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Top Winter Corporate Retreat Destination – Arizona

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Inspiration is a key ingredient to a retreat destination. And when you combine amazing destinations, outstanding resorts and a beautiful outdoor environment you have the beginning recipe for a successful corporate retreat or team building destination. Check out this time lapse video of Arizona. Quite Nice. Grand Dynamics offers amazing corporate retreats and training programs in Arizona and Winter is one of our favorite times of year to be there. Contact us to find out about programs in the surrounding landscapes of Phoenix and about our favorite spot – Sedona~

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

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Posted in Business, Business Leaders, Experiential Training, Inspirational, Meeting Planners, Program Highlights, Resort Representatives | No Comments »

Treasure Island, California is all the buzz! Join us starting July 9th for a dynamic week of events!

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Whirlwind Promo Week coming up!

At GDI SF, we’re getting geared up for our whirlwind promo event week on Treasure Island!

Our week begins starting with the Treasure Island Triathlon the weekend of July 8th-10th, where we’ll be partnering with the folks who founded the T.I. Triathlon to bring an incredible endurance adventure event to the heart of the Bay! Visit me at our booth in San Francisco at the Presidio on Thursday and Friday and on Treasure Island on Saturday. Cheer on GDI President Tim Walther as he braves the cold waters and competes in the Triathalon Sprint Race on Sunday. There is still time to register!

Up next we have our signature Wine Interactive preview on Thursday, July 14th from 5:30pm-7:30pm (Bastille Day for all you Frenchies!), hosted at The Winery SF on T.I. during happy hour! Meet great people and share a variety of fun, interactive experiences while wine tasting at Winery SF. You’; never look at a cork the same again. AWESOME!

Friday, July 15th from 3pm-6pm, we will be previewing our signature Team Expedition Race on T.I. for GDI resort reps, event planners, and DMCs and and anyone interested in booking business with Grand Dynamics. This programs will provide a sample of Grand Dynamics awesome experiential training programs. You will learn about the psychology of individual performance, discover team facilitation and processing tools and have an outstanding shared team building experience on Treasure Island! It’s gonna rock!

Sunday, July 17th (2pm-5pm), I’m ecstatic to say that we’ll be hosting Stu Mittleman, one of the greatest endurance athletes of all time on T.I. for a promo run! Stu is known for running from San Diego to New York – 52 miles a day for 56 consecutive days! Want to find out how he did it? You’ll discover things about your body that you never thought were possible! Get out your running shoes and Hermes wings!

TOURS OF THE ISLAND TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT GRAND DYNAMICS EVENTS ARE AVAILABLE ALL WEEK!

A summary of the upcoming week is below. I am off to go climb and ski Mount Shasta this weekend! Have a happy 4th of July and celebrate our FREEDOM!!! I look forward to seeing you next week!

Reuben Gibson -

A break down of upcoming GDI Promo events on T.I.:

Saturday – Sunday: July 9th-10th: Treasure Island Triathalon

Thursday, July 14th from 5:30 pm opening: Wine Interactive Networking Event Preview

Friday, July 15th from 3pm-6pm: T.I. Team Expedition Preview

Sunday, July 17th from 2pm-5pm: Stu Mittleman promo run on T.I.

For questions and all inquiries, send an email to info@granddynamics.com

Check out our Treasure Island Program Page

An Outstanding Venue with a compelling history:

Treasure Island California is host the newest division of Grand Dynamics International and the perfect destination for experiential training and corporate events. Treasure Island is literally the “treasure” of the San Francisco Bay Area waiting to be discovered. “T.I.” as we refer to it, is located right next to Yerba Buena Island between the East Bay and San Francisco, and is only a five-minute ride from downtown SF.

Boasting incredible resources, astonishing views, playing fields, space, and a rich history, Treasure Island is the perfect venue for an off-site group event!

Treasure Island, named after the novel of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson who lived in San Francisco in 1879, was artificially built for the World’s Fair Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. Treasure Island was originally planned for and used as an airport for Pan American World Airways flying boats. During World War II, Treasure Island became part of a US Naval Base and served largely as an electronics and radio communications training school and as the major Navy departure point for sailors in the Pacific.

