Recently, Niagara hotels and event planners have seen a significant increase from corporate clients requesting team building events in Niagara (Niagara Falls & area). These companies want to give their employees a different experience in the charm and peacefulness of a mostly rural area.

Why Niagara? One major factor in the increase of requests is the building of the new Convention Centre in Niagara Falls, scheduled to open April 2011.

Niagara also has a fabulous infrastructure of wineries, vineyards, farms, hotels, restaurants, the Niagara Parkway, the Niagara Falls tourist area, theatres, historic towns, winery, culinary and beer schools within the Canadian Food & Wine Institute at Niagara College, and on and on. The Farms and wineries exist because of the Niagara Escarpment, which provides the ideal micro-climate for farming.

Niagara’s lifestyle has attracted many professional people to make their homes here: top speakers, broadcasters, wine tour companies, entertainers, educators, winemakers, brew masters, actors and corporate executives. Many have established successful businesses. These people provide a base of topics for team building events that are fulfilling, memorable and give meaningful lessons.

Niagara provides a unique experience for all.

More than 22 Ontario wineries, including 17 from Niagara, shipped their product to London for a prestigious tasting designed to wow the palates of some of the world’s toughest and most powerful critics.

But it wasn’t Niagara’s usual shining star, Icewine, that took centre stage at Canada House, which is located in the heart of London’s Trafalgar Square. Forty cool-climate Chardonnay table wines were the main feature of the five-hour afternoon tasting that attracted about 60 top British wine writers, including Jancis Robinson, Oz Clarke, Stephen Spurrier and Stephen Brook, a contributing editor to high-profile wine magazine Decanter.

Spurrier was the man behind the famed 1976 Judgement of Paris, which catapulted California Chardonnay to prominence after going head-to-head with wines from France.

Bill Redelmeier, owner of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Southbrook Vineyards and who organized the friendly coalition of Ontario wineries, said he hopes the British wine tasting sends the Ontario wine industry to new heights — both abroad and at home.

The showcase, which was not a competition, has already captured the attention of media across Ontario and the United Kingdom — something Redelmeier hopes will translate into domestic wine sales.

“One of the problems we have, as Canadians, is we don’t think anything we do is as good as an import,” said Redelmeier, speaking by phone from London.

“So to have these great wine writers talking about that we’re making great wines in Ontario, I’m hoping to drive sales in Ontario. That, to me, is the big thing.

“We can talk about it and our domestic press can talk about it, but when somebody reads Jancis Robinson or Oz Clarke or Stephen Spurrier in a European magazine saying great things about Ontario wine, we get people coming and trying them in Canada. That’s where our real market is at this point.”

A panel of top Ontario critics, led by noted wine writer Tony Aspler, tasted 60 Chardonnays earlier this year and selected the creme de la creme of the bunch for the British tasting.

Aspler, who attended the London event dubbed “Seriously Cool Chardonnay,” said Ontario winemakers left a searing hot mark on the British wine scene.

“Jancis Robinson, Oz Clarke, Stephen Spurrier and Stephen Brook all had complimentary things to say about the 40 wines poured …,” Aspler wrote on the event’s website Monday.

“This could be an historic tasting in changing U.K. perceptions about Ontario wine.”

Winemaker Derek Barnett of Lailey Vineyards in Niagara-on- the-Lake summed up his U.K. experience in one word: Fabulous.

“I think we were excited to go in as a group and get reviews,” said Barnett, who was one of about 17 Ontario winemakers and winery owners who made the trip.

“We were expecting that we were, I think, on a bit of a world scale, and this is going to tell us all that we were right.”

Michele Bosc, director of marketing with Chateau des Charmes, said Niagara has established a strong international reputation for its icewine.

“But there’s more to us than just icewine,” said Bosc, whose husband, Paul-Andre, travelled to London to represent the family’s Niagara-on-the-Lake winery.

“The intent behind this whole exercise was to show that. To show that cool climate Chardonnay does extremely well in Niagara.”

The idea came to Redelmeier last year after Niagara’s Le Clos Jordanne winery won over the palates of experts in a blind taste test sponsored by the Quebec magazine Cellier.

Afterward, Redelmeier heard winemaker Thomas Bachelder on the radio say he was thrilled with the win and that any one of five to 10 Ontario wineries could have come out victorious.

All Ontario wineries that produce Vintners Quality Alliance wines were invited to submit their Chardonnay, which is made by an estimated 90% of the province’s 113 VQA producers.

