Cultivate Your Crew

A nurturing day off-site can do wonders for office morale and productivity.

BY LAYLA SCHLACK | ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINDSEY BALBIERZ

Doing trust falls in the woods is the kind of touchy-feel stuff best left in the dot-com boom, along with office pinball machines and foosball tables. But that’s not to say team building isn’t important during hard times, too, and today’s options go beyond falling backwards into your coworkers’ arms.

"The companies that are really doing well are still spending a lot of money on themselves and their employees,” says Michelle Jones, director of sales and marketing for Adventure Training Concepts in Naples, FL. “Getting out and doing something diff erent shows the company actually cares about building the teamwork and managing change.”

At Adventure Training Concepts, getting out and doing something different means anything from a scavenger hunt to a high ropes course for groups ranging from 10 to 2,000. The former military personnel, including Jones, who run the programs know that teamwork can mean the diff erence between survival and failure.

On the other end of the spectrum, New York City’s Cooking by the Book— originally founded as a cooking club 20 years ago—takes a more laidback, less physical approach to bonding among colleagues. “Everybody eats,” says owner/founder Suzen O’Rourke. “And everybody has stories. Cooking [and] eating brings people to… a diff erent space where they don’t have to think about what they’re doing.”

O’Rourke says that this frame of mind—and the fact that people’s skills in the kitchen aren’t reflective of their positions in the corporation—breaks down barriers and allows quiet or shy people to forge a bond with co-workers. She gives an example of a group of summer associates and partners from a law firm.

One of the partners, who didn’t cook and seemed disinterested in participating, was paired with a disheveled-looking, wrinkled-shirt-wearing associate who happened to be very skilled in the kitchen. The partner was able to learn a skill from someone he might not have normally interacted with, while the associate was able to speak to the partner without feeling intimidated.

Cooking by the Book works with a facilitator so that clients with serious office issues can work them out and receive the follow-up care they need, but it’s also an option for officemates who just want to take a cooking class together.

For other companies, like Adventure Training Concepts, the facilitation is built in; 30-, 60- and 90-day follow-ups are part of the package. During these follow-ups, Jones finds “that people are actually applying the training techniques that they learned on the course. People are getting along better because they’re understanding each other more.”

Jones points out that team building is even more important these days because— between email, instant messaging and cell phones—technology has stopped people from having actual conversations. She says that through working together outside of the office, face-to-face, co-workers can learn how to talk to each other. “Because they did an event together, they actually respect and appreciate and communicate better with each other,” she says.

O’Rourke has had the same experience in her programs. “You just get to learn about people diff erently,” she says. “Th e barriers are naturally dissolved and you really get to learn about each other.”

She adds that programs like hers, which aren’t as physically demanding, may break down barriers even further in some groups in which not all members are athletic or active. “People gain trust in certain things from ropes courses, if that’s what you’re looking for,” she says. “But in team building, you’re looking for people to communicate.”

And communicating isn’t just about interpersonal relationships. “We highlight company values,” Jones says. “For instance, if one company buys out another company and they combine the employees, we’ll roll out mission values.”

The bottom line is that getting employees out of their cubes opens the door for them to learn about and bond with each other. While that may sound touchy-feely on the surface, try to think of a downside to improved communication. In the end, swinging on ropes and cooking great meals together may actually point the way to a more productive office.

GAME TIME

Brian Cole Miller, author of More Quick Team-Building Activities for Busy Managers: 50 New Exercises That Get Results in Just 15 Minutes, shares a few exercises that can be done in the office, which he says work as great follow-ups to off-site activities.

KUDOS
Place a box of Kudos snack bars in the middle of the table. Everybody takes one and then gives it to someone else, along with a few words of thanks or recognition. “What’s great about this one,” Miller says, “is a) it doesn’t have to be big. And b) it doesn’t come from the boss.”

KID STUFF
At the start of a large meeting—especially where people may not know each other, or where different levels of a company are present—have everyone share what their favorite toy was. “A president can say, ‘Oh, I played with Barbie,’ and then someone else played with Barbie, too, so they start talking about which one,” Miller says. It’s a lighthearted way for people to get to know each other.

NEWSPAPER COSTUMES
Before a meeting, break into small groups, and give each team a few newspapers. Set an amount of time for them to create one costume. Miller has seen people make everything from Statue of Liberty costumes to shredding the paper like fringe. When you sit down to meet, he says, “It gets people thinking, ‘If we can be creative in this task, why can’t we be creative in balancing budgets?’”

INDEX TOWERS
Break the group up into teams of two to four. Give each team 25 index cards and a time limit to build the tallest tower. Then, give them a piece of tape to try to make it even taller, and see if that helps or hinders. Miller says you can also do it the opposite way: Let them start with the tape, and then take it away. “[This] is often how it works in business,” he says, “‘Here, do more with less.’”