before flying out of LAX so I walked out of the Leows Hotel to the beach in Santa Monica, California, right next to the famous Santa Monica Pier. As I walked out on the beach a sight greeted me that was inspiring and filled me with delight. What I saw is shaping my play these spring and summer seasons.

But first, I have two confessions. First, I love to exercise. This can be vaguely annoying to many people around me who do not share this passion. I love to move my body, I love to sweat. I love the immediacy and meditation that working out provides me. I love to work at something over time and see my physical strength, speed, agility, flexibility improve. And I love to be outside while I’m exercising.

My second confession is that I love to play, preferably with others. That’s my favorite way to exercise. Hockey, basketball, ultimate Frisbee, or pretty much anything involving others works. And exercising on my own has to have some element of play or enjoyment for me. I’d rather roller blade than just about anything else on my own. I enjoy swimming, biking and running, but not too much of any of those at one time, so triathlons (and the need to balance training in the three different pursuits at the same time) are perfect for me. If I lived closer to water I would beyond a doubt surf, paddleboard, kitesurf, and on and on. Those things look like a whole lot of fun and are extremely appealing to the otter in me.

Tomorrow I’ll write about what so inspired me on the beach in Santa Monica. Until then, what ‘confessions’ do you have about play and exercise? Your best way to play is your own unique path. You playing at your best is going to look like no one else. How are you at your best at play?

Quixote Consulting’s team building activities offer dozens of opportunities for team play.

Ideas! I’ve had millions. So have you. And I hope we have millions more. There are too many to act on, so why not go with the ones that have the most life, the most energy to them?

One good test of that is to see how absurd they are. Most of Einstein’s theories probably seemed pretty absurd, even to him. Now they’re indisputable fact.

Arthur Schopenhauer said:

All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It’s easy to see how that has played out on a grand scale in history. But what about ideas we have about ourselves and our future? What absurd possibilities put a playful twinkle in your eye?

Here’s one more quote, from the greatest book ever (yes, I’m biased), Don Quixote:

“Craziness must have more companions than wisdom.”

1. Select a small work task that has low stakes
2. Take a few minutes before starting the task to brainstorm how you could bring play into completing it.
3. Complete the task while focusing exclusively on finding intrinsic joy in the way you complete the task.
4. Give yourself a high-five, regardless of the outcome!
5. Repeat, rinse well.

Longest paper clip chain in 30 seconds

• Get a pile of standard, commercially available paper clips of no greater length than 40mm.
• At the start of the attempt, the paper clips must be laid out flat on the table, and you must have your hands flat on the table.
• Once the challenge starts, the paper clips are to be linked in a single continuous chain.
• Once the 30 second period is over, you must hold up the chain by one end, to show that all the paper clips are properly attached.
• Only paper clips which remain attached as part of the chain when held up can be counted towards the total score.

The current world record as of this week is 53 paper clips, achieved by Silvio Sabba, in Milan, Italy, on April 26, 2012. This is amazing, considering we checked this record just two months ago and it was 47! Just like the Olympics, records are meant to be broken. Are you a Guinness World Record Breaker?

Here’s a link to a video of Silvio’s record-breaking attempt. Watch in awe and get some ideas for your record-breaking attempt!

1. Austin
2. Portland, Oregon
3. Chicago
4. Houston
5. Denver

But first, before we get to the answer, what an interesting statistic! The idea that 64% of workers describe themselves as satisfied surprises me. I thought it’d be much lower.

Here’s another statistic: Gallup reports that only about a third of workers describe themselves as engaged at work. Put those two statistics together and they tell me that it really helps to be engaged at work to be satisfied, but there are other factors as well. What they are, I can only guess. But it’s clearly more than just employee engagement that makes someone satisfied with their work.

Now back to our question. They are actually in order, so the city with the happiest workers is….

Austin, Texas! Amazingly, two of the most satisfied cites are in Texas. One is central US (Chicago), and the other two are in the Pacific Northwest.

“You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

Any direction you choose.

You’re on your own. And

you know what you know.

And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

“You’ll get mixed up,

of course, as you

already know.

You’ll get mixed up

with many strange birds

as you go.

So be sure when you step.