From the late 1980s and onward, Treasure Island’s old aircraft hangers served as sound stages used in film and television productions. Numerous pictures starring Robin Williams were filmed on the island, including Flubber, What Dreams May Come, Patch Adams and Bicentennial Man as well as many other films staring other famous actors. With the development of commercial enterprises like The Winery SF, special events are starting to pop up more frequently, and there is a palpable buzz!

Building one depicted as airport Flughaffen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The Grand Dynamics SF office is located in Building One, which is a Streamline Modern-styled remnant of the World’s Fair and is one of the few buildings remaining from the exposition.

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Tags: Adventure, corporate events, corporate retreat, experiential learning, leadership development, teambuilding, Treasure Island
Posted in Business, Experiential Training, Grand Dynamics News, Interesting Stuff, Meeting Planners, Resort Representatives, Resorts, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Ensuring the ROI of Team Building

Sunday, May 8th, 2011

The first thing HR professionals ask about a team building program is its ROI for the company. Clients are becoming more conscious of their returns on team building programs. Why? Because hundreds of companies waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue every year on “Team Building” programs that do not produce the desired results. The programs fail to develop a team atmosphere within their organizations. The term “Team Building” has itself become a bit confusing. So much is being offered today at the name of team building that the client gets perplexed.

In order to ensure ROI on team building one should ask this question to oneself. How do I define team building? I read somewhere that “team building is any exercise or program that helps a group of INTERDEPENDENT people create LONG-TERM behavior change resulting in a more efficient or productive culture”.
In my experience, the first question that the training department of an organization should response before organizing a team building program is “Is the group of people being sent on team building training is interdependent?”

When I go to a company for need analysis of a team building session, my first question to the concerned person is “Do you believe that the success of each member of the group depends primarily on the success of the other members of the group?” For instance, the success of the operations department might depend heavily on the success of the sales department which might depend heavily on the success of the marketing department.
Conducting a team building program among the managers or employees of these departments at the same time might be beneficial. However, in many cases the success of each individual sales person does not probably depend primarily on the success of the other sales people. If you don’t keep these things in mind, as a sales manager you might end up spending money on a team building program that does not produce the desired outcomes for you.

When I confirm the fact that the group is interdependent, then the next question I ask is “What kind of things are happening within this group that lets me know they are not acting efficiently as a team?” or “What areas can we improve in as a result of this team building initiative?”

I also ask more specific questions to determine individual areas for improvement such as the following:
Are there conflicts which bring down morale?
Are there areas of mis-communication that slow down processes or cause to work?
To what extent the departments focus on their own success at the expense of other departments?
Is it tough for new employees to fit in with the experienced team members?
Are changes in policy resisted by team members?
Do team members feel as though they have no say?

These questions help the team leader determine what types of team building programs might be most effective for his group. If the person still finds it difficult to determine the individual areas that would have the most dramatic impact on the performance of the group, we run assessments that can be conducted on a one-on-one or group basis to the entire team.

In the next step, we help the leader in determining the right program for the group. Pursuant to complete analysis we determine what kind of a program will give his team improvement in the most areas that he has identified, and which will give his team long-term improvement so that he will not have to continually repeat the training process over time.

Team building is not a fashion. It is a serious activity. Without proper analysis and evaluation of specific issues within the team, team building can just prove to be the wastage of money, time and company resources. It will fall short of objectives set by the training / HR department.

Keep your eyes wide open; stay focused, research well; spend reasonable amount of time in assessing the actual need for the team development. Ignoring these guidelines will fail to ensure ROI on a team building initiative. Content by Anne Thornley Brown

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Tags: Meeting Planners, Meeting planners and team building, ROI and Team buiding, Team building
Posted in Business Leaders, Meeting Planners, Team building | No Comments »

MPI Launches Redesigned World Education Congress

Saturday, April 9th, 2011

April 7, 2011
Citing a changing meetings landscape, Dallas-based Meeting Professionals International (MPI) has redesigned its annual World Education Congress (WEC), which will now deliver “higher attendee ROI in a post-recession industry,” it announced yesterday.

Taking place July 23-26 in Orlando, the three-day event no longer features a traditional trade show component. Instead, it features “marketplace experiences” designed around “personal conversations” — including the WEC Hosted Buyer Program, which connects qualified buyers one-on-one with suppliers during scheduled appointments, and WEC Buyer Connect, a free option that allows meeting planner attendees who are not “hosted buyers” to similarly scheduled appointments with suppliers.

