Just like with houses, you often cannot tell by looking at a person if the foundation is strong. You can only tell when the hurricane blows by or the earthquake strikes – and then it’s too late to do something about it. The time to build a foundation is BEFORE you build the house. Often, you will spend more time on the foundation than the house itself – that isn’t good news for impatient people who want to see results yesterday! If you build the house and notice later that you should have built a stronger foundation, you may need to tear everything down and start over again. Even patchwork will be tricky and very costly.

As people, we need a strong foundation with strong pillars which, in my mind, are made up of health, relationships, finances, and work. These, in turn, must be strong.

Strong health means strong physical, emotional, and mental health. It means being in that state now and it means working on maintaining that state. Everyone may come in contact with disease, but generally those with a stronger foundation of health will combat the disease faster, often even before you know you are sick. Building strong health includes working on a positive mental attitude, working out regularly, positive eating habits, regular time off work, and some form of spiritual work. This may include going to church, meditating or volunteer work to benefit others.

Strong finances don’t only mean a lot of immediate cash flow. It means good cash flow and the knowledge that if the cash flow stopped (due to injury, divorce, downsizing, changes in market conditions), there would be a cushion made up of insurance and income from various sources like businesses and investments. Strong finances are built for the short term as well as the long term.

Strong relationships mean clean and happy, satisfying relationships with others. It has been proven that people with social interactions and married people, on average, live longer than those who are alone. Strong relationships mean that there are no outstanding issues with the people in your life. All family secrets have been dealt with, all the times that your spouse has left the toilet seat up have been forgiven and forgotten. Of course, it wouldn’t be human to never have any disagreements, but it is human and possible to have such disagreements cleaned up quickly. Strong relationships feel great and provide an incredible opportunity for support when needed.

Strong work environment, to me, includes a number of things. Relationships with coworkers, owners or partners, and customers need to be good. There needs to be a sense of purpose, meaning, and appreciation for the work being done. The work needs to “fit” your particular personality and nourish you financially and otherwise.

How strong does the foundation need to be? That depends on the kind of house you want to build. A doghouse doesn’t need much of a foundation. A tall apartment building does! What kind of a foundation does YOUR dream life need?

Team building has proven to be extremely useful in the business world where executives have different thought processes. They have different perspectives of looking towards a scenario. Due to this, personal ego and attitude can cause clashes among the employees and executives. This results in unhealthy relations which in turn affects employee performance. Due to such barriers between team members, the team won’t be able to achieve what they are expected to. In such a situation, team building comes to the rescue.

Team Building Concepts
Team building is a kind of bonding of all team members who come from different backgrounds and have different ways of thinking. It enables a mutual understanding and a common goal to be created in the minds of all team members. It helps them in increasing their performance levels and quality, better decision making, problem solving, innovative thinking, and resolving conflicts.

Good Communication in Team Building
Communication is certainly a crucial factor in team building. Team building techniques and activities which don’t involve effective communication are unproductive. It is very important for team members to communicate with each other to pass on their views and ideas. With effective communication, every team member comes to know how the other person thinks, what work does he expect, and what he is capable of. This helps in working efficiently and dividing the work accordingly among the team members, which promotes proper coordination.

Motivation in Team Building
Employee motivation is also a significant aspect of getting the best from the employee. Team building is an effective tool for the management to motivate and encourage employees to move forward towards the set goals. Motivation enables an employee to think that his contribution is truly important for the company. It includes building a person’s confidence regarding his work, his team members, and the company goals.

Team Building Projects
A good leader or manager would surely be aware of all the team building strategies. There are many ways of promoting team building, be it at the workplace or on an outing. Team building strategies are put into practice when either the team has performed well and is expected to continue doing so, or the team is not giving its best for any specific reason. There are several processes in a company, and there may arise a need of two or more processes to work for a single project. In such cases, the leaders arrange some activities which would help the teams communicate and coordinate with teams from other processes for getting ready for the collective work.

Every employee has different strengths and capabilities, and so roles and responsibilities should be assigned on that basis. Employees come from various backgrounds, so the company should take advantage of the diverse mentality in their working processes. Typical team building techniques normally consist of an outdoor trip with all the members of a team. In such activities, they play creative and informative games that includes communication. There are also some informal corporate team building activities just to make the employees feel that it is solely not a formal event.

There are many other team building techniques that can be used by experienced managers to bond a team together for a common purpose. After all, ‘team building for success’ is the most important motto in an organization.

Last week’s article covered the likely responses of three “Janes,” Jane Dough, Accidental Jane, and Tenacity Jane. This week, we explore the reactions of Go Jane Go and Merry Jane.

Go Jane Go is a successful female entrepreneur who has grown her business to the point that she may struggle to get time away from work. She’s confident and organized, and is likely to have put systems in place to get her work done in an efficient manner—which may have something to do with why she’s four times as likely as the average female business owner to hit the million-dollar. Accounting for 14% of all women entrepreneurs, Go Jane Go types are the least common of the five Jane types.

Because Go Jane Go has grown her business to the point where her she has plenty of work coming in—and the right systems in place to accommodate that work—the loss of a single client (or even two or three) does not pose a serious threat to her business.

However, because Go Jane Go tends cares so much about her clients, the loss of one or more of them may set off some serious alarm bells anyway. If the customer had been a good one with whom she had a relationship, she may feel guilt about whether she failed to provide the right level of service and almost obsessed about what she might have done wrong or what she might have done to prevent the loss. This “looking backward” approach can take up considerable energy from Go Jane Go and keep her from being able to see all of the good she has done.

It is also possible, again depending on the relationship, that Go Jane Go might actually feel relieved. In these cases, it is likely that the relationship wasn’t working for Go Jane Go but because she is committed to good service and doesn’t generally like to engage in what she may see as confrontation, she may have been quietly suffering the relationship. When this client goes, she may actually feel liberated.

In either case, Go Jane Go has an opportunity to remind herself to depersonalize things somewhat and focus on re-investing her energy. In the case of the “bad” customer, she is now free to spend her time focusing on stronger and better relationships. In the case of the lost “good” customer, she should:

1. acknowledge that sometimes things happen that are out of our control,
2. give herself credit for all the things she did that were right
3. acknowledge any lessons learned and commit to improving next time
4. and finally, release any guilt feelings and reinvest her energy in a happier way.

Our last entrepreneur, Merry Jane, is very committed to running her business in a way that helps her be master of her own time. She realizes she may not be making as much money as she might, but she’s happily running her company in a way that works for her lifestyle. Roughly 19% of women business owners are Merry Janes.

Merry Jane cares about her customers and wants to keep them, but at the same time she knows that she only has so much time to invest in any given customer. Therefore, when a customer leaves, she is likely to see it fairly pragmatically, knowing that sometimes these things happen in business. She’ll quickly turn her attention to identifying the next new customer to replace the loss.