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Team building

By Helen Beckett

Companies are dreaming up ever more novel scenarios to check out who’s a team player and who’s cool under pressure. It’s no longer just a case of white-water rafting or leaping from great heights; you’ll need your wits about you to survive some of the team-building days on offer.

Be prepared...for anything
Most companies encourage their workers to bond through talking and accomplishing bizarre tasks together. Others, however, choose more extreme methods, according to some of the stories on the internet.

Managers at the Swedish telecom company Ericsson wanted a memorable team-building exercise for its international sales conference in Athens. Bizarrely, they decided to stage a hostage-taking. The corporate busload heading for Corinth was saved from an ordeal with two masked and armed men by a concerned passer-by who tipped off the police.

Psychologist Noreen Tehrani was called into an organisation to deal with the fallout after senior executives were put through a re-birthing exercise. “They were all forced to put on nappies and then crawl through a plastic tube. It was supposed to help them deal with change,” she recalls.

“Some of the people found the whole exercise very upsetting. I had to provide counselling for those damaged by the experience,” she says.

Dare to say no
On exercises that are too physically demanding or in danger of undermining confidence, it can be a sign of character to “just say no”. A member of a hapless team of BBC designers sent on an SAS-style assault course to toughen them up wishes she’d walked out. There was little chance of escape after the first day was spent swimming fully clothed to a remote island.

Show your talent
Fortunately there are positive experiences to be gained on away days and events with colleagues. If a team-building event is designed well, there should be opportunities to discover your hidden talents and to bond with your colleagues.

In one exercise that required lateral thinking, a participant, generally viewed by his peers as unassertive, was on top of their game. “It was good to see the way that this experience seemed to improve the way I was viewed by my team,” he recalls.

Play catch
“We did the ‘catch me, I’m falling’ activity, as well as many others that allowed us to be supportive and work as a team,” says Eleanor, a marketing executive with a pharmaceutical company. She was relieved that all her colleagues caught each other –even the larger team members. “During these couple of days we learnt that we were coaches for each other.”

If there’s a common theme to these stories, it’s expect the unexpected!

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