According to MPI President and CEO Bruce MacMillan, the idea was to revamp WEC to make it relevant in the emerging economic climate, as meeting planners nationwide are no longer scrambling to cope with the recession; instead, many are strategically positioning themselves for recovery.

“We’re facing a new business paradigm in the meeting and event industry,” MacMillan said. “There are truly new rules of engagement and ways to do business in our post-recession world. That’s why we chose to redesign WEC this year instead of delivering the same WEC experience as we have for the last decade. WEC 2011 remarkably delivers more face-time with your partners, more brain-time for the latest ideas, more brand-time for your business story and more you-time for your success.”

Other new features at WEC 2011 are two networking events — “The Blitz,” designed by venues and destinations in the spirit of a site visit, and “MarketSquare,” which will function as a gathering spot for attendees and suppliers throughout the show — as well as “FlashPoint,” a lineup of 10 speakers; the “Solution Room,” a crowd-sourced peer-to-peer learning experience; and “The Hive,” a shared space where subject matter experts will present on social media, hybrid and virtual meeting tools and trends, and where a “tech concierge” will answer attendees’ technology questions.

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Tags: Meetings, MPI
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Grand Dynamics International Team Building programs help businesses operate better, faster and cheaper

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

Wouldn’t it be nice if team building programs actually offered a way to measure team performance improvement in a way that has a bottom line impact? How can you actually do that? Our team expedition model with a better, faster, cheaper framework does just that. And we can do it in 4 hours or less.

The framework is below. When you finish reading this summary, contact Grand Dynamics for a special offer when you book the team expedition with a better, faster, cheaper framework!

Better Faster Cheaper Model

If you are looking to highlight the importance of critical team elements such as: Information sharing, effective communication, problem solving, decision making, improving team effectiveness and efficiency, reducing cycle time, improving strategy, networking and interacting with team members and collaborating as an organization. This program involves utilizing specific team metrics and tracking for a very specific examples of team performance improvement.

* Step 1: Teams participate and compete against, yet collaborate with, other teams to complete a series of team initiatives. Team performance is tracked throughout the entire program. There are many, many challenges to choose from! The essential ingredient is that the problem facing a team seems difficult, even impossible, at first and requires the entire group participating to be successful. Certain strategies and team processes allow for both increased effectiveness (task completion) and efficiency (time or resources to complete the task.) IE: How can you retrieve an object in the center of a 25 foot circle without touching the ground in 20 minutes or less? Check out our blog posting that explains a team building experiential initiative here: What is a team building experiential initiative?
* Step 2: Teams get together with other teams at the “information/collaboration station” where they network, interact, and share strategies for the various challenges. Specific guidelines are provided by GDI staff.
* Step 3: Teams implement continuous improvement strategies they learn from others to improve performance. GDI facilitators insert team models, methods and tools which provide a mechanism for improving the team performance.
* Step 4: Specific GDI metric tracking involves dynamic facilitation and review of the progression of HOW teams, divisions and an organizations become BETTER, FASTER and CHEAPER.
* Step 5: Teams debrief and share highlights and insights that transfer lessons learned to the workplace. Celebrate success!

OUR PROMISE: Grand Dynamics will track your team performance and facilitate the development of actual team behaviors specific to your team that either take away from or support effective team functioning. We have PROVEN STRATEGIES we are ready to have you experience them. Contact us today and take the test of the Team Expedition!

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Tags: experiential initiative, improving team performance, information sharing, measureig ROI of team builing, measuring the roi of team building, problem solving activities, Team building, team expedition, team metrics
Posted in Experiential Training, Grand Dynamics News, Leadership Development, Meeting Planners, Program Highlights, Resort Representatives, Team building | No Comments »

What is an experiential team building initiative? What is the facilitators role when facilitating an experiential initiative?

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

An experiential initiative is essentially a challenge that is proposed to a group or team. The challenge is ones that is unique to the participants so that no participant is an expert in the task. The focus then becomes on the process in which the group interacts together, rather than the specific task. The beauty of great experiential initiatives is that they initially seem nearly impossible to accomplish. Only through effective teamwork will the team be able to accomplish the task at hand. This transition from “This is impossible” to “We did it” offers great value in the overall perception of what the team can accomplish when everyone works together.

