From The Publishers of Meetings411

July 2002

Team Building

Extreme team endeavors provide exhilarating outcomes

by Scott Dallas

When it comes to turning a work team into a well-oiled machine, there can never be too much grease.      In an effort to solidify bonds and hone the competitive edge, teams are increasingly seeking more exhilarating venues to shore up their crews. Not satisfied with role-playing in the boardroom or yet another excruciating PowerPoint presentation, teams are going extreme.
From cattle drives to ice climbing to adventure racing, groups are looking to the great outdoors as a backdrop to nurture their collaborative and competitive natures. The trend mirrors a larger cultural affinity toward extreme sports and heightened experience. Bolstered by the popularity of reality television shows such as Survivor and the Eco-Challenge races, thrill seeking is being pushed from the fringe and into the workplace.

City Slickin'
John Logan started Georgetown, Texas-based Adventure Alliance three years ago, and offers adventures suited to all levels of thrill-seeker. A former military man, many of his employees also have either military or Special Forces backgrounds.
"We had an adventure background, and continued what we like to do," Logan says.
While Adventure Alliance offers groups everything from flying MIG-29s over Moscow to rounding up Western Diamondback rattlesnakes and conducting Special Ops-styled missions armed with paintball guns, he says most companies still opt for the traditional ropes course, sailing trips or cattle drive.
If you want to teach your team the lessons of unpredictability, the cattle drive might be the best option. Starting off on horseback in a corral, the gates are opened and the cattle are turned loose.
"Everything goes to hell right there," he says, adding that horses and cattle always have minds of their own.
The group is divided into a lead team, a trail team and two flank teams. The exercise comes together when "groups find out how to work together."
"The cattle drive is continually fluid, and there is a constant changing of responsibility," Logan says. "Things can fall apart quickly. It's fun, but we also have a job to do."
When the fun stops, the team-building aspect of the outing is more visible.
"People have to step up to the plate and get to work," he says. "They usually handle it very well. It is a great equalizer."
Other activities offered by Adventure Alliance, such as caving, aren't for a typical group. Given the 140-foot repel, squeezing into tight spaces and finally a two-mile underground swim, "you can get yourself into a bind. You have to make sure everyone knows what you're getting into," Logan says.

Blending the Message Steven R. Gustafson, MS, president and CEO of Experience Based Learning, says that when he started the Rockford, Ill.-based company in 1995, "We found clients were getting tired of the 'rah-rah' programs. The clients wanted to do something more extreme." Gustafson says his clients don't want to do a team-building activity unless there's a value added to the organization. They want something applicable. A sales team, for example, is out to do something competitive and high-impact. "If you can't relate it to their dog-eat-dog world, you bore them," he says. His events are geared toward a deliberate plan of action. He asks clients what they want to see today and in six months. "We plan events around desired outcomes," Gustafson says. He adds that the scope of his events must be adjusted and modified constantly as the nation's cultural appetite moves into extreme territory. Things become commercialized, he says, using bungee jumping as an example. "It went from rarity to commonplace. Now you can go do that at the county fair," he quips. Gustafson recalls a group of 50 bank vendors going on a three-day strategic planning conference in Roanoke, Va., and wanted an activity to supplement it. After looking at the group's demographic—75 percent male, 25 percent female, with an age range from 30 to the mid-40s—he decided to do an exercise that focused on their core values. After flying out to look for possible sites, he decided on Victory Stadium. There he set up a rope bridge stretching across the width of the stadium, 650 feet wide and 100 feet in the air. The group was divided into two teams and individuals slid blindfolded from one side into the middle, with one team managing rope safety while the other positioned their blindfolded co-worker and pulled the person back toward the bleachers. Under the rope were seven values of customer service laid out on banners. When a participant made it to the center, a coach gave him or her direction on where to drop a chalk ball on each of the core values. The exercise symbolized the East Coast working with the West Coast, with the Midwestern ground coach focusing on the needs of the customer. "Everybody had a valuable functional role in the process," he says, adding that months later the group still brought pieces of the rope into their meetings, tying them together in a show of unity before they began the meeting.