Cool climate wines are defined by a shorter growing season, with falls more prone to frost.

The wines tend to show more acidity and finesse than those from hotter climates, which are normally bigger and fruitier.

For more information about the event and a list of participating wineries, go to www.coolchardonnay.ca

mbeech@stcatharinesstandard.

How to create effective teams, team work, and team building is a challenge in every organization. Work environments tend to foster rugged individuals working on personal goals for personal gain. Typically, reward, recognition, and pay systems single out the achievements of individual employees.

Appraisal, performance management, and goal setting systems most frequently focus on individual goals and progress, not on team building. Promotions and additional authority are also bestowed on individuals. Given these factors, is it any wonder that teams and team work are an uphill battle in most organizations?

Here is the information you need to develop team work and effective work teams in your organization. Use this information for team building.

Teams

Employee involvement, teams, and employee empowerment enable people to make decisions about their work. This employee involvement, team building approach, and employee empowerment increases loyalty and fosters ownership. These resources tell you how to do team building and effectively involve people.

Employee Empowerment: How to Empower Employees

Employee empowerment is a strategy and philosophy that enables employees to make decisions about their jobs. Employee empowerment helps employees own their work and take responsibility for their results. Employee empowerment helps employees serve customers at the level of the organization where the customer interface exists.

Employee Involvement: Involve Employees in Decision Making

Employee involvement is creating an environment in which people have an impact on decisions and actions that affect their jobs. Employee involvement is not the goal nor is it a tool, as practiced in many organizations. Employee involvement is a management and leadership philosophy about how people are enabled to contribute to continuous improvement and the ongoing success of their organization.

Team Building Creates Successful Teams

People in every workplace talk about team building, working as a team, and my team, but few understand how to create the experience of team building or how to develop an effective team. Many view teams as the best organization design for involving all employees in creating business success and profitability. Learn how team building helps enable the success of work teams and team work.

Teams and Team Building Resources

Find recommended reading to help you create effective work teams, successful team work, and team building ideas and activities.

Meeting Management for Team Meetings

Ineffective team meetings use critical resources, sap organizational energy and movement, and affect employee morale. Find out how to make your team meetings work for you.

Team Energizers, Icebreakers, and Team Building Activities

Icebreakers, energizers, and activities heighten the effectiveness of training and team building sessions when targeted to the training, speaking, or facilitation topic and the needs of the learners or participants.

Team Building Holidays

Find ideas for successful teams, effective team work, and team building around holiday ideas and themes.

Positive Work Relationships Contribute to Effective Teams

Want to work more effectively with people at work? Whether your relationship is with your team, supervisor, manager, customer or coworker, you want to make your interpersonal relationships positive, supportive, clear, and empowering.

I trust these resources will help you create successful and effective teams and team work. Happy team building.

By Susan M. Heathfield

It may not be though. It may simply be the lack of proper communication team building. This article raises 3 ways to help ensure that all communication channels with the team are working properly.

1. You communicate best with people when you are talking their language. That may seem obvious, but it is so often ignored too. Team leaders will sometimes try to put square-hole people into round holes and then wonder why the attempt failed.

The answer is simple: give team members what they need and want. Someone who performs best in a highly ordered and controlled setting may do less well in a more open and challenging environment, for example.

Through communication team building a leader should first understand where each member fits in best, what they need and what they want, then simply give that to them.

2. Part of the above problem stems from making assumptions. This of course is something a team leader should never do. An assumption is at best a guess. It may be right, but it may be wrong too. This is not the basis for good communication team building.

There is only one effective way to know your team, and that is through observation. Yes, you can read their profiles until you are blue in the face, and probably learn something about them, but it can never replace simple observation.

Through observation you can learn how individuals within the team behave naturally. Integrating their natural way of communicating in the team building exercise can prevent a stilted and forced way of getting them to interact effectively.

3. Through understanding and observation most of what is needed for effective communication team building can be gathered. Leaving it at that would be a mistake, however. While it is likely that the information gathered is enough, it may not be. The simple way to make sure is to ask.

Don’t assume that your observations are accurate. They probably are, but make sure by asking the team members. Tell them that you have observed how they interact together and that it seems method X is best suited for them. Then ask them if they believe this to be correct.

Several things happen at this point. The team leader gains respect because he or she is consulting with the team members. They are not being left to themselves. The team leader also gains the trust of the members, which means they are much more likely to do what is asked of them willingly. They are also much more likely to become committed to and engaged in the exercise.

