South Carolina Conferences

Greenville-Spartanburg Gaining Ground as Corporate Meeting Destination

By Jessica Genereaux

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Greenville Spartanburg is an idyllic Southern region, a cut above so many metro areas in the U.S., consumed by frenzy of the modern age. As a meeting destination, it’s a no-brainer for meeting planners looking for mild year-round weather and affordable flights. Southwest Airlines now flies here. Corporate leaders also have an abundance of hotel venues and ample space, whether training sales staff or celebrating with team building activities Greenville, Spartanburg or beyond.

 

Photos: Top: Bike Building for kids in need is a fun, fulfilling team experience, connecting businesses with the community. Bottom: Assembling 3D-printed hands helps kids overseas who were born with symbrachydactyly, a condition in which hands are not fully formed.

Jayne Palmer, event manager for Venture Up in Minneapolis, home of 17 Fortune 500 Firms, says smaller venues like Greenville decrease stress for everyone. A company devoted to building team relationships at conferences, Venture Up has held teambuilding events in Greenville and Spartanburg since 1983. “GSP is an easy destination,” she says. 

VIDEO: See General Electric in Greenville, Team Building with Venture Up.

Where else in the U.S. can you land at an airport, walk across the street, and rent a car? Well, in Minneapolis you can. But one thing the two cities don’t share in common is that arctic winter.

“I’m big on Greenville because it’s warm, hassle-free and authentic,” she says, “Greenville and Spartanburg are less contrived than larger cities. They are low-key and underrated because they don’t get much publicity, over Miami, Vegas or Chicago.”

Southwest Airlines, Michelin, Verizon, GE and Fluor with offices in Greenville, have made Venture Up’s client list, and most of them have fused their events to honor corporate social responsibility, serving needy families in South Carolina.

According to Cvent, a conference supplier network, Greenville has 8,500 hotel rooms and Spartanburg has 3,500. Both locations are said to be “up and coming” destinations, although competing with big hitters such as Vegas and Chicago is unlikely in the future.

For now, the area retains a low-profile, with old-fashioned southern charm and authenticity, but it won’t stay secret for long.

"Coffee Street" lives up to its name in Historic Greenville, SC.

Fun in Cabo

When Fun Collides With Water

Cabo San Lucas, at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula, has long been a fun site for the Margarita crowd. It's also a ripe destination for corporate meetings, with new construction booming up the coast to San Jose del Cabo and beyond. Cabo conference promoters cite the upscale amenities, rugged sea cliffs and crashing waves, but the dangerous riptides seem never to make a headline. Los Cabos' top beachside resorts are set in rugged nature, but few beaches in Los Cabos are safe to swim all the time. Before the fun began on a recent trip here, Venture Up staff learned first-off to take the tide seriously.

The Venture Up family flew down to Baja to produce a video promoting  team building activities in Los Cabos. The "Fun in Cabo" video was secondary to our promo piece, and taken long after the beach heroes below faced a life-or-death experience. Sitting under a beachside palapa, two men galloped up on horseback, frantically yelling for a doctor. Mason and Miles Lengyel, below, raced to the shoreline to find a man on the beach with no pulse; his family frantically trying to perform CPR. (See the full story on our website, called Code Red). The good news is the story had a happy ending and a new safety-minded event was born.

Miles Lengyel and Mason Lengyel, Venture Up program managers, after helping to save a man with no pulse, using only CPR at San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. 

The  Code Red Emergency Response team building program can be a life-saving experience. Designed to promote safety at work, at home, or in Mexico, teams face a simulated real-life experience similar to those many of us will face at some time in our lives. During the program, teams learn CPR, build trust in one another and have the confidence to help save a life at work, home, or a Mexico beach that may lack essential emergency gear.

Los Cabos Information:

Los Cabos conference hotels and locations
Directions: Cabo San Lucas to San Jose del Cabo
City Maps: Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo

Hyatt Ziva is a favorite venue for Venture Up clients. Located in historic San Jose del Cabo, this area is less hectic than Cabo San Lucas. A turtle nesting ground is just north of the beach and leads to a quiet harbor, Puerto del Cabo, with uncrowded water fun, including  Dolphin Discovery . conservation center and Hydro Flyboarding. Downtown San Jose is known for its historic arts district, with high end art by world renowned artists. 

