IT Management Slideshow:
Team Building Without Tears

Your IT teams are constantly under pressure to meet critical deadlines, absorb new information at warp speed and innovate to stay ahead of rapidly shifting market dynamics. That’s a pretty tall order, isn’t it? Which is why you need to know when it's time to break up familiar routines and present challenging activities that stimulate employees’ capacity for critical thinking, according to author/training consultant Marlene Caroselli. In her new book The Critical Thinking Tool Kit: Spark Your Team’s Creativity with 35 Problem-Solving Activities (Amacom/available now), Caroselli presents exercises that are designed to induce neither tears nor laughter among your employees. These are not to be confused with the kind of misguided team-building exercises that are the fodder of TV comedies such as "The Office." Rather, these are intellectual exercises that attempt to cultivate skills such as analytical thinking, problem solving and conflict management. Here are our six favorites from among the list of 35.