A Change in Focus

By Doug Franklin May 17, 2010

Last night I was doing a leadership training for a local church youth group. Two hours of team building with a short teaching on teamwork from Gideon. The students were all great kids with a desire to have fun and learn about themselves. When we started the first team building initiative the students were laughing and having a good time, but as the activity got harder and harder the focus of the students changed. They realized that for them to accomplish more than just a fun time they were going to need to sharpen their focus. What was really interesting was what happened at the end of the night. One student came about an hour late. The group quickly invited him to join them in a team building activity in progress. The group was focused but the new student was not. As they attempted to reach their goal, the new student kept dropping the ball and causing them to fail. He had the ability but he lack focus. So how do we get students to focus?

I often tell students that focus precedes success but they don’t really understand what I am talking about. They only understand focus when they need to accomplish a task. This is why I love team building activities because they stretch students’ minds and help them focus on accomplishing goals. If you want to see your students’ focus change use team building activities. They really work.