Flyboard San Jose del Cabo 

A 2-man team is all that's required for water flight in San Jose del Cabo. Kristian Sandoval, Venture Up's program director for Latin regions, and a former Hewlett Packard executive for Latin America, is also a partner in Hydro Flyboard, based in San Jose del Cabo, home of the Dolphin Discovery conservation center. 

Diversity Drives Success in San Antonio

Diversity in teams can drive creativity and productivity if the teams are functional and cooperate freely. But with diversity comes more potential for conflict and misunderstanding, as many San Antonio team managers know well. Diversity and work team performance is closely tied, and managers in racially-diverse San Antonio strive to take advantage of their opportunities to create successful diverse teams, moving past conflicts to achieve team goals.

Building teams in San Antonio is an ongoing process. Smart companies emphasize the value of diversity in ongoing team building events on- and off-site, as well as in house wellness programs that promote mind and body well-being, with specific cultures in mind.

While cultural specifics may be kept in mind for in house training and sensitivity programs, team building events such as the Amazing Race by the Riverwalk appeals to all diverse teams as it involves fun for all abilities, and provides mental challenges at which only a diverse cultural team can do well. Many of the questions and challenges address specific cultural backgrounds and the team must rely on each other to succeed.

Different work styles are prevalent in the culturally diverse workplace. Cultural sensitivity training is important for all diverse workforces to promote understanding and keep conflicts minimal and manageable. Creating a successful team takes work and dedication of all team members, not just the management.

Venture Up in San Antonio specializes in team skills and relationship building for conferences and the workplace. David Lengyel, co-founder, believes building relationships requires positive feedback from managers, as well as acquiring regular feedback from employees. For example, surveying employees every 4-6 weeks should be a minimum to make sure management and their teams are on the same page, and that small problems don’t become bigger.

Some companies, such as John Deere, elicit feedback monthly, while other companies do so annually. “That’s far too long to wait,” says Lengyel. “By the time 12 months pass, employees may already feel invisible and have one foot out the door.”

Companies who combine team building activities in their culture find the staff interaction pays off. When they outsource team building events at corporate meetings, they aim for team players to leave with an action plan to take risks, try new ideas and create new solutions back on the job, says Lengyel.

“We convey the idea that, “It’s not about you … it’s about how you can lift your team mates up,” he says. Venture Up also combines efforts with programs in CSR (corporate social responsibility) to strengthen connections with companies in the communities they serve.

Strong teams and healthy relationships are essential for a successful workplace. Employers have always valued the customer-sales relationships, but nurturing internal relationships in the workplace are taking on equal importance. Based on a recent article in the MindTools Journal, there are multiple ways to encourage positive relationships:

1. Develop Your People Skills
2. Identify Your Relationship Needs
3. Schedule Time to Build Relationships
4. Focus on Your EI (Emotional Intelligence)
5. Appreciate Others
6. Be Positive
7. Manage Your Boundaries
8. Avoid Gossip
9. Listen Actively

The key is to finding what works best in your workplace, is first to determine the overall temperature of the culture of change and think outside the box. 

 

Keeping functional teams strong means knowing the individuals that make up each team. Managers must become experts at the different personality types at work , as described in a recent Entepreneur magazine article. Understanding how personality types work will ease tensions in the workplace. Understanding the factors of emotional intelligence helps managers deal with people of wide ranging emotional makeup. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says, “Start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”

Otherwise, he says, "If you have the wrong people on the bus, nothing else matters. You may be headed in the right direction, but you still won’t achieve greatness. Great vision with mediocre people still produces mediocre results.”

Get the right team on the bus, make sure everyone is headed in the same direction and know that your team will need occasional maintenance in order to continue to run smoothly. The road to success isn’t an easy one. It’s filled with many setbacks, but working together on one uniformed goal and supporting one another will make the road getting there a much more enjoyable one, for everyone.

Detroit Companies Benefit with Creative Team

Teamwork is a word that can strike fear, frustration and annoyance in the hearts of many adult workers. Some team building activities require holding hands, singing songs and trite exercises that we’re simply tired of. Detroit companies are looking for something else out there. What can we do to inject our teams with new enthusiasm and help us all appreciate the people we work with? After all, most of us spend more time with co-workers than anyone else.

