Recently, I took the Ptex Team on a surprise outing just a few doors down from our office. We came to a large, empty hall with chairs arranged in a circle. As the team filed in, no one knew what was going on, why they were there, or what we’d be doing.
Then, our moderator explained that we would spend the afternoon competing in “The Food Truck Challenge.” We divided into four teams and each team was tasked to create their own food truck according to their assigned cuisine (Mediterranean, Asian, South American, and desserts), complete with branding and marketing, three dishes plated for 20 people, and of course, the truck itself. Everyone had a blast!
This hands-on, out-of-the-box team-building exercise was so impactful, and something I’d recommend that every leader try for their growing company. It gives your people the chance to work with team members they may not have yet worked with, discover talents and skills that they didn’t know they had, and experience coming together under intense time pressure in pursuit of a common goal—that has nothing to do with work.
Here are 3 Ptex Practical Pointers for implementing a team-building experience for your people:
1. Align it with your team culture and values.
Think about the values that are important to your team and the type of atmosphere that you want to build—in our case, it was creativity and collaboration. Then choose an activity that will help you develop and bring those things out in your team.
2. Make it both fun and meaningful
When you choose a team-building activity, aim to strike a good balance between it being fun and meaningful. It’s important that people enjoy themselves, and some kind of food component is always great, but don’t lose sight of the larger goal that you want the activity to accomplish.
3. Follow up with feedback
After the exercise, be sure to get honest feedback from your team so that you can measure the impact of the activity and make the next team-building experience even better.
Bottom line? We learn a lot at work, but PLAY can teach us just as much, if not more, about collaboration, creativity, overcoming challenges, and how to work as a team and succeed.
I’d love to know: What team-building exercises have you done with your team recently? Comment and let me know.