Communication team building is really just about building the best possible communication channel between each member of the team. The team leader will then know exactly how to get the best from the team, which in turn almost guarantees long lasting success.

Caron J Rose. More information on team building.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Caron_J_Rose
http://EzineArticles.com/?Communication-Team-Building&id=2077573

What is Team Building?

Team building refers to a wide range of activities for improving team performance. Team building can range from simple bonding exercises to complex simulations and multi-day team building retreats designed to develop a team. Wine Country Tour’s specialty is taking people out of the office environment into the wineries and vineyards of the Niagara Region for winery tours, wine-tastings and team building activities.

Reasons for Team Building

Goal: to create trust and a cooperative working environment between team members

• Coordinating a team towards a common goal
• Improving communication
• Making the workplace more enjoyable
• Motivating a team
• Getting to know each other
• Getting everyone “onto the same page”, including goal setting
• Teaching the team self-regulation strategies
• Helping participants to learn more about themselves (strengths and weaknesses)
• Identifying and utilizing the strengths of team members
• Improving team productivity
• Practicing effective collaboration with team members
• Reducing negativity and damaging thinking
• Improving positivity
• Improving relationships:
  • between two people
  • between a person and a group
  • between groups

Wine Country Tours team building activities are centred, fundamentally, at the group just having a relaxing day right from the minute they are picked up by the bus. Going through the experience of vineyard and winery tours and wine tastings, the tone is as casual and relaxed where everyone gets to laugh and play together. In our experience over the past twelve years, we have found that the group progressively becomes dramatically happier and the smiles increase exponentially, especially after a couple of winery, brewery or distillery stops!

Why Team Build With Wine Country Tours?

We are often asked to provide a structured team building activity for a variety of reasons: reduce office tension, increase motivation, improve personal and group productivity, reward staff with a fun and educational time, improve self-confidence and self-esteem by helping them “get out of their own way” and giving them a challenge to do something that they may have never done before.

Team-building is an important factor in any environment, its focus is to specialize in bringing out the best in a team to ensure self development, positive communication, leadership skills and the ability to work closely together as a team to problem solve.

Significant Return on Investment

The corporation’s investment for a wine tour outing to the Niagara Regions’ vineyards is repaid exponentially with improved productivity. The release of tension amongst employees, both overall and between individuals, does more to improve the overall feeling of well-being and relief of pent-up tension.

Winery tours are a fun day, not a work day, even though spent with fellow employees, and this is somewhat of a paradigm shift that these people experience. Outside of the workplace, people begin to see others in a more natural state, one where they show who they really are, typically this creates a very positive and enlightening experience. How many times have you seen someone, perhaps your boss, in a social setting, where you were amazed at how different she/he was? It is quite wonderful and amazing when it happens.

Things to Ask

What does your organization want to get out of the day? Let’s talk about your goals for this day. This will allow us to determine the best way to accomplish this.

What are the needs of the current team? You may not know exactly what is wrong with your team. The team itself may have some clear ideas about what they need to improve on.

What is the age range of the participants within the team? We have worked with every age group so we know how to customize the tour around your demographic(s).

What are Team Building Exercises and what is their purpose?

Team building exercises consist of a variety of tasks designed to develop group members and their ability to work together effectively. There are many types of team building activities that involve novel complex tasks and are designed for specific needs. The purpose of team building exercises is to assist teams in becoming cohesive units of individuals that can effectively work together to complete tasks.

Methods for Team Building

Wine Country Tours team building events take participants out of their regular work context, and use the new context as an enabler of change and development – allowing team participants to get to learn more about each other in a new (non-work) context.

The methods of doing this vary, and include:

• simple social activities – to encourage team members to spend time together
• group bonding sessions – company sponsored fun activities (like our winery tours) to get to know team members (sometimes intending also to inspire creativity)
• personal development activities – individual programs given to groups
• team development activities – group-dynamic games designed to help individuals discover how they approach a problem, how the team works together, and discover better methods
• training how to work better together

Group-dynamic games are experiential education exercises which help people to learn about themselves, interpersonal relationships, and how groups function from a group dynamics or social psychological point of view.

Group dynamics can be understood as complex from an interpersonal relationships point of view because it involves:

• relationships between two people
• relationships between a person and a group
• relationships between groups

Group dynamic games – problem solving activities

Group dynamic games are experiential education exercises which help people to learn about themselves, interpersonal relationships, and how groups function from a group dynamics or social psychological point of view.

Group-dynamic games are usually designed for the specific purpose of furthering personal development, character building, and teamwork via a Group-dynamic milieu. The group leader may sometimes also be the game leader, or between peers, the leadership and game-rules can change.

