Team Building Chicago | CBST Adventures

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE VIDEO: Global Food Provider Corporation Team Builds and Changes Lives

At CBST Adventures, we’re always trying new and inventive ways to tell our stories and the stories of our clients. Today’s post features a short film recapping an experience for a client. We hope you enjoy it and please share your feedback with us on any of our social channels!

To give you a little background on the video, we recently created an experience for Cargil, a global food provided cooperation based out of Minnesota. Cargil’s requested theme for this event was reaching new heights so we put them through our Community Camper Competition as this is a great day of camping-related activities that challenges people to step out of their comfort zone and maybe do some things they wouldn’t otherwise.

Rather than share the details of the event and spoil the video, we highly encourage you to check out some amazing footage we captured from the event. The last thing we’ll mention is that there was a social impact component to the event. Pay close attention to learn how Cargil chose to make a difference through this team building experience.

Growing Leadership Development Company Experiences the Perfect Team-Build

What do Leadership Development Consulting companies do when they need some team building and a little outside time? They come to CBST Adventures. We love when we get to work with companies who are as passionate about leadership development and team dynamics as we are. Such was the case when we put on an event for The Regis Company in Keystone. The Regis Company is a leadership development and coaching company that had brought 20 of their clients and 20 of their employees up to Keystone for a company conference. Our event was the team building portion of the conference and we were asked to incorporate the conference theme of ‘Thinking Forward.’ We love getting to do this integration with companies as it helps us ensure continuity with their meetings and also provide the highest level of impact for the participants!

In the spirit of anticipating the future, we decided to put the team through a customized progressive and forward thinking version of our mega popular Tactical Tablet event. The group of 30 participants first broke into teams and we kicked off the event with a friendly little game of Disc Golf. It’s a great opening primer that allows teams to warm up the muscles and get ready for a day’s worth of activity. We then started the tablet adventure and each team was given one GPS-enabled tablet and had to complete 62 questions for the day as part of the tablet challenge. As we modified this challenge specifically for the theme of the company’s meeting, we added in 10 questions that addressed key ideas, messages, and takeaways from their conference. Yep, we made people ‘walk and chew gum at the same time’ but everyone did great!

After all the teams completed the Tactical Tablet challenge, they returned to their resort in Keystone for the final activity, Rodeo Ramblers. For this activity, participants put on the goofiest cowboy hats we could find and then hop on inflatable mini-horses for a wild ride of rounding up stationary cattle steers. The sheer image of seeing adults wearing these ridiculous hats flailing around on inflatable horses is worth a thousand laughs (see the Facebook pics for the proof) and that’s why we do it. We have found, and research shows, that teams that have fun and laugh together, are more productive, have greater engagement at work, and overall are happier employees. Thus, we try to create fun-filled, laughter creating experiences and games like Rodeo Ramblers at nearly every event.

Once the day was over – you could just feel the joy in the air amongst the group. Teams did a little problem solving, got outside, laughed at one another, and overall had a great time! In our opinion, these are the ideal kind of team builds as they make for lasting experiences that people will take back with them to the office. Whether it’s reminiscing about a funny thing that happened or connecting with a colleague that someone didn’t know very well, it’s these type of interactions that we love to help create because we know they may not have happened otherwise and, more over, they change companies for the better.

If you interested in creating a fun-filled, team building experience for your company, reach out to us. We’d be happy to talk through what an event for your company would look like.

Well-Known Healthcare Product Company Finds Big-Time Fun in Team Building Event

Retreats, sales meetings, or quarterly reviews have become necessary lifeblood for businesses today. They’re great for looking back and planning ahead or even charting a new course. Oftentimes, however, these meetings can be quite intense and mentally draining after a full day or two of discussions, presentations, and problem solving. In these situations, companies and teams need a fun, relaxing break to balance the meeting work and also help bring people together. Enter CBST Adventures. Recently, a well-known healthcare product company held some team meetings in Vail and engaged CBST Adventures to inject some fun and downtime into their meetings through team building activities.

Many people may think of team building as not actually fun but more ‘mandatory fun’ – a forced activity that’s not genuinely a good time. We totally understand this, and as a result, we offer team building events that will often incorporate some degree of silliness into them. One of the activities we put this company through is called Tour de Trikester, where we have participants partake in a very mini-bicycle course on kid’s tricycles. If you can’t picture several adults on tiny tricycles, it’s downright hilarious. At the same time, as this activity is a competition, when the group is broken into teams, they can’t help but get into the activity in the spirit of competing against their coworkers. What we observe in these situations is the teams will then come up with creative strategies, encourage their coworkers, and communicate with one another without much prompting from us. We don’t tell the participants this (or at least not until the end of the day) but amidst all the fun and goofiness going on, they’re actually working on skills that have vital importance in the workplace.

Probably the best part of the day was getting to see the this company’s teams take part in our Aviation Creation activity. While this activity took place near the end of the day when you’d expect a lot of teams to be checked out, this company was all in. The challenge involved building flyable airplanes out of random plywood and foam pieces. Trust us, it’s a little bit more involved then the wooden or foam planes you got as a kid and could put together in five minutes. Once the planes were built, the teams then competed against one another to see whose plane could fly the furthest. The ingenuity folks put into designing and building the planes was impressive to say the least. Though, some planes designs and subsequent flights were not so impressive, you can be sure they got a lot of laughs. Once again, it was another activity that was pretty fun and silly at the core, yet required teams to come together, think creatively, and collaborate in trying to achieve a goal.

At the end of the day, people were smiling, laughing, and overall feeling relaxed. After daylong meetings in a conference room, you could say the experience with us was just what the doctored ordered. We’re just grateful to have helped create a memorable, fun-filled event that also helped a team grow and become more connected. Honestly, we’re not sure there’s anything more a company could want out of a team build.

If the above sounds like fun or if you’re interested in additional team building activities for your team or company, reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you!

Inc. Magazine’s #1 Alternative Team Building Activity: Building Something

In a recent article, Inc. Magazine talks about how traditional team building activities such as ropes courses and ice breakers have grown tired and cliche. Companies and teams are now looking for new alternatives to better grow and integrate their teams and Inc. has made a couple suggestions.

Number one on their list? Build Something. Such an activity calls for actual team building, problem solving, and communication skills that result in an actual deliverable or product. Pretty similar to the professional world, right? We think so too which is why we try to incorporate elements into many of our team building and community impact events. To learn more about such events, click here.

And when you’re done with that don’t forget to give the Inc. Magazine article a read.