Personal Safety Team Training Goes Extreme for Business Executives

Jamie Alexander

For you executives, here’s one company team development program that not only will smooth out company communication and boost production, it will get the leadership tiger back into your execs.

Few corporate team building activities actually deliver lasting communication skills, and even fewer provide real group leadership development capability, most giving no more than an expensive good time for a company’s executives and employees.

The latest model in corporate team building, however, provides for accelerated communication and leadership skills development, that is not only capturing the interest of executives, it has a lasting impact that carries well into the workplace.

Companies typically look for a team building program that provides for an increased communication capability, increased employee coordination, and a heightening of leadership initiative. Says Cyler Campbell, a Senior Consultant with Analytical Management Solutions, Inc., a business consulting firm in Encinitas, California.

The better programs are those that flush out breakdowns in communication and coordination between employees. When you spot where it’s disintegrating, you can then fix it. Says Campbell.

But the real problem is finding one that gets employees to develop initiative, both for themselves and motivating others. Campbell says. And as a important aspect of that, developing the ability to act immediately when handling important and emergency situations. These are components necessary in leadership, and are typically under-addressed in team building scenarios.

What is missing is a level of necessity that will more deeply impact the participant. Says Campbell. A heightened level of necessity and immediacy, you might even say seriousness of the situation being played out, will have more impact on the employee. If done correctly he will retain significantly more of what he is being taught. And have a lot of fun doing it. Most of the programs being offered are just too soft to have any lasting impact on the employee. Hence, they turn out to be minimally productive, fun outings, but expensive ones for companies.

Good luck finding a results-based team building regimen like this, they are few and far between, but they do exist. In fact, you may be pleased to find out that this is a small but burgeoning trend making its entry on the corporate landscape.

One such team building facility is Front Sight Resort, located on 550 acres in the Nevada desert, 40 miles outside of Las Vegas. Front

Sight has the distinguished reputation of being the world’s largest resort dedicated exclusively to self defense and personal safety training.

Probably more than any other facility, Front Sight embodies the very concept of Campbell’s necessity-based or results-based programs, with one significant addition: Front Sight has an instruction capability that is superlative, recognized in education and training circles as strictly top notch. This gives more structure, and significantly more added emphasis and focus on sensitive and important areas to be addressed.

Team building starts with the individual. Says Dr. Ignatius Piazza, Founder and Director of Front Sight Resort. You’ve got to work closely with both the individual and the team simultaneously, and take them both step by step to a higher level of skill. Most team building focuses exclusively on the group, with little emphasis on the individual. This limits producing the deep-reaching effect needed to bring about a lasting change in the employee.

Our team building programs are intense, like nothing you have ever seen. We integrate a wide spectrum of reality-based challenge courses that bring home to the participant the ability to deal with difficult group situations, and the necessity to make decisions now, and act now. Dr. Piazza explains.

Ultra-realistic, scenario-based group rescue activities; the world’s most extensive rope and rappelling team development courses; and World Class martial arts and firearms training programs, are some of our more popular programs that bring about significant, and lasting improvement in participant skills. Says Dr. Piazza. Custom designing programs to address specific problems that you want resolved in communication, coordination or leadership; making the program physically do-able for anyone; and absolutely making the program fun to do, are necessary components as well.

Participants need to be guided to a depth of application and confidence that they didn’t think possible. Moving them to that next threshold. Says Dr. Piazza. If you’ve done this correctly, he will have achieved something significant, and will carry those skills into his workplace, and everywhere else in his life too. And that is what the whole team building process is about.

More than ever before, business executives need the skills to lead, and the ability to deal with difficult decisions. Extreme personal safety training, as provided at Front Sight Resorts, is not only proving effective to building leadership capability, it is giving executives the necessary skills that may one day save their lives, and those of their companions.

For more information on Front Sight Resorts personal safety team building and leadership skills programs, contact their corporate office.

Jamie Alexander is a freelance business writer.

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