The Sandstone Team Building Blog

We sometimes get teams who are looking to arrange a team building activity because, for some reason, they are not gelling as a team.  The team manager, or leader, has identified the different skill sets and strengths that they want within their team and selected people accordingly.  For for some reason they are just not working.  Just because people have the right talents does not make them a team – instead they need to be taught and shown how to become a team.  And this is where our team building events come in.

In a way, it is like when an artist is trying to create a masterpiece.  Having the right idea and the right paints does not mean they will create a masterpiece.  Instead, they need to try different combinations of the paint to find out what works well together and what is the best way to achieve their desired goal.  They also need some talent!

For our teams at work, the managers need to help guide them to understand how they complement one another and how they can work together.  And team building activities are a superb way of helping them achieve this.

Barbara

No individual is exactly the same as another.  We are all different.  As a result we all like doing the same things, but perhaps in different ways or with different twists.  As an illustration let’s use coffee and tea.  There are lots of different brands with different flavours and different style coffees and teas.  Not everyone likes all of them, instead, different people have their own preference.  Then, you can bring in the whole argument about whether to include, or not, milk and sugar.  There is no right or wrong way – it is just different people’s way of enjoying the same basic drink.

If there can be this much variety and difference when it comes to drinking coffee and tea, surely there can be this much variety when it comes to other areas, such as team building. Everyone enjoys team building activities.  But, not everyone enjoys doing exactly the same thing, and certainly not in the same way.  Again this is because we are all different.  So to ensure you select a team building activity that everyone can get involved in, you need to ensure you can offer them variety – like with their coffee and tea.

For us at Sandstone, we like to have an activity which has a main theme, then we integrate lots of different style tasks and challenges for people to have a go at.  We never force anyone to do anything they don’t want to, rather we let them choose the style things that appeal to them.  That way, everyone is able to get the most out of their team building experience.  And our experience tells us most people will have a go at just about anything we offer them!

Nikki

Have you ever accepted something just because it is the norm and it always happens?  Take leap years for instance.  Now, I am sure at some point during school it was explained to me why every four years we have a leap year and February 29th is included within the calendars.  But in all honesty if I was taught it – I forgot it!

I was looking through my work calendar and realised this year – 2012 – is a leap year.  It made me realise I either didn’t know, or could no longer remember, why we have leap years every four years.  So I asked someone and they explained it to me.  All these years of not knowing and a simple question meant I now knew the answer.

I realised this is something that we often see on our team building events.  People either forget to ask a question, or don’t want to ask a question for fear of how they will look to their colleagues, and so sit in the dark on subjects they really shouldn’t be.  We always emphasis the importance of asking questions and making sure you fully understand something.  After all if you don’t understand something at work, how can you be working to your maximum effectiveness?  It’s like my Dad once told me: there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

Jenny

I am delighted to be given the honour of writing 2011s team building event of the year blog.  As always, it is a very difficult decision for us to make this choice, and 2011 was no different.  We have delivered some absolutely fantastic events for amazing clients.  We have gone through our team building event of the month blogs and came to an agreement with who would win this prestigious title for 2011.

For the monthly entries the following activities were chosen as team building events of the month: Attributes, First Contact, Memory Lane, MiniTreasure, VirtuWall, Vision Idol and Wild West.

After much discussion, the top three events in reverse order are…

3rd: The joint MiniTreasure and Vision Idol event in May at Moddershall Oaks

2nd: The Memory Lane event in December at the Reebok Stadium

1st: The VirtuWall event in November which was global!

Congratulations and thank you to all of our clients for giving us some amazing events during 2011!

Paul

As we enter the brand new year that is 2012, our team at Sandstone, the team building specialist’s, wishes you a very happy and prosperous 2012.  We are excited and looking forward to renewing friendships with regular clients and making brand new ones with people we have yet to meet. Happy New Year everyone!

Steve