I recently had the pleasure of working with Airbus Americas, and designed a custom team building program to build teamwork, trust, and communication within the group. Building this type of program is my favorite part of what I do as a professional. Blending the fun of the initiatives, while creating a situation that can be translated back to the workplace is a challenge I thrive on. Each team takes on a new approach, and has different needs. Airbus had enough people to split up into three teams, and they all had different solutions and strategies for each challenge we presented them with. Starting with simple challenges, and then growing into more complex activities allowed the teams to develop their own process, norms, and communication style within the team.
Working with the team leadership to identify the goals of the experience I selected specific initiatives to achieve the outcomes they desired. This format also allows me to know what to look for and take note of so that when we have our debrief discussion I can identify how the initiative related to the goals, and most importantly allow the teams to make the connections between the initiative and the workplace. After the final challenge, which strings several small initiatives together in a short amount of time, we collectively discussed how to move forward from the experience. The teams identified that leadership, communication, strategy, attitude, and trust were all factors that lead to success during the experience. On the opposite side distractions, lack of skills assessments, not listening, and rushing the process all lead to failure at some point. Overall the teams decided that as they returned to their jobs they would keep an open mind, stay focused, identify their skill-sets, optimize communication,and don’t let the everyday rush impact the team. Clearly we created a fun environment to drive real outcomes that can now be relayed far beyond the experience.
