Students have the opportunity to experience and improve team-building exercises in the presentation “Team Building and Trust Activities” at 6 p.m. today in the Martinsville Room in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Cordy Love, the assistant director of the new student programs office, will give the presentation, and he said the purpose of it is two-fold.

“The first part of the presentation is why team building is important, why we do it and how to put it together,” Love said. “The other part is trust activities and how to build trust with team members among your organization.”

Love said he thinks anyone who is trying to get a group to bond as a team and understand what obligations a team has will benefit from the presentation, especially presidents or vice presidents of organizations.

“For the students, it will allow them to really learn strategies for a team to move forward and they will also learn skills throughout so they can go on to other organizations and have knowledge of one or two team builders,” Love said.

The presentation is part of “iLead,” a series of leadership workshops hosted by the Student Life Office.

Love said the presentation will also provide students with key concepts of team building and trust exercises needed to fully understand and practice the concepts.

Two of the key concepts include gaining knowledge on how to set achievable goals and build on them, and to also learn how to facilitate group trust games and team building exercises.

“Most students are just involved in team builders and they don’t lead them so this presentation is going to give you the skills with how to lead a team builder, facilitate the team builder and to debrief that team builder,” Love said.

Love said he thinks an important part of presenting team builders is to include an activity that is purposeful and that his presentation is unique because it is interactive.

One of the team building activities in the presentation is the “ball toss” where the objective is to pass the ball around a circle of people. Love said he will throw in a few tricks to demonstrate a point to the participants.

“The point of the ball toss is to talk about communication, how you can juggle multiple tasks and how to be flexible throughout your experience,” Love said. “When you work with an organization there are a variety of things you have to juggle so if the team is not on the same page then it is really hard to get your goal accomplished.”

Love said he has done a variety of team building exercises and presentations including training new Eastern orientation staff, transition staff and PROWL leaders.

“Ever since (graduate) school I have been doing team builders to help develop teams and the more you do it, the more it becomes second nature,” Love said.

The presentation is open to anyone who chooses to attend.

“I want people to walk away with the sense that they can form their own team builders, that they know how to debrief it and they have the skills, the confidence and the ability to conduct their own,” Love said.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or rjrodgers@eiu.edu