Rent a Cabin, Share a Meal, Tell a Story...Great Team Building

A friend of mine (@PossibliTEAMS) owns a corporate team building and innovative workplace training company and in the past has helped our organization (Blueprint Education) with innovative training sessions to pull our team closer together.  In a recent leadership retreat, we naturally looked for ideas to energize our group and bring innovative approaches to education.  We created team building activities into the agenda which broke the ice and allowed us to gain trust with each other.  It is important to note one of three goals for our retreat was a closer, more effective team.  We built this goal on the foundation of Patrick Lencioni book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable where we focused on the Five Functions of a Team (Trust – Conflict – Commitment – Accountability – Results).  It is worth mentioning we are furtherest from a dysfunctional team and applied the book as a means for us not to fall into this trap.  We accomplished the “closer, more effective team” by renting a cabin for a few days and preparing all meals.  This literally brought us closer together and built a solid foundation around trust.  The most effective team building event happened organically.  Late one evening, after dinner we shared defining moments in our lives and thought what a great book this would make.  Each person (eleven of us) shared a moment in their life and mentally created a new chapter.  It was a night full of belly laughing and insightful snapshots into our lives.  We don’t think the book will ever get published since we all agreed that what was shared at the table stayed at the table.  I will tell you, it would make for a great book and perhaps an even better movie.