Step with care and great

tact and remember that…

…Life’s A Great

Balancing Act.”

“And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU’LL MOVE

MOUNTAINS!”

In his recent Rolling Stone interview President Obama ended with this optimistic message:

“There’s an incredible generosity and recognition from people that these are tough times. It reminds you of what an incredible privilege it is to occupy this office. You’re touching people on a day-to-day basis, and sometimes you don’t even know it.

My hair is grayer, and obviously you get dinged up and bruised in this job. But my confidence in the American people is stronger than it was when I came into office, and my determination to do right by them and make sure that every morning, I wake up trying to figure out, “How do I improve their prospects?” That determination burns brighter than it did back in 2008.”

A recent New York Times article outlines how Republican leaders are urging Mitt Romney to extend a more positive message. The Republican governor of Michigan said, ““The American people want to hear a positive vision for America.”

Both sides know that the more optimistic candidate wins. You can use this information to your advantage in your life. When you’re trying to influence and lead, you know which direction to head for your vision to win the hearts and minds of the people you’re leading and influencing. Head for the one with sunny skies and a better tomorrow. Combine that with compelling stories and you have an unbeatable combination.

Check out Quixote Consulting’s strengths-based leadership training Leader Quest to chart out a positive vision of the future with your leadership team. Check out Quixote Consulting’s influence training Influence: The Power of Persuasion to learn more about influencing.

President Obama, and any good influencer knows this. That is why in his recent Rolling Stone interview he ended the interview with this statement:

“You generally don’t hear in the press about what goes right, but you do hear it from the people who were impacted by it. I tell you, not a day passes where somewhere, somehow, I don’t hear about something we’ve done that’s really touched somebody directly. Somebody writes and says, “I’m 25 years old, and because of health care reform, I was able to stay on my parents’ plan and ended up getting a checkup, and it turned out that I had a tumor and it was caught early, and I just want you to know that treatment is going well, and I really think this health care bill saved my life.” Or you’re in a rope line and somebody says, “I know you’ve been criticized because a lot of folks have had their homes foreclosed on, but your housing program actually helped me stay in my home, and it’s made all the difference in the world.”

There’s an incredible generosity and recognition from people that these are tough times. It reminds you of what an incredible privilege it is to occupy this office. You’re touching people on a day-to-day basis, and sometimes you don’t even know it.”

Stories – the key to influencing for a positive outcome. What stories will you tell today?

Check out Quixote Consulting’s strengths-based leadership training Leader Quest to explore how to influence positively with your leadership team. Check out Quixote Consulting’s influence training Influence: The Power of Persuasion to learn more about influencing.

“I really loved his playing. He had all the good elements of music in his playing – compositional elements like taking a small idea and really developing it…doing things out of tempo, suddenly going out of tempo. He was so strong he could stop the whole group just by the way he played. And taking a tune, playing a cadenza…it was sort of like what Picasso did with a face: he’d just turn it every which way. It was thrilling to hear him play (but) it was frightening that sometimes I’d have to play after him, except that the music was so good that it was fun to get involved in it.”

Playing with a master is frightening – I know that feeling! But what a delight too! It’s frightening fun, especially if the master you’re working with delights in her craft. When that fear shows up from doing anything with someone you think is better than you look for the fun too. A hint is in Jim Hall’s quote above – “the music was so good that it was fun to get involved in it.”

It’s often tempting to compare one’s self unfavorably with someone better than you – I write this from repeatedly bitter experience. One way out of that trap is in how good the music is, the project is, the art, the work, the delight, the life. Go to the fun to escape the greater than/less than trap. Jim Hall did, so can you.

Two examples from their work together:

First – In their recording of Without a Song you hear Jim Hall offering repeated variations on what Sonny had played in his solo before him. He listened, got inspired, remembered, then made it his own.

Second – In their recording of Don’t Stop the Carnival, they do a beautiful call and response where Sonny Rollins plays a classic Lester Young saxophone lick. Jim Hall echoes with a bluesy lick. Later on in the song when Hall leads the call and response, he plays the Lester Young lick and Sonny responds with Jim Hall’s original bluesy lick! That’s some serious listening, and one reason why I have a passion for playing jazz – that’s some serious fun!