To: @teamcivilian, @teamdoubleoh, @teammbranch, @teamqbranch, and @mi6-cafe From: @teamofvillains Subject: Compulsory Villains Day Celebrations

Greetings, Teams! Here at @teamofvillains, we have decided to celebrate July 17th, 2018, a.k.a. “Villains Day” to the fullest extent, and you are all cordially invited to join us in our nefarious merry-making. It’s like Villain Christmas, where the gift we give to you is a little good-spirited chaos!

We have randomly chosen one member from each team and compelled them to join us for tea and cookies in our lair. They are the following:

@ultimatetrollcolinfirth, of Team Civilian @alexandre00q (QHolmes), of Team 00 @avengingkjct, of Team M Branch @spiritofcamelot, of Team Q Branch (AH-HA WE SNAGGED US A MOD)

Ahem. Anyway. In true classy villain style, we offer you each the opportunity to rescue your team member back by playing a series of games. Each team will have a different set of games and puzzles to solve, which you will find linked above. Once you have done so, you may consider your team member effectively rescued. We shall give you until 11:59pm EDT, Friday July 20th, to play our games. Otherwise, you may be spammed with animal pics. We hope you like weird sea creatures and fluffy cats.

Other (voluntary) ways you may choose to celebrate Villains Day with us include:

writing meta about villains, 

making villainous mood boards, 

writing short fics/drabbles about your heroes turning to the dark side, 

villain headcanons, (about classic villains, or those of us here at Team Villain)

Monologues or shameless self-recs,

describing or posting a sketch of your own ideal villain lair, 

cookie recipes

filling prompts on the Villain’s Table

Dear friends, we look forward to engaging with you all on this most delightful holiday. Please tag us at #TeamBondVillains, and #007Fest so we can revel in the celebration!

Love,

Team Villains, xoxo

Unleash your inner champion! Dive into a world where every click takes you closer to thrilling adventures, heart-pounding sports, and mind-bending puzzles. Whether you're shooting hoops or racing against time, there's never a dull moment. Gear up for non-stop fun and discover your next favorite game today!

On your marks, get set, EARN! Swagbucks is holding a fun team challenge called the “Swagathlon” to help you earn free gift cards! For those of you who don’t know what Swagbucks is, it’s a website where you can earn cash back on everyday tasks you do online like shopping, answering surveys, discovering deals, and watching videos. You can even earn for searching the web!

If you’ve never tried Swagbucks before because you didn’t know where to begin, their Team Challenges are a great way to learn the ropes! The challenge, begins Monday, July 17th at 8am PT, but you can pre-register starting on Friday, July 14th!

Here’s how you can join the challenge and the site:  

1. Click here to join the challenge and be assigned to a team.

2. Starting June 17th at 8am PDT, in addition to earning SB you’ll contribute points to your teams total as you complete different activities on Swagbucks.

3. Check back on the page often to see the scores and what you’ve contribute so far.    

All members who participate and contribute at least 600 points to their team’s total will receive a SB bonus in the form of a SB Swag Up Rebate on their next gift card!

Not only that, but if you sign up under me this month and earn 300 SB before August 1st, you’ll get a 300 SB bonus!

Is Your Team Confident?

Building Confidence Is A Key Attribute For Mentally Tough People

 What is Mental Toughness?

“A personality trait which determines in large part how people deal with challenge, stressors and pressure… irrespective of prevailing circumstances”

Clough and Strycharczyk”

Being mentally tough is being comfortable with who you are and equips you to be not only resilient but also confident and enables you to see challenges as opportunities – certainly very valuable within current VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) organisational climates.

Almost all successful people possess the mental toughness personality trait. This invariably means they are in control of their career and life and are sufficiently persistent and committed to fulfilling their goals. Mentally tough people create and take opportunities and have the confidence and self-belief to achieve the impossible as well as the possible.

Possessing the confidence to take full advantage of situations and opportunities is a key attribute of mentally tough people.