Video: One way to engage your staff is to align your Detroit Team Building program with corporate social responsibility, as this Magna Power groups does with Venture Up.

The Detroit Chamber of Commerce promotes maintaining a strong team as a key aspect in successful daily business. Detroit team building activities come in many shapes and forms. Many business owners and leaders in human resources realize a new approach is needed to break up the stagnant air surrounding a typical team building experience. 

The Chamber advises companies to promote a culture of staff engagement by supporting active participation in team building activities. It also cites research showing staff members who are continually engaged in team building activities have a higher job satisfaction rate, increased productivity, motivation and passion for quality, and customer service performance. Companies with the right tools for team building can best drive performance and results, which are important for business success.

The Chamber encourages several activities to breed a strong workplace culture of teamwork and trust and energize the everyday work environment. These include: staff appreciation days, “Lunch and Learns”, and programs supporting families in the workplace, such as ”Youth Office Days”.

While these activities are relatively simple, they are great tools to encourage participation and allow employees to feel appreciated. Trends show that employees having a sense of belonging and emotional buy-in typically have better workplace performance than those who have a negative attitude towards their employer.

A strong team holds its bond in conflict resolution. While minor conflict is inevitable (Let’s face it, humans can only be friendly and cooperative for so long), having strong relationships will allow teams to navigate these temporary problems with grace and compassion, leading to positive conflict resolution. Team members don’t want to see other members suffering or struggling, so even in the midst of a disagreement the foundations remain strong and the team pulls through.

When a team oversteps the mark of healthy difference of opinion, resolving conflict requires respect and patience. The human experience of conflict involves our emotions, perceptions, and actions; we experience it on all three levels, and we need to address all three levels to resolve it. We must replace the negative experiences with positive ones. 

Venture Up, a company providing team building in Detroit since 1983, has found many ways to encourage team cohesion in fun new ways. Say goodbye to the cheesy activities of the old days and say hello to adventure, fun and excitement. David Lengyel, co-founder of Venture Up, has taken his adventurous background and created a program that encourages employees to have fun, but more importantly, strengthen their relationships and improve the workplace culture.

Milwaukee Teams Building Succeeds with Diversity

Milwaukee employers can easily tap into the local market when recruiting for diversity and talent. Training staff for team projects can also be more productive because diverse teams are more 
successful. Milwaukee Team Building and training programs generally involve people with varied cultural backgrounds and viewpoints. 

YouTube

VIDEO: One way diverse teams grow stronger is to engage in corporate social responsibility projects. Cisco recently engaged in CSR for a Venture Up Team Building event in Milwaukee. During the 4-hour program teams assembled 3D Printed hands for kids born with symbrachydactyly, a condition in which hands are not fully formed. Venture Up ships the prosthetics to needy kids and hospitals overseas.

~ ~ ~ ~

They attack problem-solving games and challenges with more creativity than team members of similar backgrounds. 

Did the workplace change? Not really. Some tech companies say they cannot find qualified employees, but they have been criticized for the human tendency we all share of aligning with people much like ourselves.

 

“When teams lack diversity it kills innovation,” says Venture Up founder David Lengyel, who has worked with Milwaukee firms, such as Johnson Controls, SC Johnson, Rockwell, GE Healthcare and U.S. Bank. “Baby boomers and tech-savvy millennials make a great combination for work teams and in culturally diverse corporate training programs,” says Lengyel, whose company has been building corporate team relationships since 1983.

“When your team is filled with similar people, it leads group members to think they have the same information and the same perspective. But this mindset squelches innovation and creativity,” says Yuriy Boykiv, in an article for Fast Company.

Minorities make up 27 percent of the American workplace. Studies show diverse work teams are more innovative and productive with the right management and training. But what are companies doing to create diverse teams? Ever since a 2009 study showed tech companies hire only 6.8 percent minorities, Facebook, Google and other image-conscious brands went into public relations overdrive and gave major donations to high profile organizations affiliated with minorities and women.

Few American organizations take adequate steps to change, even when it means profitability. McKinsey & Co. research shows companies with more diverse work forces perform better financially.

