Team building is one of the most important investments you can make for your team and when executed correctly, can have long lasting positive effects on your employee’s productivity, performance and general happiness at work. So, how do you ensure that your next team building event is a success?

Set Clear Goals

One of the first questions you should be asking is WHY are we holding this event. Do you want to get everyone energised and excited about the year ahead? Do you have specific focus areas such as wanting your group to work on communication & collaboration? Or you may simply be wanting to get your employees together for a bit of mingling, general ‘team building’ & fun. Whatever the reason, it’s important that the outcome you’re wanting to achieve becomes the focus of the activity. Once you’ve narrowed down what your desired outcomes are, talk to us about which team building programs would be best or how we can tailor an activity to suit.

Know Your Participants

Just as team building can fall short when the goals & outcomes are not in alignment, similar issues come up if your specific participants are not taken into account. Puzzle-solving might be fun for brainy participants but could bore those who prefer to be more active. On the other hand, athletic activities may delight some but send others into a panic. This requires looking at questions such as the level of physicality attendees would be comfortable with, and what their roles are within the organisation. Generally, unless otherwise instructed by you, our activities are designed to suit participants from a wide range of demographic i.e. ages, fitness levels & interests. This way, everyone in your team feels comfortable contributing and no one feels disengaged or excluded.

Don’t Embarrass Your Employees

Leading on from knowing your participants, the last thing a company should want to do is push participants so far outside of their comfort zone that they feel alienated or even embarrassed. There are many horror stories out there about team building that have given it a bad rap. A few of our favourite ‘team building fails’ include:

The Trust Fall

Arguably the most infamous team building exercise in the history of team building! An activity whereby a person closes their eyes, crosses their arms, and blindly falls backwards into the arms of a colleague. An exercise that on the surface generates warm & fuzzy feelings of building support & trust between co-workers but in reality, involves a lot of unwanted touching, invasion of personal space & possible injury when your colleagues fail to catch you.

Paintball

It’s hard to perceive how shooting other members of your team with hard pellets covered in paint could be deemed as remotely related to ‘team building’. If you want to create a sense of team camaraderie, any activity that insights violence towards others is not the way to do so & will have the absolute opposite effect.

Face Your Fears – Ropes Course

For an active, outdoorsy person with no fear of heights, a ropes course may sound like a great idea for a team event. Once again, a successful team event is all about knowing your participants. Just because you might be into something doesn’t mean that everyone in your team will feel comfortable. We’ve heard many horror stories about employees paralysed by fear on a ropes course and either refusing to participate in the challenge at all OR giving it their best with the result being plenty of tears & embarrassment.

Our tips:

• Don’t choose activities that might violate people’s dignity, privacy, or personal space.
• Something you might enjoy with your buddies on the weekend isn’t always appropriate for the workplace.
• The purpose of team building is for everyone to feel comfortable to contribute & included – not the opposite!

Incorporate a Debrief

A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review showed that teams who host even an unstructured debrief have a 22% higher chance of succeeding than a team that didn’t do one. So, we can see that even a quick, informal debrief can have such a greatly positive impact on the way we do work. To learn more about how to incorporate a debrief into your next activity, check out our blog post, Team Building Activity Debrief.

With heritage towns amid rolling green hills and unspoilt bush and located a short 90-minute drive from Sydney, the Southern Highlands is a conference offsite destination your delegates won’t soon forget. And due to the recent bush fires, the Southern Highlands needs your help now more than ever – and you can do this by simply booking your next conference offsite in the Southern Highlands region.

“Come visit with us, stay with us and spend with us. Enjoy everything our beautiful region has to offer including our wonderful places to stay, restaurants, bars, cafes, shops, cellar doors and local produce to take home.”
– Visit Southern Highlands talking about their ‘Share the Love’ bushfire recovery campaign.

Similarly, you may have already heard of the ‘Empty Esky’ movement. Empty Esky is a national movement of foodies and adventurers on a mission to support small businesses affected by the Australian fires. The concept is simple, they are encouraging everyone to grab an empty esky, embark on a road trip to a fire-affected town (when it’s safe to do so) and to stock up with produce and wares purchased from local traders. Check out their website to peruse the many small businesses that have registered as being affected by the fires.

