Team building activities

[Applespider]

Each year, work send us on a team-building day. Thankfully, it's not usually one of those 'build a bridge across a river' type events but an activity that we'd all like to do in a group - the teambuilding comes from putting together the report to the office afterwards!

Last year various teams went to the horse racing, some smaller teams went sailing/skiing/to another city (by putting some cash to budget). But it's time to think of suggestions for this year and I'm stumped. The one on the table so far is learning to salsa but not sure it appeals; we had one suggestion of learning Circus skills but it's way over budget to do that.

We're a largish group - 26 of us (20 women and 6 guys) aged between 20 and mid-40s - and there's a budget of £50 a head. So ideas please?

 

[yellow]

You need go no further after this idea:

Nothing builds a team like legally shooting your boss and getting away with it!!

Er.. paintball.

 

[Applespider]

Nothing builds a team like legally shooting your boss and getting away with it!!

Er.. paintball.

Appealing though that sounds - I should also point out that there's a kind of internal competition between the 6 teams in the office to do the most original/interesting event. And we've paintballed before...

Locationwise - we're in London so anything within an hour of there is good.

 

[yellow]

And we've paintballed before...

Ahh... bummer. I really was hoping to sneak in and shoot your boss.

Well, I don't know London well enough to suggest too much more.

A pubcrawl of all pubs established before 1750? A scavenger hunt (maybe there's a professional s-hunt-set-up-group?) could be fun.

What about some community service? Soup-kitchen or the like? Team-buildish, cheap, and gives back to the community. Communist, I know.

Flag football? My Pound Sterling is on you.

<ponder>

 

[emw]

How many pints can you buy for £50 these days?

 

[yellow]

How many pints can you buy for £50 these days?

More if you don't tip!!

I'm just kidding. Be a good tipper. Buy cheaper bitters.

 

[Applespider]

A pubcrawl of all pubs established before 1750? A scavenger hunt (maybe there's a professional s-hunt-set-up-group?) could be fun.

Great idea but we're doing that as a whole office in August

What about some community service?

Equally great idea but we did that (as an office) in May as part of London Cares Day - digging school gardens and painting murals for community halls.

Flag football? My Pound Sterling is on you.

I like it! But sadly rest of team believe footballs should be round

 

[OutThere]

A scavenger hunt can be a lot of fun.

They're popular in greenwich/stanford connecticut, for whatever reason, and my friends do them a lot.

Scavenger hunts can be seriously cool if you get creative...

- Require pictures. Say, a picture of your group skinny dipping in the Thames.
- Require assembly. 'Find these 3 pieces of this thing, put it together and take a picture of you holding it/using it in front of *landmark*"
- Use a GPS+coordinates
- Throw in a twist that has to do with your work.

You can have each team come up with things to find, hide stuff, make requirements etc. to keep it fair.

Your report at the end would be a culmination of all of the things you've photographed, found, assembled, swiped and created.

Just a thought.

edit: blast. too slow writing my post. just read the post above.

 

[yellow]

How about a Tube race?
See who can get from Heathrow to King's Cross the fastest.

edit: blast. too slow writing my post. just read the post above.

30 minutes late.. that's some kickass words per minute there, fella.

 

[Applespider]

How about a Tube race?
See who can get from Heathrow to King's Cross the fastest.

Interesting... and would leave lots of the £50 per head since we've all got Tube passes. But given we have to do this in July/August and the Tube is most unpleasant, I'm not convinced. Nor do I think London Underground would be v happy with a group of 26 wandering around together - remember, we have to do something as a together...

Some great ideas though!

 

[calculus]

How about taking a completely different approach and doing something to help your community, for example fixing up the garden in an old folks home.

 

[Tanglewood]

Ahh... bummer. I really was hoping to sneak in and shoot your boss.

You can still have your chance, my department is going paintballing on June 23rd for a team building exercise.

Have you thought about go-carts? Last year my department went to a local speed circuit and did relay races.