Employee engagement is another challenge facing U.S. firms. Gallup research shows 87 percent of employees are not engaged. That is, staff are not devoted to the company mission, are unmotivated, and may be seeking jobs elsewhere. Retaining and recruiting staff costs companies needless millions annually, but they are slow to shift the corporate culture despite overwhelming research.

Engaging employees and improving the corporate culture are not objects you can buy. They are part of a fluid process with no end. You don’t “arrive” at corporate culture. A strong corporate culture comes from the top down. Strong leaders pay attention to their staff, survey their employees well-being on a regular basis and act on feedback. They stay involved and engaged with staff, from top brass to the front line.

Research also shows that employee engagement is strong when companies have a dedicated program in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Companies are better able to retain and recruit staff if the culture is diverse and employees are engaged in CSR projects allowing them to interact with the community on a personal level.

Just as diversity in teams brings more creativity to the workplace, successful CSR programs can keep teams engaged, and create company ambassadors who can serve leaders in recruiting new talent and keep the company afloat. But the leaders must drive the boat.

Olympic Games Team Building

3 Team Building Activities in Ohio to Engage Employees

Engaged employees are productive employees. Companies in Columbus and Cincinnati are taking to the outside world to encourage staff to collaborate in team building events, but it often has little to do with business or profits. The idea is for colleagues to interact on a personal level, and share in the company’s efforts to give back to Ohio’s community.

According to Forbes Magazine, employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals, resulting in the use of discretionary effort.



Photo: Courtesy VENTURE UP Team Building, Columbus

Research shows overwhelmingly that when companies are involved in community service, employee engagement increases and the corporate culture improves. Some companies seek outside resources to build staff relationships in Columbus, while others, such as Kroger’s in Cincinnati, have long term in-house programs focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR) that spans nationwide.

Scioto Mile Amazing Race

Scioto Mile Amazing Race is about competition with a cause. Venture Up, a company devoted to building relationships for a strong corporate culture, designed the race with philanthropy in mind. Columbus firms enroll their teams in the race to compete for money -- not for corporate profits, but to support community services in Ohio. Beginning at the Arena District, the 2-hour race sets teams out on separate paths through the park system, a 145-acre spread by the river. Successful teams must rely on each other and the community members they meet en route as they try to solve puzzles, accomplish tasks, and discover clues that lead them to the finish line near the Whittier Peninsula. Teams work in groups of 12 or less, and the first three teams to finish win a check for the Ohio social service agency of their choice. 

Contact: VENTURE UP Team Building, 888-305-1065, info@VentureUp.com

Climb for a Cause

While climbing a 26-foot wall is difficult enough, solving clues along the way can be even more challenging. Venture Up designed this CSR program for executives in good physical condition, with a supportive team below. But there’s more to the wall than simply the ascent. Depending on the route they choose, climbers will find envelopes attached to the wall, each representing cash to support a non-profit group in Columbus, Cincinnati or Cleveland. Each envelope has a problem to solve, so the climber can toss the envelope down for his team to handle as he continues ascending and grabbing more envelopes. Climbers who reach the top of the wall can ring the bell to get an added bonus to support their group in need. Companies who prefer straight climbing may rent a wall in Columbus at the McKnight Outdoor Education & Recreation Center, or choose a portable wall for off-site events.

Contact: McKnight Outdoor Education & Recreation Center, 614-202-5197

VIDEO: Corporate staff engage in Fun Food Team Building with Venture Up.

Kroger’s Philanthropy

Cincinnati-based Kroger began in 1883 and is the largest grocer in the nation, comprising a family of brands, including Ralph’s, Fred Meyer, Smith’s, Food 4 Less, King Soopers, Fry’s, Dillon’s and City Market. Kroger has been involved in CSR long before it became the recognized way to lift communities and strengthen corporate culture. Kroger has helped feed American families for more than 30 years with its Bringing Hope to the Table ® program. Kroger and its family of employees list thousands of volunteer hours annually, and many serve on local boards for food banks across the nation.

Kroger founded the Feeding America network of foodbanks, dedicated to securing and providing food for familiies in need. It operates programs for self-sufficiency, educates the public about hunger, and advocates for legislation to protect people from going hungry.

Contact: Kroger Community Pantry, 614-277- 3663,
Corporate Communications, 513-762-1304, keith.dailey@kroger.com