The first thing you will need to organise for your conference offsite is of course your venue. Check out the venues listed on our website under South Coast & Southern Highlands to get you started, then chat to us if you’d like to discuss our venue recommendations further. We’ve then put together a list of our top team building ideas for the Southern Highlands to help assist with your organising. We have even included our bespoke Southern Highlands Explorer which sees teams venture around the local area visiting wineries & local producers all the while participating in a team activity – so make sure you pack your empty eskies!

Southern Highlands Explorer

The Southern Highlands is a breathtaking plateau of scenic countryside littered with remarkable things to do, see and experience. For corporate groups to fully explore this area Pinnacle Team Events can tailor a program to suit your requirements.

The Southern Highlands Explorer event would transport teams of delegates to various locations where they undertake challenges that see them interacting with the best the Highlands has to offer.

Experiences include: The Bradman Museum, The Illawarra Fly Walk, Southern Highlands Wines, Red Cow Farm, Montrose Berry Picking, Farm Club Café and much more.

This event usually starts at the conference venue and finishes either at an off-site dinner location or back at the conference venue. Delegates can be transported in mini buses, coaches or company cars. The whole event is tailored to suit your delegates, time frame, location and desired experiences.

Wine Olympics

Rather than running, jumping and swimming your way to victory, teams will tackle a very different series of events – an array of winery related activities that will guarantee a good time.

This activity is also great in conjunction with our very popular Grape to Glass wine blending activity – where delegates design a label and blend your very own company wine that will be bottled and delivered to you post event.

Example Challenges:

• Grape Stomping – Teams race against each other to stomp enough grapes to fill a wine bottle.
• Cork Toss – Each team receives a box of corks which they must throw into a barrel with the aim of outscoring opponents.
• Waiter Relay – Teams race against each other whilst carrying a tray of wine glasses
• Grape Catapults – Teams fire bunches of grapes via replicated catapults towards a landing zone where strategically positioned team members await ready to catch

Amazing Race

The Amazing Race On Site is an action packed adventure where teams navigate their way around the conference resort undertaking team based challenges. Speed is not always the deciding factor with an emphasis on teamwork, planning, problem-solving and of course having fun.

Teams will be issued with a map of the resort and cryptic clues to various locations hidden around the grounds. Awaiting the groups at each location are team-based activities known as “roadblocks” that will be tailored to suit your outcomes and the venue.

All teams converge at the finale location at the same time for a final all-in team challenge before prizes are awarded to the victors!

Laser Clay Pigeon Shooting

Experience the thrill and excitement of shooting clay pigeons as they fly through the air in this safe and entertaining team activity.

This dynamic and interactive event uses authentic 12-gauge shotguns that have been converted to fire harmless laser beams. Clays with Omni-directional tape are fired from the launcher – when the shooter hits their target the beam is reflected back to the gun and registers a hit on the electronic scoreboard.

This activity is very popular and loads of fun for males and females of all ages, fitness levels and ability. Usually this event will be structured with a team’s competition for the first hour followed by an individual shootout at the end.

The system is great for groups up to 40 people. If you have a larger group, we suggest having 2 sets or pairing this event with Archery to eliminate down time where participants are not actively involved.

Escape

Can your team escape? This exciting Escape the Room challenge is the ultimate team building event that will test the sharpest minds. Each team is “locked” in a room with a set time frame in which to escape before the world as we know it ceases to exist. Teams must follow the clues, solve the puzzles and unlock the secrets to ESCAPE!

For teams to be successful they must communicate, think outside the box, work together, admit to their mistakes and believe they can succeed. All this under extreme time pressure as each team has only 90 minutes to uncover the 8-digit code that will ultimately allow them to escape the room.

This event can be tailored to suit any size group by adding more rooms for more teams. We recommend each team is between 8 – 12 people with each team requiring 1 room.

Rooms can be conference rooms, hotel rooms, offices, boardrooms etc. Pinnacle requires 30 minutes in each room prior to the event to set up.

Murder Mystery Night

A murder mystery is a fun and extremely silly game of ‘whodunit’ hosted by the MURDER CO team. The aim of the game is very simple; solve a murder before the guilty party strikes again. What makes this activity truly special is that your guests play the chief murder suspects.

Everyone who attends a murder mystery plays a part in the investigation. Once we have some basic details about your event, we will send out character sheets for you to distribute to your guests. Each character sheet contains clear and simple instructions about the murder mystery and how to play.

Trivia Night

This isn’t your average pub trivia. Pinnacle is ingenious at tailoring this interactive trivia challenge to any group. It will prove to be unlike any other trivia night you have ever attended. The games we play throughout the night are hysterical and we can guarantee that your delegates will be laughing from start to finish.

