Team Building Activities

Team building cultivates cooperation, bridge building, planning, and effective use of resources.  The benefits of team building activities are countless: improvement in planning skills, problem solving, decision making, time management, friendly competition, personal confidence, morale, communication skills, commitment, etc.

Team building activities also help the team in self-assessment, identifying the team’s current strengths and weaknesses which will serve as a springboard for change.

Mobile Learning Initiatives |  Interactive Simulations

Mobile Learning Initiatives

Choose a local venue, a favorite meeting location or a more exotic locale.  TeamBuilders WorldWide will bring our Mobile Learning Initiatives to a conference facility of your choice.  Our training sessions are customizable for any organization and all ability levels – from intense classroom programming to exciting outdoor adventures.

The cognitive and physical interactive challenges in our Mobile Learning Initiatives bring to life theories and models about team dynamics.  These activities work to surface group dynamics, creating insights through guided debriefs after each challenge.  Team members work together with a TeamBuilders WorldWide facilitator to create an action plan that will extend what they have learned in each challenge and ensure they will apply it back at the workplace.

We collaborate with you to determine your objectives, desired outcomes and to learn about your organization’s culture to tailor a program that engages your team both mentally and physically, helping them to evolve beyond their current level of performance.  TeamBuilders WorldWide has many different activities and program designs; here are just a few:

Corporate Juggle
This activity mimics the fast pace and confusion within a business day, providing a great metaphor referencing bad throws and dropped balls as communication barriers that impact business, quality and high performance. Issues surface around how each individual’s intra- and inter- departmental actions within the group impact the overall objectives of the organization. It’s powerful to watch how teams struggle balancing task, process and people.
Promotes: Team member’s accumulative impact, effective communication, quality and effectiveness.

Get as Much as You Can! - Modeling the Way
Leaders are the architects of their culture, whether it’s a boardroom, factory or in the field. Their actions, decisions and behaviors set the example and the norms for the rest of the team. The culture we create is the culture that will be practiced by everyone. This activity has a game show format in which pods of four groups individually try to… get as much as they can.  The groups collaborating together collect the maximum potential, yet often the groups begin to work against each other. Trust is breeched and silos are formed as each group works to protect themselves to the finish. The debrief is a powerful discussion around how they created a culture of every team for themselves.
Promotes:  Trust, understanding culture, sharing the vision, dealing with change.

Interconnectivity (Quantum Puzzle)
This is a problem solving exercise which addresses strategy, execution and the impact of independent roles and functions on the big picture and success. The group will put together a 14-board puzzle and, with a one-hour deadline, they must develop a process to reconstruct the puzzle in 60 seconds or less. Each participant contributes to the success of this activity by not only knowing his or her board (their job), but by their awareness of who they connect to and who connects to them (who we impact). It is amazing to watch the group Form, Storm, Norm and Perform or not.
Promotes:  Understanding team stages of development, group problem solving, accumulative impact on success, and process improvement.

30 Minutes to 0 - Inspiring a Vision /Enabling Others to Act
This exercise focuses on seeking and sharing information as well as effectively communicating a common vision through leadership practices. The leadership group is explained the objective of Critical Mission. They must communicate this to the blindfolded group who must execute the plan. The leadership group very often will speak to the blindfolded workers as if they can see. The metaphor is very powerful when we think of how often we all speak to each other as if we have the same information …yet often we don’t. Blindfolds in your business can represent conflicting or lack of information, the uncertainty of change or assumptions. Inspiring the vision is crucial to success.
Promotes: Empathy that will impact trust, effective communication, sharing the vision.

Beyond the Box - Challenging the Process
This activity addresses diminishing resources with a very strong emphasis placed on the concept of “doing different to do more”. This activity begins with a variation of squares (boxes) of different sizes on the ground. The group’s objective is for each member of the team to have both feet in a square. Eventually, at the end of the activity there will only be one square available for the entire group to accomplish its objective. Watch how the group operates in tactical silos and shifts to a more strategic collaboration. The solution for the last round is very different than the previous rounds.
Promotes:  Dealing with change, beyond the box actions, shifting from silos to a united objective, and doing different to do more.

The Matrix
Two groups work on opposite sides of the matrix with a common goal.  The initial perception is that the other group’s presence is adversarial or that the activity is a competition between groups. . . untrue.
Promotes: Collaboration vs. operating in silos, alignment, effective communication, trust, and problem solving.