The Facilitators Role: Experiential initiatives involve a facilitator presenting the challenge by providing the rules, guidelines, resources and framing, or presentation, for the challenge. This often includes a specific timeframe for the challenge to be completed, and the consequences for not following the rules and guidelines. Keeping participants physically and emotionally safe throughout the experience provides the foundation for participants being able to participate fully. The facilitator’s job is to observe the team in action, listening and paying close attention to how the team interacts. Depending on the focus of the event, the facilitator will present the challenge in such a way that the activity relates the desired outcome.

For example, if the event is focused on fun and excitement and the experience of the group overcoming the challenge, the facilitator will present the experience with high energy and encouragement with a focus on keeping everyone engaged in the activity. If the focus is on team communication, then the activity will be framed in such a way that participants will focus their attention on how they are communicating with one another, and what processes lead to greater team effectiveness.

These challenges present an opportunity for the facilitator to provide a model, method or tool that will improve the collective team functioning. When the focus is on team improvement then the reflection period, also know as processing or debriefing, is an integral and important part of the initiative. During the processing participants discuss what they observed and how the team interacted and what lessons and actions are important to bring forth.

As the team experiences a lesson in process improvement the challenge is to apply those lessons in additional activities and practice what they have learned in an effort to experience better elements of teamwork, such as effective communication between team members, creating a shared mental model of the goal or team process or efficiently deciding on and evaluating the actions to take place.

This is where the skill and experience of the facilitator becomes very important. The art and science of effective facilitation is to be able to recognize the need for the right tool at the right time. This comes from understanding complex team dynamics and key elements of human psychology, experiential learning and business. The methodology is one of the Socratic method, where the facilitator uses questions to lead the group to their own insights and conclusions, thus increasing buy-in and ownership for the insights and actions as a result.

Often times collaboration is a key part of a team building experience. Experiential initiatives create the opportunity for participants to hold or share information, hinder or support the progress of another team, and to focus on working together verses competing. Our psychological make-up is typically one that is founded on competition. Our inner drive to get ahead of another person is based on our instinct and survival mechanisms. The art of creating collaboration is one that requires practice and a visceral experience of seeing the collective benefit through collaborative efforts.

Often times we refer to an “AH-HA” moment in experiential training. This happens when someone has an insight or breakthrough that allows for an individual to shift their beliefs or actions. When this occurs in a collaborative setting the shift in actions become readily apparent in future interactions in any environment.The benefit of experiential team initiatives comes from the fact that they are novel, dramatic, experiential, consequential and metaphoric experiences. Because participants are fully engaged physically, socially, intellectually and emotionally the retention of concepts soars high above traditional methods of learning.

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Tags: experiential initiative, experiential team building initiative, facilitation, facilitator, how to facilitate, Team building, what is an experiential initiative
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How safe is a team building or experiential leadership training program?

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

How safe are Grand Dynamics team building or experiential leadership programs, physically and emotionally?

Grand Dynamics programs often involve activities such as rock climbing, rappelling, bridge building and team problem solving initiatives. These activities feel adventurous because the perceived risk of these activities is much higher than the actual risk. As such, these activities can be powerful tools to help people confront fears, set goals, and feel what it is like to step out of the “comfort zone” and into the “growth zone.” That said, there is a distinct science behind challenging people to push their limits and also maintain safety. Over eleven years of providing adventurous activities, we are proud to report that GDI has never had an accident or hospitalization. In our opinion, the biggest risk in experiential training programs is the emotional risk when participants challenge themselves among their peers. At GDI we make every effort to provide not only a physically safe experience, but an emotionally safe experience as well. We adhere to the “Challenge By Choice” philosophy and emphasize the Full Value Contract, where participants respect the level of engagement of their peers.

For more information and frequently asked questions about team building, experiential leadership training or Grand Dynamics International, check out our FAQ page and of course, contact for detailed information.