 

[thedude110]

Don't know if your group is courting adventure, but how about creating a living museum (5th link down -- easily adapted beyond a 20 minute classroom activity, I think) in a local park?

Did this with my students in Providence, though I suspect it's a bit of a safer city than London.

 

[OutThere]

How about a Tube race?
See who can get from Heathrow to King's Cross the fastest.



30 minutes late.. that's some kickass words per minute there, fella.

I was referring to Applespider's statement that they were doing a scavenger hunt as a whole office, which happened 4 minutes before mine.

Tube race sounds cool. 'twould be more extreme in the new york city subway system however. That would be a battle for life and death.

 

[UKnjb]

A punting regatta !

Punting as in the ones that you can hire out in Oxford or Cambridge. Punting is do-able at pretty well any level, independent of gender, is great fun etc. Your event, being in July, is likely (hmmmm - maybe not, this is England after all) to be warm weather. You could have singles (male vs male, female vs female) - straight competitive and mixed pair - co-operative (male+female), competitive races.

Apart from the punting, it could be picnic by the river and a day out of London.

There would be an overhead cost, but any money left over could be donated to a charity.

If you were interested in pursuing this, PM me as I might be able to help in providing facilities - boats, clubhouse and all the rest of the infra-structure for doing it.

 

[Applespider]

A punting regatta !

Sadly it's such a stunning idea that our IT team are already doing it in July... argh!

 

[UKnjb]

Sadly it's such a stunning idea that our IT team are already doing it in July... argh!

Why is there nothing new under the sun? Just for the record, we hosted a similar event at my club the other week for a group of Oxbridge students. One of the best days of the year. I hope you will be going on the one organised by your IT guys.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Tried to give this some thought last night for you... but came up completely blank.

Unfortunately, our organisation doesn't go in for these sorts of activities. Instead we have a staff conference and team-away days which are all about work. Strategic planning etc.

 

[Applespider]

Unfortunately, our organisation doesn't go in for these sorts of activities. Instead we have a staff conference and team-away days which are all about work. Strategic planning etc.

Now we've just one of those those 'pat yourself on the back and the year ahead' meetings today out of the office. I swear that we seem to have something out of the office on a near enough monthly basis... imagine if we got those 6-12 days back productivity wise!

 

[iGav]

Karting

 

[yellow]

Ultimate Frisbee? Get out in the sun (such as it is).. fresh air (such as it is)..

How about Beer Frisbee? I'll tell you more if you're intregued.

 

[aricher]

Our teamwork building have always been things like bowling and glowing "cosmic" mini golf. The company overall does horse race, baseball games or boat cruises but those are usually just drunk-fests.

 

[kretzy]

I've always been curious about those murder mystery nights you can run or have hosted for you by a professional. I've never been to one, so I don't know if they're any good or not but it might be fun to run one after work one night.

The only other thing I can think of is Mini Golf. That's always fun.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

murder mysteries are AWESOME!

i know nothing about professional ones, but i hosted one with 10 or so friends and it was outstanding. no, i won't make the pictures public.

 

[ksz]

Ok, this is going to be a party-pooping contrarian viewpoint...don't take it too harshly.

I have always thought that team-building exercises don't really work and aren't really necessary. When the group returns to work the next day, has anything really changed? Was the team weak to begin with, and is the team still weak afterwards? Do the same problems that existed before exist afterwards? Is team building really about building more cohesive teams that work well together, or is it just a momentary morale booster and a chance to get away from work?

From my experience managing engineering teams, I think effective teamwork is built from the inside. A day of superficial partying has not been effective. I have taken my team on cruises and other single-day excursions, but only to celebrate the successful release of products. Political and ideological differences among team members are addressed through one-on-ones. If the team is dysfunctional, the problem has to be dealt with directly.

But this is just my opinion. If you have a different view of team-building exercises and their outcomes, I would really like to know.