The Sandstone Team Building Blog

I was recently at Chester Zoo in the Spirit of the Jaguar Enclosure.  The enclosure is designed for the Jaguar’s, as such you don’t always get to see them.  But you will see the Leafcutter Ants which have their own enclosure within the wider Jaguar house.  I always find it fascinating to watch these animals as you see them carrying segments of leaves along the branch into their nest.  After my latest visit I decided to see what I could find out about these ants.

Chester Zoo have a page dedicate to the Leafcutter Ants or Acromyrmex octospinosus if you use their Latin name, which provides an overview of the ants.  But I wanted to look deeper, I wanted to know more about their hierarchy and how they work together.  As there appears to be too much structure to what they are all doing for it to be random individuals.  It is a team of ants working together for the common good.

I did some research and found this article on Wikipedia which I found very informative!  Not only did I find out there are 41 species of Leafcutter Ants but it helped me understand their structure.  Leafcutter Ants broadly have 4 castes (teams) who each focus on different areas and their key strengths for the common good of the colony.  They have the Minims, the Minors, the Mediae and the Majors.  Each of these different castes have different strengths.  The Minims tend to the growing brood or care for the fungus gardens.  The Minors are the first line of defense and continuously patrol the surrounding terrain and vigorously attack any enemies that threaten the foraging lines.  The Mediae are the generalised foragers, who cut leaves and bring the leaf fragments back to the nest (the ones who enthrall visitors at Chester Zoo).  And the Majors act as soldiers, defending the nest from intruders.

Each of these 4 castes have different skills sets and body structures which make them superb at their individual roles.  However, the colony needs all of them to survive and indeed thrive.  Likewise if the Minims and the Majors swapped roles the colony would suffer as these are roles neither of them are suited to.  The colony has grown and adapted to their strengths and know what each caste can offer them.

What an excellent example of using different skills sets and strengths within a team to maximise their ability to work together.  We could all learn a thing or two from these Leafcutter Ants.

Nikki

I have been looking through all of our past blog entries, of which there are a few!  And I realised that we don’t actually have a blog which defines the phrase ‘team building‘.  So any guesses what this entry will be about?

According to my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1997 the definition of the word ‘team’ is “a set of players; a set of people or animals working together”.  The definition of the word ‘building’ from the same dictionary is a “house or similar structure”.

So if you put the two together you can take the meaning to be a set of people working together within a structure.  And to be honest that isn’t a bad definition.  Team building as we deliver it, is a group of people who work together taking part in one of our structured activities to help deliver their desired outcomes, whether it is a more learning-focused activity or a more light-hearted fun activity.

And as a last thought the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘teamwork’ as “organised cooperation”.  I think I would have to agree with them there.

Nikki

I bought a new tent the other day – a Vango Icarus 500.  This is the first tent I’ve bought it some years.  In fact it’s been quite some years since I’ve even been camping!  We used to go a lot when my children were younger.  And that was a big frame tent!  It was also heavy, cumbersome and took a fair bit of time to put up using the poles that we had.   I knew since I’d last bought a tent that the materials and designs have changed, with the aim of making life easier.  The tents become easier to put up and lighter to move around.

And why is this?  Well tents have changed with the times.  As new fabrics and materials that have been developed that work with tents, they have been redesigned to make the experience better for the end user – us.

And well that’s true with so many things.  Taking our unique team building activities for example, we utilise modern technology hand in hand with our facilitation team to help our events run smoothly.   This combination allows our clients to have a fabulous experience, whichever team building option they have chosen.

Maybe the idea of changing with the times isn’t a radical idea these days, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing to do!

Oh … and if you can please keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain too much on us when we eventually go camping that would be great!

Barbara

11:00AM, late July, central London.  The Hilton Hotel at Paddington Station to be precise.  Who would have thought that, just 2 hours later, this group of 30 people would have had – shall we say – interesting conversations with both Hotel Security folk and their Network Rail equivalents?  Certainly not the group members themselves at the start…

Vision Idol does that.  It gets people so focused, so involved, so enjoying themselves that little things like dressing up as a dominatrix – complete with whip – and flogging an (albeit rubber) chicken to (albeit thespian) death are all part of the activity.  Anyway, I guess that hotel security needed reassurance that the chicken wasn’t recently last seen in their kitchen (or, worse still, shortly to make its way into it!) and that the whip would not be used on other guests.  Then they were happy enough.  Network Rail were probably just curious to know why the pilot of Thunderbird 1 of International Rescue fame was carrying a Dalek on the up escalator.  Whether their concern was that International Rescue felt the need to visit their station or that a Dalek was in attendance was unclear.  Still, they seemed happy enough at the end.  As were plenty of open-mouthed passengers on the down escalator!

If none of that makes sense, you’ve clearly never attended – and indeed never seen any photos from -  a Vision Idol event.  Tremendous fun is always had by all.  Equally importantly, the photographic evidence is always a great reminder of the conference theme for the day and the team development gained.

A great event populated by fantastic people from a new client.  I think even the chicken enjoyed it.

Alan