We already talked about great company culture and one of the ways of improving quality of the communication is team building. Team building aimed at creating a strong community is a good and useful thing, but most companies of any size have already gone through all common types of team building at least once during their existence.
When the usual forms of team building are tiring, and the team (your own or the client’s) needs to be shaken up, it’s time to think in an original way! Here are some unusual team-building scenarios – take note and feel free to put them into practice. It will be fun and effective!
Quest room
Quest rooms are now trendy – rooms from which you need to get out in an hour, completing tasks with your hands and, as they say, with your brains. Some of these rooms involve the passage of a whole suite of rooms. During such an adventure, the team of participants does not think about work at all: a completely different realistic world is created inside the rooms. It can be a pirate ship, a horror movie atmosphere, or a mental hospital. Without thinking about any kind of team building there, the people who went inside are obsessed with only one task: to get out and they are ready to do anything for this.
During the game, they will get an adrenaline rush, show themselves in a stressful situation, and surely turn on the team spirit. This team building is ideal for small groups and can be designed specifically for the purposes of a particular company in a particular room. The result of modern and fashionable entertainment exceeds the wildest expectations.
Dialogues in the dark
In 1995, a German named Heinecke came up with an interesting project called Dialogues in the Dark. This is a training led by blind trainers, which takes place in the dark and lasts for several hours. Its participants can be from 2 to several dozen people. The purpose of the training is to help build and strengthen the team by using the effect of darkness, which sharpens perception and helps us to be more honest, and also better feel everything that happens, and not just see it.
Participants are given a variety of tasks: from determining the size of the room, which they have never been in, to team tasks – solving a spatial problem, and so on. This is very unusual and productive – for example, with the help of such training, experts say, you can easily identify the “anti-leader” in the team.
Wine day
To implement this team-building program, it is highly desirable to live in regions where grapes grow and winemaking flourishes. A small vineyard is rented, where an excursion, lectures on winemaking, and even competitions are organized for team-building participants.
For example, the participants can be divided into teams, each of which will trample grapes, come up with a name and label for a new variety, and even present their product. So it is an ideal plan to work with sales managers, for example. The rallying of the team and the identification of leaders takes place in a friendly manner and is accompanied by a wine tasting.
The final point in such a pleasant team building can be delivered by ready-made wine, which, after six months of fermentation, arrives at the company’s office.
A flash mob, as you know, is a kind of performance that begins and is held suddenly for the audience. If you set a goal for the company’s employees to prepare and conduct such a flash mob, the team will face a serious test: they will have to work smoothly and overcome various kinds of constraints in themselves in order to complete the task in public. Actions like these bring people closer together.
Here’s an example: during the Australian Open in 2014, people walking around Federation Square in Melbourne suddenly donned T-shirts with a painted rainbow and the words “Making smiles, changing lives” on them. In a few minutes, they gathered in the center of the square and began to dance – it turned out to be all 240 employees of the Johnson & Johnson sales department.
Creativity
As you know, everything that is created by the hands of a particular person is extremely valuable to him. For the team of a particular company, you can hold a creative team building – for example, create a big picture together. It is not necessary to know how to draw.
Participants in such training are offered a set of tasks: attend creative workshops, go to different points, complete interesting tasks and, as a result, create one work of art for all. There will be a delegation of authority, the involvement of everyone, and the fulfillment of individual tasks … A picture can, for example, be painted in parts – one department of the company is responsible for each area, and then, coming together, the parts form a single canvas.
In the process of such training, employees will learn a lot of new things, get distracted from work, and be able to feel like creators. And the masterpiece created in the final can be placed in the office – and it will always remind employees of a fun creative day.
Pet shelter
Another unexpected place where your team building can be made is the pet shelter. One day at this place where people should cooperate with each other for real help can be a life-changing experience. Your team not only should organize every member for different tasks but also they will feel that each one of the team makes a change and something significant. Also, when they will contact the pets that are not so lucky as pets who have homes and families, they will feel empathy. It will provoke common feelings in the team that also is important in the terms of the company’s cohesion and unity. Also, maybe someone will decide to take the pet from a shelter and it will be even more meaningful and well-remembered team building. Basepaws can help in this situation and give more information about the cat that was taken from the shelter.
Dance therapy
It is fresh and original, although at first glance there may be many objections. The bottom line is this: music has a great impact on people’s minds, and dance and in general some kind of team physical exercises not only make the team more united but also produce endorphins in a person – hormones of joy.
This is not about teaching all employees of a particular company how to dance flamenco or hip-hop professionally. Team-building dance therapy goes like this: the team spends the whole day in the hall, in sportswear, and surrounded by music. Here, team tasks are performed, round dances are held, and people fool around and at the same time open up in improvisation, performing, for example, the dance of savages and so on. At some point, they are invited to listen to themselves by closing their eyes and dancing in the dark.
Such training allows people to open up and feel each other better, stop being shy and remove any blocks in communication within the team and with clients. This is still used extremely rarely but in vain.
Unusual team building is not a way to show that some company is better than a competitor, but a real way to increase your sales. After successful team-building activities, people interact more effectively at work and feel more comfortable in a team. Fact: if the atmosphere at work is good, the profitability of the business increases by 20-60%, staff turnover decreases, and the company’s image is strengthened. Therefore, it is better not to underestimate team building, but to do it.
