The Sandstone Team Building Blog

Not many people can claim on their CV bar flair trainer, gunslinger, circus skills performer, bubble specialist and caterpillar track supervisor.  I’m one.  I suspect every other person able to claim that particularly unusual combination of job skills works here too.  I’m more proud, though, that I can also write on my CV ‘team player’.  Our team activities appeal to our clients because they are all inclusive – by which we mean that there is something for everyone within them.  Nobody sits on the sidelines, nobody ‘opts out’.  For us, effective teams are those that harness the different strengths that their members have.  You don’t get that if one or more team members aren’t committed to the cause, whatever that cause is.

I’m convinced that means that each and every event team that we send out is an effective one.  We certainly have considerable differences in terms of our skill sets and approaches, if not our attitudes – which are all geared to giving every client the best team building session they have ever experienced.  My strengths are hands-on practical ones, as you might have gathered from my opening sentence.  I’d like to think I’m good with people as well – no, this is no time for modesty, I am good with people!  But I can’t spell – yes, I had help with this blog entry – and my adding up isn’t so hot either.  Academia pretty well passed me by at arm’s length, if the truth be told.  And occasionally the length in question was a cane rather than an arm, but this is not the time or the place to develop that memory further!

But I don’t need to be good at matters cerebral.  We have others here for stuff like that who are brilliant at it.  Most importantly, we’ve developed processes here over the years – and we’re continuing to develop them for that matter – that help us to combine our different strengths to make us an efficient and effective team from the moment a client first contacts us to the time they are thanking us for a great job well done.

As we so often help clients understand, great teams don’t just happen.  Putting individuals together and calling them a team isn’t enough, by some distance.  You have to work on how they collaborate to make them deliver day in, day out something that is greater than the sum of their parts.  I’m proud that our processes do that for us and that our events not only enable every participant to have a good time and leave with big smiles on their faces but also help teams develop their own processes and, thereby, deliver increased team effectiveness.

And in case you were wondering, I’m also proud to have such a unique CV.  Especially the bubble specialist bit.

Steve