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Tags: business and team builiding, experiential leadership training, how safe are team building programs? how safe are experiential leadrship programs?, meeting planners and team building safety, perceived risk in adventure programming, Team building
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5 Tips to Create Successful Team-Building Activities

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Donna provides these tips for meeting planners about team building events designated to accelerate peer to peer relationships. These ideas are useful and should be considered by any team building specialist or meeting event professional. Here’s my belief summary –
understand your audience – every program should include at least a basic needs assessment
identify what is most important – clarify the outcome and begin with the end in mind
leverage buy in – use interal team members to create a leadership dynamic
do something unexpected – increase retention through an emotionally charges unique experience
And lastly, give back – foster community and contribution

Let Grand Dynamics International help you to optimize your next team building experience.

5 Tips to Create Successful Team-Building Activities
Thursday, June 3, 2010 by Donna Kastner
TeamOne challenge for meeting planners is helping attendees who don’t typically see each other on a day-to-day basis suddenly create solid connections with each other. Team-building activities can be very effective in accelerating peer-to-peer relationships, but preparation is key.

Here are five tips to keep in mind as you develop your team-building activity:

1. Know Your Audience: You might have a great list of activities, but first, you need to have a conversation with the team leader to learn more about the personalities in your audience. Find out about past team-building experiences – both good and bad – as well as other relevant history for the group. If you’re considering an activity that’s more physically demanding, make sure this group is up to the challenge.

2. Identify ONE Most Critical Objective: This should be discussed in that initial conversation with the team leader. Are you looking to help attendees meet as many new people as possible? Or are you looking to strengthen existing relationships? How will this objective tie back to their day-to-day work world? Will they come away from this exercise with a deeper list of SMEs (subject matter experts) to engage in the future? Be sure to communicate the WHY factor from the start to get folks on board.

3. Prime the Pump: Select your most charismatic and respected team members to serve as small group leaders. Schedule a call with this group BEFORE your event to share more about their role in this activity. This will go a long way in diffusing the resistors – and trust me, there will be resistors. Funny, but when a team-building activity is executed well, your best testimonials often come from folks who initially were a bit resistant.

4. Do Something Unexpected: Scavenger hunt? Yawn, we’ve all done that one before, but what new element can you introduce to refresh a classic? Will they motor through town on Segways? Will you incorporate a relay race element in the hunt? Will you have celebrities roaming about with clues?

5. Add a Charitable Element: It’s great if the product of this team-building activity might be something that can be donated to a group in need. Perhaps the teams will create colorful artwork for a youth center? Or maybe you’ll get sponsors who will make a donation to the winning team’s favorite charity?

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Tags: meeting planner team building, planning a team building event, tips for team building
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Amex Study Shows Biz Travel ROI

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

February 2011
NEW YORK
For every dollar a company spends on business travel, the return on investment (ROI) brings $20 in additional profits, according to a research report from American Express Global Business Travel.

Called Return on Investment Refresh: Travel as a Competitive Advantage, the study explores the link between travel and business growth. The research analyzed business travel spending from a sampling of nearly 900 public companies over the past decade of economic cycles.

According to the research, U.S. industries could reach optimal revenue potential by increasing travel spending to just over 4 percent, an amount that translates to about $70 per worker.

The study also concludes that industry sectors such as business services, sports and entertainment typically already operate under optimal levels, while finance, pharmaceutical and retail companies could benefit from business travel spending growth.

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Grand Dynamics 2010 Highlights! Experiential Team Building and Leadership Development with HUGE IMPACT

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

WOW What a Year!!!!!

This is the Grand Dynamics team coming to you live from blog land! We are excited to share our highlight and insights from 2010 and the work and company we love! Of course, this won’t be all encompassing, but it will give a great idea of the types of programs that Grand Dynamics delivers and a few of our personal adventures.

Before we get started, let’s acknowledge and say YOU ROCK to all the Grand Dynamics team members – our core staff, alliance partners, resort resellers and all our contract staff that have made 2010 a banner year for Grand Dynamics. And, of course to all of our client-partners, THANK-YOU!!! YOU are THE BEST and continue to inspire us to make a positive difference in this world.

At GDI, we love what we do. Below is a sample of what we DID in 2010!

