
Adventure Seminars |
Meeting Facilitation | Team Tips
Quirky's Quality Construction
Company | Dingling Brothers Circus Train |
Skill Development Safaris
Bring
a change of pace, a change of awareness, and a change of view into the
classroom, boardroom, or meeting space with one of the Adventure Seminars.
Like outdoor adventure-based training, each of the Adventure Seminars
increases interpersonal skills (also known as emotional intelligence) by
moving people out of their normal routine and engaging participants in ways
that a sit-down meeting or training cannot. These Adventure Seminars
encourage people to participate in the learning process for themselves. By
bringing the "adventure" indoors, the lessons that come out of the training
are more easily related to the workplace.
Adventure Seminars are selected, or custom designed, to meet the
specific needs of the client group. The activities range in length from 1 -
6 hours, always ending with a debriefing session to reflect on and capture
lessons that apply directly to the workplace. Several shorter activities can
be combined to complete a half-day or full day training requirement.
Adventure Seminars can focus on behavior in one or several of the
following areas:
Articulating a common goal
Collaboration
Communication: Listening
Communication: Forming messages
Conflict resolution
Cooperation
Decision-making
Ethics in the workplace
Finding alternatives in planning
Leadership
Planning for change
Problem solving
Strategic planning
Supportive teamwork
Team coordination
Trust
Working as one team
Adventure Seminars can meet specific
training goals, spark an energetic start to a business meeting, or integrate
a series of conference sessions.
A sampling of activities is briefly described below. Many more are
available:
Quirky’s Quality Construction Company: The Leonard Egg Project
Dingling Brothers Circus Train
Skill Development Safaris
Identical Highrises
Global Bank and Trust houses its operations exclusively in office buildings
with two identical highrise buildings. The Bank is growing so fast that it
is looking for the fastest way to build their signature buildings all over
the world. Participants form teams from different part of the world to
compete to create the plan that allows for the shortest construction time.
Teams must create and document plans to meet the building requirements, and
then test their plans through timed construction of the buildings. Staffing
and requirement changes challenge the team’s methods and plans, honing the
participants’ ability to foresee and document risk and change management in
their real life projects.
Business Behavior Focus: Strategic planning, planning for change,
team coordination, problem-solving, communications,
cooperation/collaboration
Rack ‘em Up
Participants decide how to use the human resources of the team between two
roles, Production and Support, to maximize profits for the company. The
Production people toss "products" into containers to rack up dollar value
income for the company. The Support people return non-income generating
"products" to the Production people for recycling as income "products." The
team records four "quarters" of income, with the opportunity to change the
strategic plan based on observation of which parts of the previous plan
worked well and which didn’t.
Business Behavior Focus: Strategic planning, communication, meeting
facilitation, decision-making, problem solving, cooperation/collaboration
Bored of Directors
The team’s goal is to assemble four squares of four different colors. The
director can’t move from the headquarters office, the managers can’t touch
anything, and the workers can’t see what the materials look like.
Participants soon learn from experience how effective communication and
organization lead to the successful completion of a project or task.
Business Behavior Focus: communication, articulating a common goal,
team coordination, problem solving, strategic planning
Bull’s Eye
Participants form sub-teams to fill a central container with objects. Each
sub-team chooses how to allocate personnel into one of two roles: Tossers or
Retrievers. The Tossers throw objects into the central container from a
stationary position. The Retrievers move about returning any objects that
miss the central container. Any other strategy that the sub-teams wish to
use is up to their creativity in order to accomplish the goal. There is a
preliminary planning session, a period of "work" activity, a break for
strategy revision, and a final period of "work." Results are measured and
compared for outcome evaluation of success.
Business Behavior Focus: Working together as one team, articulating a
common goal, team coordination, cooperation/collaboration, communications,
ethics in the workplace
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