Your team — you spend most of your waking moments with them, or at least eight hours a day, five days a week (sometimes more) — that’s 40 hours you have to argue, commiserate, plan, innovate, and dream about the job or project you have to carry out. With all this time and amalgamation of personalities, not much can be accomplished if you’re not a team, a unit that works together and understands the intricacies of one another as individuals. Teamwork really does make the dream work!
Who doesn’t want to work in an environment where people respect each other and work together to accomplish the task at hand? At TreeRunner Grand Rapids, we understand how vital a thriving team is and offer treetop team building experiences that focus on communication development, conflict management, leadership, cultivating trust, problem-solving techniques, and resource and time management. Each group that we work with will have a tailored team building program either geared towards a light-hearted experience or more of a classic team building experience led by a facilitator to address the specific opportunities in your group. Join us in today’s musing on team building and why it matters in the workplace.
Team building and your treetop adventure.
Team building may get a bad wrap with your employees, but when it’s successful, it’s invaluable. When individuals can come together and work together through conflict and progress, both the company and its employee’s benefit. The ridiculous scenarios exist such as Michael Scott from The Office and the team building shenanigans that ensue. Or there is the day out to the amusement park, or maybe even worse, the company picnic. In theory, they sound nice, but nothing is truly accomplished except an unproductive day away from the office.
At TreeRunner Grand Rapids, we offer a much different approach to team building and it begins in the trees. Step into a treetop obstacle course and have fun while learning and practicing new skills.
Communication – Being a good and effective communicator is indeed a skill, and in the workplace it’s an integral part of the business’s success. When communication turns sour it flows to every facet from client relationships and employee engagement, to company culture and the overall ROI — to work through tension and clear up any misunderstandings, communication is imperative. At TreeRunner Grand Rapids, our aerial adventure park takes your team high up into the tree and has varying difficulty in obstacles that you and your team must work through to complete and move through the rest of the ropes course. You can have a facilitator through TreeRunner to guide you as you explore how to effectively communicate with your team or you can tackle the task yourself. Either way, spending a day amidst the trees helps break down barriers in an environment away from work, that opens the door for communication.
Conflict management – Many companies come to us because there is conflict on the team or the company is undergoing changes. Conflict often progresses when there is a communication breakdown. Teammates can feel misunderstood or a misunderstanding in the communicating pattern can occur. You can tackle and manage conflict in the workplace with effective and straightforward communication. Conflict can also arise from a teammate who feels disregarded, disrespected, or taken advantage of. A team with a foundational understanding of communication patterns and techniques has the ability to express and understand the needs of their teammates and leads to better performance, productivity, and engagement. At TreeRunner Grand Rapids, we help you dive into conflict management by learning how to be better communicators. Every person may have differing opinions, and our adventure park provides a stress-free environment to work through conflict. Conflict management begins by simply normalizing conflict — conflict is a very real and normal part of life, we just need to learn how to better deal with it. The workplace can foster vague conversations for the sake of avoiding conflict, but in the trees you can’t be vague, you have to be clear about how to move through the obstacle and this translates back to the office.
Team building is arguably the most important facet of a strong team and is fostered through communication and conflict management. An aerial adventure at TreeRunner can be more than just a fun outing — you can begin to build a strong foundation for your team through conquering different obstacles throughout the day that translate into skills you can take back to the office! Encourage and grow your team into one that can effectively communicate and move through conflict with calmness and maturity.
There are many more components to team building with us at TreeRunner Grand Rapids, so stay tuned for part two!