Making the Jump
What Color is your Team Building Parachute?
by Ed Graziano | Published in October 2007 Focus on Entertainment
How do you get meeting and event participants out of their chairs and actively engaging with others? After all, isn’t that a major benefit of getting everyone together — for a little socialization and interaction?
There are various ways to incorporate interaction, team building and networking into your programs; it’s simply a matter of determining what works best for your group.
The trick is finding the right solution to the right challenge.
Your Challenge: The group wants to explore a new city or
seek adventure.
Your Parachute: With adventure hunts and races, teams are sent out to complete challenges, find an elusive “villain” or take creative photos. Add value by incorporating your products or brand with key messaging and challenges.
Your Challenge: Getting your team to communicate and work as a group.
Your Parachute: Team challenges, competitive or noncompetitive, can be tailored with activities, props, music and staff to fit almost any meeting theme, from “Mission: Impossible” to a corporate olympiad.
Your Challenge: Getting participants to present creative approaches to company or industry issues in an informal way.
Your Parachute: Interactive theatrics let participants be creative. There are many ways to incorporate costumes, funny props, creative script writing and video cameras into a team experience that not only stimulates laughter, but gives participants a memorable keepsake.
Your Challenge: Attendees have been cooped up in meetings all day and want to have some fun.
Your Parachute: When you give participants a chance to create and decorate their own soapbox derby racer, for example, or an image of their perfect utopia through creating and building events, expect to be amazed by your group’s creativity and sense of humor.
Your Challenge: You want to summarize and reinforce meeting content or provide an after-dinner activity.
Your Parachute: Almost any popular television game show can be recreated for a corporate event. Additionally, many event suppliers have created their own game show formats that encourage full group participation.
Your Challenge: You need to address specific issues or processes, such as inter-departmental communication or work style differences.
Your Parachute: Experience —> Reflect —> Process —> Apply is the experiential learning module that gives context to learning-based team building activities. The session should be enjoyable to everyone, with the goals understood in advance and plentiful opportunities for participants to discuss and reflect.
Your Challenge: The group needs to focus on specific areas, such as risk taking, understanding roles and responsibilities, or trust.
Your Parachute: Many excellent business educational simulation tools are available that offer participants a lighthearted way to simulate workplace processes.
Your Challenge: Helping attendees relax, connect and grow relationships.
Your Parachute: After a long day of meetings, theme reception activities are one of the best ways for people to truly interact and network. Make the most of this opportunity by presenting activities that bring people together, such as casino nights, video horse racing events or themed carnivals.
Your Challenge: Increasing the value of an activity, ensuring attendees feel that their time is well-spent and/or strengthening their connection with the host city.
Your Parachute: With community service projects, participants have a chance to connect with the community by either visiting a nonprofit organization and doing hands-on work (such as painting, cleaning or gardening) or building toys or items on-site for a local charity. Remember to allot plenty of time, and choose a charity with which your organization has established ties.
Other options include role-playing, case studies and self-directed workgroups, and the list goes on. Regardless of your group’s needs, there is an activity to that is just the right parachute as they make a leap for the next level of business success.
About the author: Ed Graziano
Ed Graziano is the founder of Chicago-based Corporate Event Enterprises, a national supplier of interactive and team-based programs for event and meeting planners.
Contact: ed@corpevent.com