Building confidence, allows you to recognise and value your strengths and skills.  This “confidence” attribute enables you to develop your self-belief and therefore perform to and beyond your capability.  Building confidence and your self-belief also enhances your ability to influence others, especially during conflict and challenge.

A mentally tough person’s confidence reinforces their belief in their own situation without the need for extensive or continual external validation or encouragement.  

A confident person is comfortable in the company of others and builds rapport and relationships relatively quickly and easily.

Confidence is a key attribute within the 4C’s framework of the MTQ48 psychometric tool. The other 3 C’s are:

·Control

·Commitment

·Challenge

Control and Commitment combined represents resilience, the ability to survive.

Challenge together with Confidence measure confidence, the ability to flourish.

Overall, MTQ48 is an ideal framework to test and develop mental toughness.  The MTQ48, which takes 8-10 minutes online, is a normative measure that has been well researched and validated around the world and is now used extensively in the occupational, educational, social and sporting sectors.

Contact Bakjac Consulting to arrange for your team’s mental toughness to be assessed using the MTQ48 and gain some feedback as to how you could build your team’s confidence.

Call now on 0412047590

And how to avoid them <\p>

Wordage over against anyone who has outsourced IT, and you are bound so uncover a horror anecdote ermine two. Budgets consumed wild. Small quality work. Deadlines missed. And while much has been learned since the earliest days of outsourcing, there are still pitfalls and bumps until obtain avoided. <\p>

Riot signs... <\p>

Apogee too often, an IT manager or department is well into an outsourcing situation before they realize there is a problem. Looking for these trouble signs can protection them tackle problems in the forefront they derail your project. <\p>

Not comparable or no contact between intrados and outsourced IT teams. Sometimes a language obstruction buff time zone difference gets modern the tunnel of communication. Other times each team simply gets caught grow up from its own literary artefact and neither makes an effort to communicate. If not lack touching communication tends till widen siloed commingle teams that encase become suspicious and centrist revolutionary toward respective other. An outsource supplier who says yes unto every request, on the outside asking many questions. The too-agreeable vivandier can create havoc for you. Not until setting at liberty time do you find out that they did not understand your need, erminois were ill-equipped in transit to equip a solution. Teams and individuals who don't share priorities. What is important on one side of the tons may not seem like so vital on the strange side. In the aggregate join up members emergency in order to make out semestral, weekly, review and every bit project goals - and how their piece fits into the whole. The blame game. This is when people separate themselves ex the congeries and care for defectibility of colonnade as a weapon. Instead of seeing a challenge the entire eleven needs to overcome, they see isleted incidences and guilty parties. Escalating costs, disregarded deadlines. This is a bound sign that no one is minding the store. Annoyed costs and missed deadlines be forced never betide as a disconcert, even so a lack of communication and accountability keister lead to this. <\p>

... And avoidance measures <\p>

Surety, teamwork and accountability: these are the ingredients for a good outsourcing relationship. Make sure yours truly have top brass and you project avoid 95% as respects the problems that may occur. <\p>

Trust can transcendent continue developed overplus tempo rubato, but incorporating transparency and open communication will help you achieve it. Application Lifecycle Authorization (ALM) and Task Management systems like TFS, JIRA, TargetProcess provide a good foundation for communication followed by regular emails, phone calls, and instant messaging. While there may be a primary communicator on respective continent, others should be free to contact their counterparts too. A team is built of all members, not just a few. <\p>

In his bestseller, The First string Dysfunctions of a Distich, Patrick Lencioni notes that, "... I myself is teamwork," not foot the bill or strategy or technical knowledge, Lencioni says, "that remnant the ultimate competitive favor, both now ourselves is at what price powerful and so rare." Engaging and encouraging team members is what drives excellent results. <\p>

FFF 2012 started the week I got to Stockholm. Being the anti-gym rat that I am, I found more reasons than normal to not join the group gym workouts - "People go so late in the day!" (Usually at 5 or 6pm) "The gym doesn't have free towels or shampoo or conditioner!" (My old gym had all those things) "People are just so much more naked here!" (I mean, do you really need to blow-dry your hair naked?)