The use of group dynamic activities has a history of application in conflict resolution, anger management and team building

There are a number of exercises with a problem that the group must solve. We have developed outdoor and indoor activities.

There are other activities we are involved with regularly with local interactive theatre group, Mystery on the Lake, The Secret of Butlersburg, and The Last Illusionist, who take us on historic and fascinating walks throughout Niagara on the Lake and Niagara Falls, respectively.

A few of our more popular activities:

• Niagara on the Lake Historical Scavenger Hunt
• Camera Scavenger
• Dance-off Competition
• BBQ Cook-off  Iron chef style
• Jugglers All
• Hand-Writing Analysis Comedy
• Magic Tricks Education

Ice-Breakers

An ice-breaker is a facilitation exercise intended to help a group to begin the process of forming themselves into a team. Icebreakers are commonly presented as a game to “warm up” the group by helping the members to get to know each other. They often focus on sharing personal information such as name, hobbies, etc.

TESTIMONIALS:

Hello Diane,

Thank you for all of your hard work on Saturday we had an amazing time. People are still talking about it (a very good sign).

Thanks again for everything Diane I would not hesitate to work with you again.

Warmest regards,

Cheryl

Haywood Securities Inc.

Hi Diane

I just wanted to report in to let you know that we just had a fabulous day yesterday.  Everyone had a super great time.  Dinner at Tony’s was amazing, one of the best meals yet – really memorable.  Dale’s cake was absolutely delectable and she was so surprised!  Everyone also commented that the sandwiches at lunch were superb.  The jet boating was a blast (I wish I had of had a contest for the best after ride hair!).

Thanks again for your help with this event, it was a huge success, one of the best summer trips yet.  When we visit Niagara again (probably in three to four years) I’ll be sure to use Wine Country Tours again, and of course will recommend you whenever I can.

Very best regards,

Janet

Diane,

Just wanted to let you know the feedback from the tour was great, everyone had a good time. They certainly enjoyed the tour at Cattail, Roselyn was very informative, as a matter of fact, I just placed an order with her for some wine for Christmas gifts for the partners! We had a nice chat.

It certainly was the right choice for our group, family based and great wine.

Dinner and the entertainment was also fun, Kudos goes to the young lady who sang her heart out to our crew, with the younger crowd I was a bit worried they would not have enjoyed it, however they seemed to be open to change! I particularly enjoyed her choice of tunes as I spent many a Sunday with my Grandmother (who raised me) watching old English movies and know those tunes quite well.

We certainly could have went on for quite awhile about the mobster connections he is quite the wealth of knowledge.

Thank-you for getting it together, it certainly left me time to enjoy the day!

Once again Thanks~

Suzette

BDO Dunwoody LLP

Hi Diane

I just like to say thank you very much for the lovely day on Friday. I spoke with everybody on Monday and they all enjoyed the day very much. The first winery was the favourite winery, more personal and all agreed much more information learned. I have already given your web site and telephone number out to 2 people, to book with you outside of Johnson’s. I will make sure all the teams know about you for next year, unfortunately most of the teams have all ready done team building day. The brewery was also a hit.

Thanks again

Lorelei

S.C. Johnson

Hello Diane!

First of all, thank you for a wonderful day!  Everyone enjoyed themselves, and I am a very popular person in the office.

Please especially thank Stratus for us, the group loved Phyllis especially.  Someone on the team mentioned even that of all the wine tours she has done, Phyllis was by far the best!

Again, thanks again!  I’m going to make sure your name is available the next time our group (or anyone else’s) wants to do a tour!

Sarah

Microsoft Canada

References:

www.wilkipedia.com

http://managementhelp.org/grp_skll/teams/teams.htm

http://humanresources.about.com/od/involvementteams/a/twelve_tip_team.htm

Passes can be used any weekend in May. If you have a group of at least 10 people, make it a day and tour here with Wine Country Tours

Advance Ticket Price $38 plus applicable taxes until April 23; $43 plus taxes as of April 23. Tickets ordered up until April 19 will be sent by postal mail; tickets ordered after April 19 will be held for pick-up at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Chamber of Commerce, lower level of the Courthouse, 26 Queen Street, open seven days a week between 10 am and 5 pm.

To order tickets, click here:

• http://www.niagaraonthelake.com/ticketdetail/jpage/1/p/te/content.do?Page_Id=2&Item_Id=2230&Merchant_Id=806