Why Your Team Building Event Should Be More Like a Roller Coaster Ride

I bet you remember almost every roller coaster ride you ever took. Why? You were TOTALLY engaged, and the experience played on a wide range of your emotions. Most types of team building event fail to engage people’s thoughts and emotions.

Think about the anticipation you felt when you first strolled through the amusement park gates. Then, remember how apprehensive you became when the attendant strapped you into the car. As the chain ratcheted up that first long climb, it’s probably safe to say you were a little stressed out. When the chair finally crested to the top of the climb and started to drop, your heart was pumping. Nonetheless, you stayed focused-even through the side-slamming hairpin turns. As the ride slowed, you began to relax. When it was over, you were slapping each other on the back, exhilarated at what you accomplished. The rest of the day was a piece of cake.

A truly excellent team building event should be like that too; more like a roller coaster ride than a visit to the bowling alley. But instead of sharing the experience with your friends, or kids, you’re sharing it with your co-workers. The exhilaration and focus of the experience not only makes it memorable, but it creates a much stronger shared bond among teammates.

To be completely honest, our Team Building with Taste events are not exactly as scintillating as a roller coaster ride. Yet, in follow-up interviews, participants often describe a sequence of emotions as shown in the graph below:

Here’s what happens at one of our typical team building events:

Participants walk into our facility having heard that they are doing some kind of corporate cooking event like some of the shows they see on TV. “That’s cool. Sounds like fun.” Soon, we give them the ground rules of the cooking contest. There’s a deadline. There’s judges. They have to eat what they cook. They have to make a good looking judges plate. Some can’t cook a lick. Others have bragged about how good they are.  “Yikes, there’s pressure and I can’t hide. This isn’t the usual corporate outing. “

Now we start the clock. They get focused. Heads are down. Everyone is competitive. One eye is on the next prep table. A few curve balls are thrown in to the mix. They deal with it. Our chefs our helping, but not cooking it for them. Twenty minutes left to go. “This stuff is tasting pretty good.” Ten minutes left to go. “Get it on the plate.” 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 5, 3, 2, 1.  “Wow! Did I do that, with Jeannette and that knucklehead Bob, from Charlotte? You know, he’s not so bad. Where’s my smartphone. Let’s get a picture of our team.”

Don’t be fooled by the amount of fun in this cooking competition. This team building event supplies plenty of lessons that carry over to your teamwork in  the workplace. The pressure of completing your task, complete with emotional ups and downs helps make those lessons easy to remember.

Team Building with Taste: It’s not quite a roller coaster ride, but it has its emotional peaks and valleys. And, when it’s over, we hear quite a few squeals of delight!