Challenge
A major aerospace company had hired 160 new employees and needed a full-day corporate team building that would enable these new employees to feel connected to each other and the organization.
They wanted a day worth of activities in Boston that highlighted:
- An understanding and application of the keys to successful teams
- A realization that behavioral change may be necessary to succeed
- Have a firm sense of possibilities and be motivated to seek them out
- Have a better commitment to change management in the future.
Solution
We offered three activities where group members had the opportunity to not only work together as a team and challenge their limits but also learn the benefit of the client and team relationships, the need for ongoing communications, and the need for win-win possibilities. This has become a yearly event for this company as an orientation for all new hires.
Program Details
We designed a day filled with adventure and learning, starting with an activity called “The Great Egg Drop.” In this event, the large group was broken into small sub-teams and were given specific materials and asked to research and build a device (with the “winning team landing a lucrative contract”), which would protect three eggs when dropped from a height.
This simple-sounding activity involved participants needing to ask the right questions from their “clients” (facilitator) to build the device to the customer’s specifications. Asking specific questions could lead to great insights and potential creativity. Ignoring your customer or asking very narrowly focused questions usually led to building a device that fell short of customer expectations and, ultimately, failed to land the contract.
From there, we moved on to a low ropes activity called The Mohawk Walk. In this activity, there were several cables strung between trees a foot or so above the ground. There are also many different ropes hanging from the trees. The goal of the activity was to work in teams to move participants across the wires between sections while attempting to accumulate as many monetary points as possible. The different team’s results were then combined in an attempt to achieve the specified goal. Groups began collaborating as the event unfolded, and found benefit in helping each other out and setting other teams up for success by sharing best practices. To ensure full participation and everyone’s comfort, individuals were given multiple options (some supervisory or scoring and non-physical) based on their comfort level, and all participants were instructed ahead of time on proper safety guidelines.
Finally, groups engaged in a high ropes element called The Flying Squirrel. In this fun, high energy activity, participants were strapped into a state-of-the-art full-body harness system. They were then pulled up to 40 feet in the air, working in unison after having undergone a safety briefing by trained staff. This event also had numerous critical roles, some non-physical, and allowed full and active participation.
