One of the biggest joys in the shared the experience of a team retreat, is the special role each team member plays in making the experience whole. Both structured and unstructured team building events help to activate each employee’s individual strengths and heighten your team’s ability to communicate with one another based on their unique set of skills. You have likely already chosen an amazing destination for your retreat, and the team-building activities along the way give you and your team the chance to fully dive into your special location for the weekend!
Once scheduling out meals, we like to take a step back and start to envision the full itinerary on an hourly basis. With the transportation, lodging, and meals already in place, take a look at the windows of unscheduled time between either your breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner to start to identify how much time will be spent on meetings and how much time to spend on activities. You additionally check out how we recommend mixing work and play for your retreat. By locking in your meals and venue in advance, you greatly ease the process and can now accurately gauge the amount your team is looking to spend on appropriate activities.
Depending on your location, we love to be sure that we are maximizing the day and adventuring out at the peak time to enjoy the most of your natural surroundings. If you are looking to do a bonfire at your Joshua Tree retreat, it is smart to plan an evening event after the sun goes down for maximum enjoyment. On the contrary, if you’re interested in white water rafting, lots of locations suggest earlier trips for a more smooth yet tactical ride.
There are loads of activities in each destination that feed to the adventurous soul and also provide ease and relaxation to those looking to kick back, but what is it that takes an activity from a group experience to a team-building event? We like to look at these in two different categories. Structured team-building, with clear communication goals and outlined objectives and Unstructured team-building, where the magic happens in the moments in-between. Both of these activities are equally vital in creating the organic atmosphere for people to truly get the sense of “going away to come together.”
To kick off the structured team building activities, we love to organize involve an invigorating game of Team Olympics. The teams start by creating a “Team Flag” and build camaraderie around claiming a team name, logo or mascot to build hype and represent during the upcoming relays. From relay games that test your physical agility such as a game of Landmines that involves guiding a team member carefully through a “minefield” to the Egg Drop Challenge that uses your mental strength to create a structure that will safely catch an egg dropped from high above, each employee gets an opportunity to help take their team to the top!
Another great activity that our team loves to feature on our retreats is a pre-organized scavenger hunt that allows everyone to truly dive into their chosen destination, whether it be through the Redwoods of the Russian River or the winding trails of the Rocky Mountains. There are many options to build out your scavenger hunt. If you are quite familiar with the area, a few members of your team can lay out a series of riddles to lead your team members through to the finish line. We tend to keep the recommended distance of the hunt to 1.5 miles or less, depending on the activity level of your group.
Additionally if you have a larger group or are traveling to a new destination, it can be a great idea to hire out a scavenger planning team that bases their hunts on an app platform. These teams create a specific scavenger hunt branded with your company name and logo, special riddles that only your team members will be able to answer, and provide a live leaderboard to enhance the friendly competition throughout the game. These hunts usually involve submitting fun photos throughout the hunt after reaching certain destinations and solving certain riddles, which creates invaluable, raw content for your team to take home. Lots of these app based companies love to provide the full service team building experience, and will organize the starting line by walking through what to expect and how to use the app, and then end their scavenger hunts by leading an awards ceremony and highlight a few of the photos and videos collected throughout the hunt to create a full circle experience with endless laughs from the whole team.
No matter the size of your group, there are plenty of ways to be sure everyone stays engaged by creating effective small group activities that emplore everyone to use their unique skills that aid the entire group’s success. Hint: everyone loves prizes. From team swag to a simple coffee shop gift card, small prizes are a great way to get your team excited by rewarding them with an awards ceremony to recognize the top teams of the day. This provides great bragging rights for the winning team to bring back to the office which only builds anticipation for next year’s rematch!
When hosting structured team building activities, it is extremely productive to think about which departments need to enhance their communication or problem solving skills, and think about pairing them up for challenges. In the past, we’ve ran lots of fun rounds of Team Olympics and Scavenger Hunts and have found great success when pairing members from different departments to work together.
For instance, pairing the sales team and technology department together on a challenge boosts the understanding between the departments and positively affects the communication on deliverables from the architecture of the technology to the client facing product. We can’t recommend switching your employees daily circle up enough. The magic happens when the collaboration between departments is at the forefront of your challenges!
Structured Team Building activities such as Team Olympics and Scavenger Hunts aren’t the only piece to the puzzle. Location based activities allow your team to dive deep into your destination and truly experience what your area has to offer from sunrise to sunset.
When it comes to local activities, we love to consult with area experts such as your venue concierge to find out “what not to miss” in the area to fill in your day’s itinerary for an action packed adventure. To connect everyone together in the mornings, we suggest activities such as a morning hike, yoga, or meditation session to relax and refresh the team for the day. Whenever possible, we always focus our search on local vendors to provide the most genuine experience that really speaks to the location. Often times, there are local guides that have worked with your venue before, and provide a knowledgeable, smooth start to everyone’s day.
As the day continues, we love to keep our teams on the move with exciting activities such as ropes courses, kayaking adventure down the Colorado River, or a challenging hike along the California Coast that gets everyone moving, trusting, and communicating with each other in a very organic way. There’s something impactful to be said about the experience of leaning on one another during an activity that requires a little bit of bravery. When you get people out of their comfort zones, bonds are built through this awesome shared experience!
After an afternoon full of adrenaline, solidify the new team bonds through a celebratory happy hour that keeps people engaging with one another over a relaxing cocktail. Think about what is happening in your work sphere at the moment and customize your hors d'oeuvres menu to feature a favorite of each department leader, or theme a drink after one of your company’s major clients or projects for extra engagement.
As you segment later into the night and people loosen up a bit, we love to host a fun round of trivia, start a game night, or turn up the karaoke for a night full of laughs and great memories. We’ve organized fun trivia questions based on individual groups’ industries, company branded game nights, and branded karaoke and have found that the more you can tailor to your team, the more special, customized, and genuine the experience will be for all of your guests.
To wrap things up, our team always loves to host a bonfire at our retreats to chat about the weekend’s highlights around the cozy fire with s’mores and delicious late night snacks served to replenish after a few drinks throughout the evening. There’s nothing better than kicking back with your team in a relaxed environment to reminisce on the best parts of the weekend and solidify new bonds within your team that will span past the duration of the retreat!
In order to really knock it out of the park with your team specifically, we typically send out a customized survey to gauge interest in each activity after budgeting for the venue and meals. Often times with larger, diverse groups there will be varied responses. In this case, it is very appropriate to break the group up into smaller teams to venture out to their respective activities for the morning and choose activities such as Team Olympics for the entire group to circle up with later in the afternoon. By initiating a survey, you are able to take a closer look and provide an itinerary that speaks to the interests of your team and allows them to feel a part of the process of executing your company’s unforgettable team retreat!