If you are inspired to be a part of Grand Dynamics in 2011, put your name and email into the form below and we’ll hook you up with some killer GD Content! You will get access to our Grand Dynamics Secrets email series (you can always bail on the emails if you don’t love them). You’ll find out:

What Smart Companies are realizing about their people in a Challenging Economy
The insider secrets behind the Art and Science of Experiential Training
Top 10 Ways to Reinvigorate the workforce and increase employee engagement
How to build your brand, culture and profit
Strategies for improving communication, building relationships and increasing trust
Top 10 Fitness and Endurance Training Tips
A 4 step process for analyzing team performance
Awesome team building and leadership program highlights and videos
This series also includes optional downloads of icebreakers, reports and videos – all FREE

We’re looking forward to celebrating and working together with YOU!

Client and Program Highlights

Sonic Automotive – Leadership and “Culture Infusion” through a 10 City team building and leadership training roll out. January – February, 2010 Blog Link and Video

Behind the Magic Curtain - This Jackson Hole Chamber sponsored Action Seminar revealed the secrets of successful customer service and what is really “Behind the Scenes” of the most successful businesses and their raving fan customers.

Readers Digest “Vermont Olympics” The event took Readers Digest Executives on a competitive journey around Southern Vermont where they had to milk cows, find hidden treasures and shop at a historic country store.

Trinity Woman’s Lacrosse - The woman’s lacrosse team competed in a competitive GPS course where they had to locate lacrosse balls and solve challenges along the way of their 5k fitness work out. I like to think that we helped play a role in their championship run for the NCAA division title by building a great deal of rapport during the preseason.

Wyoming Workforce Annual Conference Workforce Conference – How to Reinvigorate the Workforce program highlighting trends in Employee Engagement and the Top Ten Strategies for Reinvigorating the Workforce. (You’ll get all the info in our GD Secrets Email Series)

Sheridan Intensive Youth EQ Leadership Training involved the Baron EQ-i and experiential training to prepare youth for entering into the workforce. Here is the a link to the SIGNIFICANT RESULTS of the TRAINING.

Corporate Picnic for 1200 Employees of a New Jersey publishing company. This interactive incentive-based team building event was delivered with flawless execution. Here is a brief summary of the event.

The Grand Adventure - An eclectic group of individuals came together from across the country to learn Endurance Strategies for Life and culminated with a dramatic Grand Teton Summit amidst high winds. Go to the Grand Adventure page and get access to awesome beta! Check out the Grand Adventure Trip Report Blog.

The 2011 Grand Adventure is available for individuals and teams seeking the best coaches available in areas of leadership and health and wellness. Only 15 spots available for the August 2011 Grand Adventure. Access the Information Page about the 2011 Grand Adventure.

Mountain Seminar – This Indoor, Mountaineering Themed Event included a mountaineering keynote speech, experiential team building exercises and a culminating “Base Camp” challenge. * Excellent Themed Event for Annual Business Meetings or conference themed events.

Coins 3 Peaks Challenge – Adventure Race – This Industry Building Event in partnership with the Coins Foundation challenged participants to climb 3 New England Peaks (Whiteface, NY – Monadnock, NH, Mansfield, VT) in 24 hours to raise money for those in need world-wide. This year the program saw 80 participants cross the finish line and raised $75,000 for relief in Haiti. Read More Here: 3 Peaks 2010 Blog Summary

The 2011 3 Peaks is September 17-18, 2011. Check out the Awesome Web-Site for the event! Coins 3 Peaks USA 2011

Mountain Expedition – A GDI Hallmark program that involved mountaineering challenges as a metaphor for business leadership and teamwork. Themes addressed included communication, information sharing and courageous leadership. Awesome. No, I mean REALLY Awesome!

Customized Corporate Retreats – Several clients experienced the power of Grand Dynamics multi-day retreats (We call them an ADVANCE). East Coat to West Coast, throughout the year, we have resort partnerships and complementary amazing experiences that create the foundation for effective business meetings and outstanding results. One such Advance took place in Northern California and involved staying at multiple high-end resorts where participants experiences an incentive based team experience, experiential exercises, mountain biking, and paintball (Yes, Paintball!).

