Negativity is contagious. It’s all too easy to complain about everything that goes wrong and this can quickly spread to others. Fortunately there is a simple trick that can be used to eliminate negativity; simply don’t say negative words. Aiming for positive remarks helps people to get energised. Rather than looking for blame, seek opportunities to improve and progress forward.

Here are some examples of negative statements that people commonly use:

• Don’t do that
• We can’t do it
• It can’t be done
• We don’t do such thing
• It is against our policy
• We have never done this before
• It has never been done
• No one knows how to do this
• You don’t know how this works
• The management is clueless
• The staff are clueless
• They sit there all day and do nothing
• No one cares

These statements do not help and are sometime stated as a reflex reaction rather than with an appropriate thought. Sometimes they become a habit and it is important to eliminate them as bad habits.

This simple two stage exercise helps to increase the awareness of delegates about this issue and helps them to address it. It is ideal for delegates who work closely together or are part of the same team.

This is a simple yet powerful exercise in getting people to share their perception about others. Sometimes seeing the world from another person’s point of view can have a significant benefit for us. This exercise facilitates this process and is most ideal for delegates who know each other so you can use this as part of a team building course.

This activity allows people to help each other anonymously. Sometimes we may feel stuck or wonder what we could do to improve our behaviour or skills. We may however not feel comfortable to directly ask others about them. This exercise sets the scene for people to open up and help each without fear of being wrong or obvious.

This is a suitable exercise for getting people in a team to express their feelings about each other but in a very indirect and controlled way. It also gives delegates a chance to see how others think of them. It also helps them to discover how much they know about other people’s view of them. This exercise is suitable for a group of delegates who know each other.

Research shows that people with specific and defined goals are more likely to succeed in life than those without. One of the great ways to find these goals is to get inspired by your favourite heroes and personalities in history. This exercise systematically helps delegates to formulate their goals using this approach.

This exercise has several parts though you don’t have to go through all of them. Pick and choose based on your objective, your time and your delegates.

This is a great exercise to get the delegates to pay attention to where they are in life and perhaps where they want to go. It is a good eye opener, so it is ideal when you want to talk about motivation or want to energise team members. It is also ideal for use in coaching sessions.

This is an ideal exercise which enables participants to find out more about themselves. It is highly effective in bringing up lots of hidden issues that could be present in the team and causes conflicts. This self-probation can be used for coaching where team members can clearly see various points of view and based on those take steps to move the team forward towards its ideal state. This is effectively a self-coaching exercise where only the team members’ views are used to evaluate the group. This activity is as opposed to using 360 degree questionnaires or other elaborate formal feedback mechanisms used in some organisations. Indeed, since team members know more about their own team more than anyone else, their self-analysis will be more useful and accurate than many other methods.

In certain countries, writing an essay on “Money or Knowledge” is a classic school activity. Sometimes the essay writing activity is so classic, it is dismissed as routine and is not paid as much attention as it deserves. Worst still, the question is ignored for later stages of life where the question actually becomes far more applicable.

This training exercise helps professionals to explore this subject once again, “Is it better to go for knowledge or for money?” Like all grand questions, the answer is far from trivial and you can have endless debates about the merits and pitfall of each direction. Nevertheless, the direction taken comes to define your individuality and will also explain a lot about your economic prosperity, your social and academic skills as well as your general knowledge about the world.

This is an energizing exercise designed to show the difference between direct instructions and feedback. In other words, it shows that shaping seems to be a lot more effective than telling.This is an ideal exercise for coaching  as it clearly demonstrates the effect of indirect feedback.

The aim of this exercise is to increase individual’s confidence in their own capabilities and talents. Participants are encouraged to share their knowledge and experience with others in a constructive and structured way.