Adventure Racing
Corporate Adventure Training, based in Golden, Colo., offers a half- to three-day adventure race. Liz Hafer, an accomplished sky runner who has competed in high-altitude marathons and ultra-distance events, and her partner, Eco-Challenge 2000 World Champion Ian Adamson, take groups through a larger-than- life obstacle course.
The Team CAT adventure race is modeled on the Eco-Challenge, and recreates elements of intense competition, endurance, rapid shifts in strategy, and dramatic role shifting, shaped to be "more feasible to a group of corporate people." They adjust the difficulty depending on each group's physical capability.
In the beginning, the group gets together and is introduced to the concept of adventure racing. They are provided tips to success, including how to plan, prevent, prepare, shift roles, and maintain mutual respect.
It is at this point, Hafer says, that "We begin to bridge the sport of adventure racing to their particular organization."
Groups paddle, navigate terrain, mountain bike, climb and repel rock faces, and solve other unanticipated problems.
In the race, "everyone has tough times," Hafer says. "The teams that blow up don't communicate well when faced with problems. The team is only as strong as its weakest link. The issue is how to make the weakest link stronger."
Even before starting the exercise, they watch footage of adventure races and discuss implications for a business environment. Still, people can fall into the same old traps.
"Once they were doing it, they make the same mistakes. They saw they had no strategy," Hafer says.
She adds that most people want to repeat the program, and that many wished it had been even more extreme.
Hafer says that for the thrill, the risks involved in adventure racing are even smaller than that of a typical ropes course.
"You are not facing a fear that is going to put you in heart attack mode," she maintains.
Ropes courses tend to reinforce fears, she says, and involve less of the role shifting that plays a big role in her brand of team building.
Terry Hurd runs Perdidot Key, Fla.-based Gulf Coast Wilderness Adventures with her husband Randy, a former Navy SEAL. They have competed together in adventure races such as the 300-mile Beast of the East, and were slated to do the Australian Eco-Challenge. Three years ago they decided to start a business catering to the novice.
Twice a year they put together an adventure race, the Coastal Challenge, at Gulf Islands National Sea Shore in Perdidot Key. The experience involves 12 hours of racing on a 38-mile course preceded by eight hours of training in biking and kayaking, navigating and even proper foot care. Hurd, a veteran adventure racer who has lost toenails in competition, reveals a twinge of sadism in her voice when recalling people who initially dismissed the instruction.
"I enjoy watching them struggle," she scoffs. "It's a positive struggle born of blisters and blood."
The Coastal Challenge is more mental than physical, Hurd says, and it "teaches people that they can do anything," adding "no one has ever quit."
The race starts at 6:30 p.m. and ends at five in the morning. Hurd admits that little planning goes into the message.
It would be hard to work in the message after the race, she says, when "everyone's so exhausted. They know what they got."

Business and Pleasure
Who says adventure and luxury don't mix? Certainly not Amber Brkich, vice president of public relations for Ridgefield, Conn.-based Island Quest Adventures and a competitor on the CBS television program Survivor II: The Australian Outback.
Teams seeking tough, if not rough, team skill development can design tailored trips lasting as long as one week (for groups of up to 64) at Buccaneer Resort in St. Croix, USVI. There, groups can traverse ropes courses, drive 4x4's, kayak and rock climb while staying in luxury accommodations and competing for cash and other prizes.
While the team building might be as extreme as the largesse, Brkich maintains that Island Quest Adventures' solution serves corporate team-building needs while satisfying the taste for adventure. Team-building activities "are always trying to get you to think outside the box," something she says the Caribbean backdrop provides.
"With each game, whether the quest involves negotiation or competition, they focus on corporate skills." Brkich says, "[The message] sneaks its way in there; otherwise you'd think it was cheesy."
The quests are modeled after the trials in Survivor, but "without the suffering and bug eating. We won't make them starve or sleep in the grass," Brkich says. Events can be geared to people of all skill levels and abilities. Island Quest Adventures is currently booking reservations but has not yet formally launched.

Why Adventure Team Building?
Any activity that involves several people in some collaborative effort can be a meaningful experience," says Peter Grazier, president and CEO of Teambuilding, Inc., a Chadds Ford, Penn.-based consulting company that pairs up clients with specialists in a wide range of extreme activities.
He believes that teamwork is something left out of the picture from the beginning, starting in school, where teamwork is instead referred to as cheating.
"None of us were taught to tap into each other's strengths. In fact, it was taught out of us," Grazier contends.
From the outset, companies inherit a workforce that is deficient in the skills necessary to be successful as a group, he explains.
While many of the programs Teambuilding, Inc., offers are considered extreme, Grazier bristles at the very use of the term.
"It makes it sound like we're doing it just for flash, and we're not," he contends.
Grazier echoes other purveyors of high-octane, high-experience activity.
"A lot of this is being driven by a trend in culture toward experience," he says.
Dr. Suzanne Zoglio, an executive coach and facilitator who has authored several books about building successful work teams, including Teams at Work: 7 Keys to Success and Create A Life that Tickles Your Soul, says extreme team building is highly effective in unifying teams and focusing them on goals.
"Sometimes you need to break down things before you can build. People get stuck in a rut of expectations," Zoglio says.
The three crucial elements to this, Zoglio explains, are trust, confidence and hope.  "When the challenge is physical and different from the work environment, it gives an opportunity to revisit those elements," she says.
In extreme conditions, people are forced to rely on one another.
She recalls a caving trip she made with a group of executives. They were walking in an unlit cave and had to communicate down the line, anticipating what the person down the line needed to know.
"When in an adventure situation, you don't want to look over your shoulder to see if your partner is backing you up," she explains. "Communication becomes explicit. There's no room for generalities."
The constant change of terrain applied well to the perpetually shifting corporate climate, she says.