To be able to take your employees, sports team or school group away to an outdoor location for their team building initiative is a fantastic opportunity. It allows them to break away from the professional ambience of the office or classroom and be more like themselves. It also affords you more space and flexibility than an indoor venue, which may be limited by size, lighting, facilities or proximity to the individuals’ homes.
The activity that you choose will be based on your objective for the group. Are you trying to improve their communication skills? Is there a lot of internal politics within the team? Do they need to get to know one another better? Only once you have decided on why you need team building, can you decide on how to go about it.
Once you know what your objective is, you can decide on the activity that will be most appropriate. If you have access to an outdoor venue, here are some ideas for great activities and exercises:
Obstacle Course
Today, there are a number of game farms and lodges that offer a team building area with an obstacle course. These usually require that individuals climb, crawl, run, jump and scale, so be sure that your team is physically up to the challenge. This exercise pushes them beyond what they thought they could do and encourages them to help and support one another. If you do not have the accessibility to or funds for a formal course, make one up using ropes, swings, tyres etc…
Get Charitable
Decide on a charity or charities and get your group to work hard in doing something charitable for them. This could involve walking dogs at the local shelter, digging trenches for new pipes at the orphanage, or taking a group of senior citizens to do their grocery shopping. This engenders a sense of social responsibility and encourages each person to respect the others’ involvement for their good deeds and willingness to help.
Get Active
Make the most of the outdoors by organising a day of activity or sports for the team. You may choose just one exercise, or a range of them. Some popular choices are:
- Archery
- Quad biking
- Abseiling
- Canopy tours
- Paintballing
- Clay pigeon shooting
- Go carting
- 4 x 4 trails
- Beach volleyball (best followed by cold beers or a refreshing swim)
- White water rafting
On the Farm
Any hard-working farmer will no doubt appreciate the opportunity to display his skills and show others how challenging the management of a farm can be. So, arrange for your team to visit a farm and learn how to drive sheep, milk cows, steer tractors, catch chickens, and so on. This is fun, but is also hard work, requiring cooperation and communication.
A-MAZE-ing
Teach your employees or sports team all about cooperation and working together by getting them to guide one another through a maze. Perch one member from each team above the maze and make them responsible for guiding the rest of the team, who are tied to one another, through the puzzle.
Photo Courtesy of Let’s Ride
First of all, great article! It provoked a few ideas that I would like to post here. Teamwork is a dynamic process involving people with complementary backgrounds and skills, share common goals and exercise concentrated effort in assessing, planning, evaluating and executing towards the common goal. However, there are significant difficulties that are experienced while building collaborative groups among individuals. We must take into consideration cultural and personal differences, professional, social differences, education disparities and gender disparities. Unsolved communication barriers, poor commitment from all stakeholders undermine the spirit of team. We should also count in factors such as differences in political views. Organizations often fail to design practical policies to govern team building, so all efforts become obsolete sooner that they can settle to become useful for any institution.