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!