Between each round of questions, the tables volunteer delegates to participate in crazy challenge activities (which makes the evening very interactive). Music trivia, movie, and TV sound tracks are on the menu as well as IQ/Brainteasers.

We will fit in with the agenda of the evening and usually fill the space between the entree and the main, the main and the dessert. At the completion of the event the results are tallied up and prizes are presented to the winning team.

We are already 3 weeks into the New Year, have you already broken all of your New Year’s resolutions? Or failed to even set any? If you have, you are part of the majority. Studies show that the rate for failing New Year’s resolutions is around 80%.

The most common New Year’s resolutions are focused more on personal goals such as be healthier & exercise more, or be nicer to people or give more to charity. But what about at work? Setting goals for the year is the hallmark of good business everywhere!

Step One: Reflect

It might seem obvious, but many teams forget to take the time to review the year that was. Psychotherapist Esther Perel states that the New Year is a great time to be forward-thinking about who you want to be; but it’s also a great time to look back at what you’re ready to let go of. Put simply, the best way to set goals for the year ahead is to go back & reflect on the previous year i.e. what worked well & what wasn’t so successful.

If you’re unsure where to start, performing a simple SWOT analysis of your business will give you plenty of information to get going. We’ve included a template from Wordstream as a guideline below, however there’s an abundance of information online about performing a SWOT analysis:

Step Two: Identify Your Goal & Purpose

According to the famous Tony Robbins, there are two key questions that you need to ask yourself for compelling goal planning: identify your goals & identify your purpose.

1. Identify Your Goals: What do you really want? What is the exact objective you desire? A promotion at work? To take up daily meditation? In order to set achievable goals, you need to have a clear outcome in mind.
2. Identify your purpose: Why do you want to achieve this goal? What will it bring you? Will that promotion give you the financial freedom you desire? In order to keep your goals, you need to ask the right questions and seek real change in your life. If you know what you’re moving toward, you’ll find ways to make it happen by learning how to set goals.

Step Three: Set SMART Goals

You may have already heard of SMART goal setting as it is so widely used as a successful guideline for goal setting. See below:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time Bound

Set Specific Goals

Your goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalized goals are unhelpful because they don’t provide sufficient direction.

Set Measurable Goals

Include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is simply defined as “To reduce expenses” how will you know when you have been successful? In one month’s time if you have a 1 percent reduction or in two years’ time when you have a 10 percent reduction? Without a way to measure your success you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you have actually achieved something.

Set Attainable Goals

Make sure that it’s possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving, you will only demoralise yourself and erode your confidence.

Set Relevant Goals

Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you’ll develop the focus you need to get ahead and do what you want. Set widely scattered and inconsistent goals, and you’ll fritter your time – and your life – away.

Set Time-Bound Goals

Your goals must have a deadline. Again, this means that you know when you can celebrate success. When you are working on a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement will come that much quicker.

SMART guideline via MindTools

Happy New Year and Good Luck!

Since October last year we have been inundated with enquiries from clients wanting to find out how they can incorporate a charity-style team activity into their upcoming conference – primarily with the desire to give back to those affected by the bushfire crisis.

We have spoken previously on our blog about what Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) means and the importance both employees and customers place on working for and spending their money with businesses that prioritise CSR. Put simply, CSR refers to a company’s efforts to improve society in some way. This doesn’t always mean a donation to charity; CSR can relate to any kind of improvement effort such as creating a more sustainable workplace.

There has always been a high demand for team activities that incorporate CSR however as mentioned above, with the prevalence of the current bushfire crisis we have found more and more companies are wanting to include this in their conference as part of their organised team activity.

Bushfire Relief

The NSW Office of Emergency Management has recently advised that monetary donations are the most useful & valuable way to help those affected by the bushfire crisis. The RFS has also requested that people don’t donate any items such as food or water to local brigades as they have everything they need at this point in time.

“The best way is to donate money. This allows people to buy the things they need, and it supports local businesses which have also been impacted. We know many people want to donate physical items such as food and clothing but these take up much needed community space.”
NSW RFS

The NSW Office of Emergency Management has encouraged people to only donate to reputable charities, as currently there are some scams involving people doorknocking or calling via phone and claiming to be or represent people who have lost their homes in the bushfires.

