Corporate Team Building

Experiential learning is the cornerstone of our sessions. We immerse participants in purposeful activities to illustrate learning points relating to the session objectives. Our programs explore serious issues in a lighter mood through cooperative or competitive play. Fun is one of the key elements in all our programs.

Experiential learning is an active, learner-centric methodology where learners put knowledge and skills to use in a meaningful and relevant fashion.

We use the experiential learning cycle: Experience, Sharing, Processing, Generalising and Applying for the debriefing and reflection process.  We utilize many creative and active reviewing techniques to integrate the worlds of talk and action by narrowing the gap between theory and practice.  The advantage of this model is the transference of learning into our daily work context is built into the model. This ensures learning is transferred back to the workplace after the session.

Abraham Maslow’s theory has become an important part of the study of workplace motivation. Maslow saw human needs as a hierarchy which was represented as a triangle for ease of understanding. He surmised that people could not commit to moving on to the next need until the previous need was fully attained. Once the needs were attained they would cease to be a motivator, so motivated people would start to look to the next need in order to satisfy themselves.

If a manager can see where an employee is in the hierarchy then they will understand how best to motivate that individual. At the survival or basic level, staff need resources, information and management support to be able to do their job efficiently and independently. At the security level, staff need to feel that they are being managed in a fair manner and appropriately rewarded for their contribution. At the belonging level, staff need to feel listened to and be informed, and have supportive relationships with other team members. At the esteem level, staff crave respect and recognition. Lastly, at the self-fulfilment level, teams require a clear understanding of business goals, the values and purpose of the business, and how they contribute to achievements.

Awareness is the first step for any change to occur because it creates an opportunity for choice. In this programme, our intention is to create a safe and fun learning environment to gently create awareness of automatic behaviours of individuals through simple activities. The emotion and feeling that arises through these behaviours are brought to light for participants to reflect. Furthermore, having stronger self-awareness allows individuals to begin to better manage themselves in a team environment

Team building should not involve peer pressure; Challenge by Choice helps individuals avoid crowd mentality and manipulation.

In all our programs, we strongly adhere to the “Challenge by Choice” concept.  This philosophy creates an environment where participants are asked to search for opportunities to stretch and grow during the experience. We ask that participants challenge themselves and participate fully in the experience at-hand by inviting them to step out of their comfort zone. If they find themselves in the panic zone, participants are empowered to make a choice to step back.

We seek to create opportunities for learning about how to set goals that are in neither the comfort nor the panic zone, but in that slightly uncomfortable stretch zone where the greatest opportunities for growth and learning lie. In this process we recognize the need for individuals and the group to accept responsibility for their decisions. We also recognize that any activity may pose a different level and type of challenge for each person. Most importantly, we encourage the team to provide a supportive and caring atmosphere to support each other’s learning.

This dimension is about the individual ability to integrate healthily into a team as well as the ability to create a functioning team. The underpinning theory that guides us is Tuckman’s Group Development. The theory states that a team will progress through 4 stages: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. The last stage of Adjournment is about completion and closure for a team.

At each stage, team behaviours are distinct. Healthy members functioning in a team are aware of the stages the team is in and make effort to contribute and guide others to work together. In addition to experiencing these stages, we will guide participants in identifying such behaviours and learn to work through these stages. The goal is about participants about to apply this concept in their own work context.

Feedback taps into the basic human need to improve, to compete, to be accurate and the desire to be competent. If given properly, it supports growth, learning, error correction and improvement. Properly given feedback is almost always appreciated and motivates people to improve.

Feedback is also one of our important approaches. From an organization perspective, feedback serves the same functions as interpersonal feedback. Learning to give feedback and understanding the characteristics of them will be valuable to the organization.

Open communication ensures honesty in the best interest of each other. Openness is also about listening and suspending judgments. This program we will be using “The Johari Window ” developed by American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Inghamin in the 1950’s. It is known as a disclosure/feedback model of self-awareness, personal development, group development and understanding relationships.