What's the best team building exercise you've done (planning a large work retreat)
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
Looking for GREAT activities you can do with a large audience (>200 people). I've heard great things about the Marshmallow Challenge (build a tower with Spaghetti and Marshmallow) that they've done the TED talk about but a large chunk of the attendees have already done it. Anyone have other ideas?
|
Anonymous
|
I'm 50 and have worked at a dozen companies, big and small. I have never had a positive experience with team building exercises - they always feel forced and involve people that I am only with because they pay me.
The only out of the box experience that help make us feel part of a team was crushing on a big proposal. Seriously. It wasn't an "exercise", it was a real, honest effort that involved everyone and we all knew it would have a big impact on our jobs. The core team worked on it for months but there was one week at the end where we all came on board with pizza and late nights and the whole deal to explain who we were, what we were going to do and why we were the best people to do it. It was great. More importantly, it was REAL. I guess that's what is hard to manufacture. We want real. |
Anonymous
|
I am an elementary school principal with a staff of 50 people. We opened last year with a 2 hour session on StrengthsFinder. I bought the book for everyone and they completed the assessment. Then we did a variety of exercises including finding out the strengths of others, plotting out our strengths on a large graph. breaking into teams to see what our collective strengths were and where support would be needed.
We did do the Marshmallow Challenge later in the year, and everyone enjoyed it. It was framed in the context of collaboration, which was something we'd been focusing on all year. This year we are going to do some short activities I learned at a workshop with Dan Horgan. (You can google him). He took us through several team building games like tossing a ball around a circle, but one teammate is blindfolded. Another was putting together a puzzle. Two of us were blindfolded and had to put the puzzle together. Others gave us directions, but couldn't touch the puzzle pieces or our hands. I agree with the PP that these activities can feel contrived. Folks need to see what the connection is to the work they do. You have to be very explicit about that or else it's just a waste of time. I don't plan to spend more than an hour on these games because I know teachers want to get to their rooms. We need to connect and have fun as a group and then get to our business. |
Anonymous
| Let them go home early. |
Anonymous
+1. Team building activities are horrible, everyone hates them and they don't do any good. Sorry but true. |
Anonymous
|
We have a catered bbq with alcohol. no working allowed that day. go team.
Anything else feels like a scene from Office Space. |
Anonymous
| I hate team building exercises. They really don't build the team. If there are new employees it is a good way for them to meet people but for everyone else, it is horrible. |
Anonymous
+1. Plus give them an extra day of vacation (to be used some other time not on the day of the team building exercises). |
Anonymous
| They're terrible. HR people are so completely out of touch. |
Anonymous
| Open bar |
Anonymous
|
Seriously? Is this marshmallow thing for real?
No one wants to to do that shit |
Anonymous
| All of these things have the ability to make grown people feel like children. I did not get an advanced degree and work in the field for a decade to play with marshmallows and spaghetti. Hell no. |
Anonymous
| Our company did one a few years ago that I thought was cool...they built bikes which we then donated to a kids charity. |
Anonymous
+1. This actual is a team build that IS worth it. Kids come in, thinking they are there to help, and they wins up getting the bikes at the end. I know Destination Paradise out if Annapolis does this ( no, not me). |
Anonymous
| Ok, I'm the hell no poster, but the bike thing is actually pretty cool. |