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Helping leaders motivate their people to a
higher level of performance through strong human relations,

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team building, and goal of giving. This is the Seven Minute Leadership

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Podcast with your host Paul fella Aldo. Hello everyone, and welcome to the

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Seven Minute Leadership Podcast, Episode one
fifty three and its team building on a

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budget. And what if I told
you that for just twenty five dollars you

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could conduct an amazing two to three
hour team building exercise that will get your

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team to be able to communicate together, work together, problem solved together,

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and engage many other of the leadership
tools necessary for any high performing team.

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So if I go all the way
back to the first week of March twenty

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twenty, when we were all caught
off guard with the pandemic announcement, we

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didn't have enough ppe, how are
we going to pay for it, how

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are we going to afford COVID sick
time? All that stuff that happened at

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the beginning of COVID. I assembled
my leadership team and we literally locked ourselves

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in our conference room and sketched out
the battle plan for our EMS agency to

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navigate this pandemic. We all had
to work together, communicate effectively, be

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in sync with one another at a
level we never dreamed would ever come to

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fruition. We always talked about this
type of scenario, but when it doesn't

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happen that often, it's hard for
a nonprofit MS agency to invest that level

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of money for something that may not
come true. Lesson learned. So fast

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forward to present day. I have
some new members of my leadership team that

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we're not with me during the pandemic. I wanted to recreate that exact scenario

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for them, but I didn't want
to use COVID or a future pandemic as

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the scenario. I wanted it to
be fun, engaging that would get them

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all around the table, working and
talking together to solve a problem. So

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here's what I came up with and
did a couple of weeks ago from my

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team. So, if you go
to Amazon in search for something called Unsolved

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case Files, it's an interactive murder
mystery where your team has to work together

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to solve a murder case. It's
twenty five bucks, and here's what you

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get. A case file in an
evidence bag, newspaper clippings, mugshots,

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witness and suspect statements, crime scene
photos, and various other surprise things in

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that folder. It was legit.
It all looked real. To make it

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even more realistic, I assembled my
team. They had no idea what we

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were going to do that day other
than it was a team building exercise,

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and I had already talked to our
local police chief and gave him the case

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file. He walked into the conference
room the morning of the exercise and said

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something to the effect of, we
need your help. We have this cold

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case that we need your help solving. He read a brief overview of the

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murder, slapped the case file down
on the table, and just walked away.

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Now the look on my team's face
was priceless, and the opening five

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minutes was what I expected. They
kind of looked at each other waiting for

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someone to make the first move,
and finally someone reached for the folder and

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cracked it open. Someone else started
separating all the documents. Someone else went

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to the whiteboard and started scribing notes
and drawing the lines to connect the people.

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It was like watching one of those
crime shows, and as their boss,

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it was an incredibly rewarding experience to
see them off rating outside of their

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normal element and comfort zone, and
in a little over two hours they solve

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the case. The point of all
this is that if you're struggling with the

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whole teamwork concept, you don't have
to spend a thousand bucks to truck your

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staff off to some retreat and have
them stand on picnic tables and fall backwards

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into each other's arms. This was
twenty five dollars. I mean, I

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bought them lunch too, but that
wasn't a terrible expense. But you can

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do this on a dirt cheap budget
and it's fun. Fun to the point

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that later that night, when I
was getting ready for bed, one of

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the attendees texted me and said,
I can't stop thinking about today's exercise.

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It felt so real and this was
such a cool experience. And I never

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have my people text me like that
after any training that we do, and

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we do some pretty cool real world
training all the time. So this was

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undoubtedly a winner of an idea and
a great team building exercise. I think

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that they will talk about for a
long long time. So team building is

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necessary. Sometimes you just have to
get creative with your approach to reach your

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desired objectives for your team. It
turns out this scenario got my staff working

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and communicating together, and in that
they learn some valuable lessons about attention to

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detail, organization, listening to each
other, and more importantly, listening to

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other people's point of view. Aren't
those all the necessary qualities that any high

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performing team needs to possess. This
has been the seven Minute Leadership Podcast,

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and I thank you for listening.
For more Paul Fellovaledo podcasts, visit Paul

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Fellovalito dot com