Seeking True North Annual Advance – The Book, written by GDI President Tim Walther with long time business partner and collaborator Erick Erickson laid the platform for this multi-day open enrollment program. This year the event took involved a multi-day back country experience in the Tetons of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Next year we have another awesome event for you! Seeking True North 2011

Cooperative Edge Business Development Experiential Training – This customized training program for business teams involves pre-assessments and interviews to focus the training and facilitation on what is most important. Delivery is a carefully designed series of experiential team and leadership exercises woven with models, methods and tools to facilitate transference of the concepts and promote business results. For Wyoming Businesses, Grand Dynamics supports the use of the Wyoming Workforce Development Training funds for matching funds to off-set training fees. The Hand in Hand Childhood Education center was one such client that experience the cooperative edge with outstanding results.

The Grand Dynamics Assessment Center delivered a plethora of online insights to individuals. Our top selling assessments were the BarOn EQ-i and the DiSC Behavioral Profile.

International Programming
Grand Dynamics Associates delivered The Leadership Challenge Adventure, a 3 Day Intensive Program designed for transitioning aspiring mangers into leaders. This program utilized the LPI (Leadership Practices Inventory) with 1.5 days of indoor programming and 1.5 days of outdoor adventure based experiential leadership training. These programs were delivered in Spain, Germany, Mexico and Australia. Our Asia programs included customized adventure programs in Chiang Mai, Thailand and the Philipines.

Personal and Business Development for Grand Dynamics Staff:
At Grand Dynamics, we practice what we preach! Here are a couple of the training programs we invested in this year to facilitate the personal and professional growth for our staff and business.

Business Mastery – Tony Robbins and Business Mastery Staff – January, 2010 Vegas! Check out the 7 Forces of Business Mastery.

Unleash the Power Within – Tony Robbins – November, 2010 – New Jersey

Association for Experiential Education International Conference - November, 2010 – Vegas (again!)

GDI In the News
Fox Business News – Grand Dynamics is highlighted on Fox Business News for Experiential Leadership Training strategies n a challenging economy. Check out our You Tube Channel with the 2 minute Fox Business News Coverage.

Grand Dynamics’ feature television show The Winning Edge was featured across the USA in 137 countries world-wide. The show continues to air throughout 2011 around the world. USA LISTINGS WORLD WIDE LISTINGS

Personal Summits
GDI President Tim Walther traveled to the land of ice and snow to complete a full summit ascent of the Mooses Tooth in the Denali Range of Alaska. Get the full trip report Here: Mooses Tooth Alpine Climb

Will Leggett continued his Hunting Exploits

New Staff Reuben Gibson completed his first multi-pitch rock climb up Baxters Pinnacle in the Tetons

Josh Morris, GDI International Program Manager, competed in the World Climbing Competition televised on ESPN during the opening of the Sands Marina Resort, Singapore. Check out the videos and beta! World Climbing Blog

From all our staff at Grand Dynamics we wish you a healthy and happy new year!

If you haven’t filled out the form above to get access to our Grand Dynamics Secrets, NOW would be a good time!

A special thanks to many of our core delivery team: Erick Erickson, Chuck Connelly, Stephanie Sibille, Stephen Koch, Scotty McGee, Gary Falk, Stu Mittleman, Charlie Marshall, Glenn Slattery, Jessie Roy, Skyler Atkins, Scott Fessler, Reuben Gibson, Will Leggett, Todd Walther, Tim Walther, Sparky, and of course, TELOS!!!!

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Tags: Adventure, Behind the Magic Curtain, Charlie Marshall, Chuck Connelly, corporate retreat, emotional intelligence, Erick Erickson, experiential learning, Gary Falk, Glenn Slattery, Grand Dynamics, Jessie Roy, Leadership Training, Reuben Gibson, Scott Fessler, Scotty McGee, Skyler Atkins, Stephanie Sibille, Stephen Koch, Team building, telos, Tim Walther, Todd Walther, Will Leggett, “Sparky”
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Archive for the ‘Meeting Planners’ Category

Top Winter Corporate Retreat Destination – Arizona

Treasure Island, California is all the buzz! Join us starting July 9th for a dynamic week of events!

Ensuring the ROI of Team Building

MPI Launches Redesigned World Education Congress

What is an experiential team building initiative? What is the facilitators role when facilitating an experiential initiative?

How safe is a team building or experiential leadership training program?

5 Tips to Create Successful Team-Building Activities

Amex Study Shows Biz Travel ROI

Grand Dynamics 2010 Highlights! Experiential Team Building and Leadership Development with HUGE IMPACT