Amazing Team Building Events

Posted on Jul 31 2013 - 1:05pm by Kevin Maddox

Team Building

Corporate team building exercises aren’t just fun, they’re extremely valuable. They reward patience and thoughtfulness, care and skill. They expose the weak elements of a workforce and strengthen them with hard work, determination and skill. The frivolity and playfulness of team building events hides a very important truth – they will make your workforce better, says About.com journalist Susan Heathfield.

If you’ve never organised a team building event before, it can be hard to know which direction to turn, says Team Management expert Brick Jackson. Although I recommend Spitbank Fort for amazing team building events but still people having a grasp on that what exactly is a team building event is? Should it involve lots of writing and strategising? Or should it be quite a relaxed affair with luxury rooms and complimentary refreshments? How do you choose an event that benefits all involved?

To answer these questions and more – here are a few of the amazing team building events that you and your workforce can get involved with.

The Apprentices

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past seven years and you don’t know what The Apprentice is – here’s a quick run through. A workforce is split into two opposing teams who are then given the same corporate task. This task can incorporate almost any kind of skill you can think of. Past television episodes of the The Apprentice have seen team members set up product photo shoots, sell from market stalls, advertise greetings cards and design their own clothing ranges. The possibilities really are endless. At the end of an action packed team building day, a panel of industry experts will choose one winning team and one team to be…fired.

This is a great team building exercise for any workforce that needs to increase its adaptability and flexibility. The challenge set is ‘unseen’ – teams are expected to adapt to whatever intense or unfamiliar situation they’re introduced to and function as efficiently and effectively as possible. Do be sure that your workforce is robust enough to risk being metaphorically ‘fired.’ It is a corporate exercise but it should be fun too.

Commercial Break

Within this team building scenario, your employees are top advertising executives. They’re tasked with producing several high quality television ads and they’re given a huge range of props with which to do it. Actresses, actors and models are all on standby – just in case a team makes the decision to shirk front of house duties. Remember though – every decision has consequences in this game. Once your workforce has tired themselves out producing top drawer ads, you can then hold an advertising awards ceremony in order to pick a winner.

There’s a whole suite of professional recording equipment available for use in this event. It’s extremely good fun, it’s very laid back and it’ll get team members bonding in time. The experts at Teambuilding.com point out that the commercial break scenario is ideal for the workforce that already functions well but wants to strengthen ties.

Fashion Works

Yes, you’ve guessed it. In this team building exercise, colleagues compete against one another to create and manage a fashion show. They must use the wide range of materials made available to them to design and make their own statement clothing pieces. Then, they must nominate catwalk models from their team and kit them out in these pieces. The team with the best fashion show wins – it’s that simple.

Once again, this great for a workforce that already functions pretty well but could do with a little bonding time. It’s very lighthearted and insincere, so it should foster close connections and strong friendships.

Photo Credit: Flickr/Michael Cardus

About the Author

Kevin is a team building expert and corporate event manager. Throughout his career, he has seen various amazing team building events. He owns a blog through which he shares information about different techniques to build team spirit.