If your company is looking to make a donation, here is a short list of some registered charities below:

• NSW RFS
• The Salvation Army
• The Red Cross
• WIRES
• Koala Hospital Port Macquarie
• RSPCA
• St Vincent de Paul Society

CSR Team Building Events

Based on the above comments, our activity recommendations for groups wanting to give to those affected by the bushfires are those activities where a monetary donation is made by the group to a charity representative at the conclusion of the activity. The two CSR activities that suit this format is the Race to Make a Difference & the Challenge for Charity.

The Race to Make a Difference

The Race to Make a Difference is a fast paced, action packed CSR event that culminates in the team giving back to a charity organisation. The goal for the participants is to be the team that raises the most dollars for charity.

The challenges are designed to be fun, hands on and require the team to think strategically and work together to achieve success. Teams will be issued $$$ based on their performance at each challenge site.

Ultimately the teams converge on the final location where the winners are announced and the donation to charity formalised.

How to include the Charity? We have two suggested formats:

• Teams choose a charity that appeals to them to compete on behalf of. The winning team get to donate a cheque from your company to their nominated charity. i.e. First = $1000, 2nd = $500, 3rd = $250.
• The company chooses the charity and all teams are competing to see what team can earn the most for that charity. Ultimately the winning team would present a cheque onto a representative of that company who is present at the finale of the event.

Example Road Block Challenges:

Number Triangle – Nine numbered tiles are laid out in a triangle shape. The team moves the tiles so that the addition of the numbers is equal on each side.

Shape Shifter – Using memory and instinct teams must recreate a series of original shapes.

Catapults – Teams fire tennis balls via replicated catapults towards a landing zone where strategically positioned team members await ready to catch.

Pyramids – Teams are racing to rebuild a pyramid that can only be structured from bottom to top.

Duration: 2 – 3 hours

Location: Outdoors, all areas around a resort or city/urban areas

Challenge for Charity

Challenge for Charity is a fun, high energy fundraising event where teams compete to raise the most for their chosen charity. This is an engaging way to make a Corporate Donation and involve your team in the process.

Each table becomes a team and is issued with a Charity for Challenge activity booklet. There are 45 challenges within the booklet, 15 easy, 15 medium and 15 hard. Teams work frantically to complete each page of the booklet, ripping them out and handing in to the Pinnacle staff as soon as possible. A correct page will see the delegates earn money for the charity e.g.

Easy = $2
Medium = $5
Hard = $10

At the conclusion of the activity we will introduce the charity representative to say a few words of gratitude and announce the total amount that has been donated on behalf of your client. The amounts can be adjusted to fit with your donation budget. Once the desired donation amount has been decided the challenge amounts will be worked back accordingly.

Example Challenges:

Team Mascots– Strike fear into your opponents with your team mascot to start the game!

Origami my Team– Can you follow the steps towards Origami master status?

Number Puzzle- Does your team have the smarts to crack the code?

Hidden Letter– Search high and low in your conference room for the letters and you shall find the ANSWER!

Duration: 45 mins – 2 hours

Location: Indoors with 1 x table per team

Tailor Your Own!

As always, we are happy to tailor an activity to suit your specific requirements. Please contact us to find out more information & discuss your upcoming event!

Every year it is said that the third Monday of January is the gloomiest day of the year – also known as Blue Monday. As the theory goes, by the 20^th January 2020 all the joy from Christmas will have faded & all we are left with is a dilapidated bank account, a bulge around our waists & we’ll be riddled with guilt that our New Year’s resolutions to be healthier, fitter & wiser have fallen by the wayside.

But is Blue Monday really the saddest day of the year or is the label just a misguided PR stunt – we think so!

The concept was originally coined in 2004 by psychologist Cliff Arnall.

He came up with a “formula” for the January blues after he was asked to do so by travel firm Sky Travel, who then used the phrase in a press release to promote their winter deals.

It took into account a number of factors likely to contribute to low mood and read as follows:

W = weather

D = debt

d = monthly salary

T = time since Christmas

Q = time since failing our new year’s resolutions

M = low motivational levels

Na = the feeling of a need to take action

Arnall has since confessed that the formula is essentially pseudoscience and has urged people to “refute the whole notion” of Blue Monday.

Whether Blue Monday is a real phenomenon or not, the month of January is a great time to get the team motivated and bring everyone together to kick start the new year. Strangely enough, we are almost booked out for events on Monday 20 January 2020 & are filling up fast the remainder of that week!

If you’re stuck for ideas, check out our previous blog post Team Building Ideas to Kick Off the New Year or give us a call.