Interconnectivity (Escher Puzzle)
This is a powerful exercise in collaboration and communication. Each participant has a card with a piece of information that is crucial to solving the puzzle.  Every known piece of information is needed for the successful completion of the puzzle.  The group must communicate non-verbally to bring all of the information together and complete the final project.  Perceptions may create internal communication barriers, which in return impede completion. 
Promotes: Understanding issues, concerns and impact on success.

The End in Mind
The “fabric of the organization” is defined by the participants and often represents balance, support, effective communication, quality and integrity.  The objective for the group is to move from the present state of business to the future state of business by passing over, under, or through a structure without damaging the fabric of the organization and by maintaining the sequence they select: over, under or through.  If the team is not successful in their attempts, consequences are placed on the whole team requiring them to start over (major re-work).  The same is true for the sequence…it must be consistent to the end.  Thus, they must “begin with the end in mind”. 
Promotes: Strategic thinking, planning, unified and creative problem solving, and integrity.

Team member interviews – Encouraging the Heart-Building Trust
There is a great scene in the movie We Were Solders when Mel Gibson’s character takes the helicopter pilot out and begins a conversation about himself, his family and his interests. When asked if this conversation had a purpose, the commander responded, “Yeah, I figured you would not go into battle for just anyone (at least not with a sense of purpose)”. Knowing each other helps us to understand that we all have things that are important to us and we need to be reliable to one another at all times. His point echoes in business as well. High performing teams that get to know each other as people…not departments, job titles or areas of business, but as people, begin to build the foundation of trust. Team members don’t have to like each other, but they do need to respect one another.
Promotes: Building trust, effective communication, seeking and sharing information.

Customer Interface Solutions (Key-Punch)
Participants have five attempts to create the most efficient organizational process. There is a market place with 30 numbers (represents 30 customers, 30 products, or $30 million).  The team will need to access this area and make contact with the numbers while staying within the provided guidelines.
Promotes: Problem solving, communication, proactive planning and looking into the future.

Organizational Alignment
This activity addresses ownership and empowerment through awareness, understanding, and application.  There are two groups standing in a line facing away from the center point.  Each person stands on a square.  The objective is to create an effective solution for business growth.  This is accomplished by creating a system and process for moving each person from their current square to the square in the same position within the other group.  Basically, the groups switch sides.  This is done while staying within the guidelines provided.  In order to be successful, every member of the group must be enabled by understanding the strategic process, the operational process and their part in the people process.  Requiring the groups to execute its solution without verbal communication ensures this.
Promotes: Ownership, empowerment, problem solving, buy-in, and confidence.

Taking it to the Next Level: High Level Challenges
TeamBuilders WorldWide Center for Action Learning is a 50 acre wooded course with a climate control pavilion on the Banks of Lake Harris. Our high level challenges include a 60’ rock climbing tower, A 300 foot zip line, double leap of faith above the palm tree lines and a high Y. It’s the perfect climactic ending for the more adventurous types. 
Promotes: Collaboration for success, risk taking, effective communication, trust, and problem solving.

Interactive Simulations

Countdown
If you’re looking for an activity that is just FUNN, then here it is.  That’s right FUNN: Functional Understanding Not Necessary.  Countdown is a friendly competition in which participants actually build and launch rockets.  This rocket’s materials include a 2 liter bottle for the frame and a combination of air pressure and water for rocket fuel.  Oh yeah, they’re launching an egg which must come back intact.  The team that launches it’s egg the farthest in one piece wins.  These rockets can go 100-200 feet high.  This activity is an excellent climatic ending using one of Apollo 13 Keynote presentations

The Rueben
Rube Goldberg was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, and author. Through his “INVENTIONS”, Rube Goldberg discovered difficult ways to achieve easy results. His cartoons were, as he said, symbols of businesses capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results.  This activity is a great morale booster.  Participants build their own Rube Goldberg machines that basically have 10 steps to do a simple task.  The ingenuity is fabulous and the laughter level awesome.

We design and deliver a powerful action-based program with value added solutions; Your group will laugh, gather insight and create applications from meaningful and memorable activities. But don’t just take our word for it. . . take a peek at the Chilis Grill & Bar team’s experience in this video.