Out-of-office Events Offer Team-building Experience
Cooking, Comedy and Racing are some events that can help build
a more cohesive workplace.
By Jonathan Bloom, Special to the Boston Business Journal , 10/11/02
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Out-of-office Events Offer Team-building Experience
Cooking,
Comedy and Racing are some events that can help build
a more cohesive workplace.
By Jonathan Bloom, Special to the Boston Business Journal
,
10/11/02
CEOs looking for team-building ideas have more options than cooking up a few
burgers and playing a softball game. These days, employees can cook – a gourmet
meal, that is.
Interactive Cuisine, for example, puts business people in a kitchen, where
colleagues learn about one another while cooking and then eating a meal.
These days, companies are searching for unique ways to build teamwork and
improve morale – be it cooking together, laughing together or racing around a
track.
At Interactive Cuisine, there is a simple reason cooking builds cohesion, says
Julia Shanks, chef/owner of the Cambridge-based company. "cooking is great
because everybody can relate to food," she says. We all eat, and we all cook, to
some degree."
In order to encourage teamwork, Shanks splits a group into appetizer, entrée,
and dessert crews. After all, it takes a lot of teamwork to make that perfect
soufflé.
"To really team-build, we debrief after we cook," says Shanks. "sometimes we’ll
cook for a bit then stop and talk about how its going. If we find some old
dynamics are coming up, we put a stop to it," says Shanks.
Recently, the administrative board of Operation Frontline, a nonprofit nutrition
education program, spent an evening cooking as a team. While the menu was toned
down to fit in with Operation Frontline’s mission of teaching low-income
families how to make a nutritious meal, it was by no means pedestrian: crispy
skate with eggplant chutney and peach-blueberry cobbler. The event accomplished
its goal, according to Jennifer Shea, program manager at Operation Frontline.
"Cooking is so good because it’s such a natural team-building activity," says
Shea. "There is a clear goal and a specific timeline."
One of the benefits of team-building through cooking and other unusual
activities, is that the CEO sometimes wears the sous-chef’s hat, and vice versa.
"Cooking tends to shake things up. The leaders in the office are not usually the
best cooks," says Shanks.
That formula held true with Operation Frontline. "Our newest board member, who’s
a chef, is a bit shy. But he stepped right up with the cooking because he was in
such a familiar position," says Shea.
Rally the troupes
As with old-fashioned teambuilding ideas, getting people out of the office is
still the cardinal rule of these events. "Whether it’s a phone ringing or that
looming deadline, it’s hard to interact with people (in the workplace)," says
Shanks. "Outside of the office you can really learn about each other without the
day-to-day stress."
Boston’s Improv Asylum not only takes people out of their office – but actually
puts them onstage – to build team cohesion among co-workers. The improvisational
troupe, in the city’s North End, forces co-workers to listen to one another and
work together in creating short dramatic scenes – all through unrehearsed
interaction.
According to Leah Gotcsik, Improv Asylum’s director of corporate training, the
group uses the "yes and" theory, which forces colleagues to acknowledge a
statement and build from it. "You take someone’s idea and say ‘yes and … .’ It
helps them understand what it takes to forward an idea, as opposed to
questioning or negating it. By listening to each other, staying positive and
all, working together, we create a scene," says Gotcsik.
The three-hour sessions usually involve basic improv exercises, then short
scenes. Most businesspeople are glad to hear that all Improv Asylum’s
facilitators have experience in business. Plus, more often than not, the
sketches are funny, which helps break the ice. "The fun part is that it is
funny," says Gotscik. "You could almost call them kids’ games; you could almost
say that it tricks them, but it gets them to let their guards down."
While not everybody feels comfortable hamming it up in front of the co-workers
they’ll see the next day at the copy machine, at least the improve amateurs
don’t have to worry about on-lookers; the theater is in a basement with no
windows. And shy folks need not worry. "You don’t have to be the star of the
show. Some people are more in the background. As long as you participate," says
Gotcsik.
Fast companies
At F1 Boston, participants in the go-cart action at the Braintree complex aren’t
hard to come by. While most F1 team-building events are full-day affairs,
half-day events aren’t uncommon. A typical event centers around, not
surprisingly, driving. companies are divided into teams that compete to wine an
endurance race by completing the most laps. Teams make signs for encouragement
and signal driver changes, the race’s main strategy point. "To watch the teams
in their driving suits talking more than they’ve probably ever done is really
rewarding," says Maureen Ridings, director of sales at F1. "It’s really
exciting, very competitive and teams really work together trying to win."
While all three events vary greatly, they are comparable in price, around a few
thousand dollars for three to four hours. And all three have the same goal:
getting colleagues to interact in a hierarchy-free, outside-the-office setting
to build cohesive teams and have fun in the process.
"I think it was really valuable for people getting to know each other outside of
their normal roles," says Operation Frontline’s Shea. "One guy said to me, ‘This
what we’re gonna do every year, right?’ Sounds good to me."