Team Building Road Rally
What: A team building exercise utilizing a Tour style Road Rally format.
Why: A car rally presents participants with a fun, non-threatening opportunity to explore how communication, trust and interdependency work to improve the overall productivity of the team. The exercise is designed to facilitate individuals, who may not be in the same work group, to build relationships and learn about one another. It is a fun team building experience, as well as, the foundation for a dialogue on how communication and trust play key roles in the success or failure of a team.
Driving and following instructions are activities that most people use everyday. A road rally engages these skills in a way that can quickly illustrate the importance of communication, trust and the value of interdependency to succeed in a team environment. The nature of the event necessitates that everyone participate and therefore experience the learning.
Methodology
The team building activity is customized to the business and communication goals of
each group. The rally platform provides flexibility to structure the activity as a fun
out-of-the-office experience designed to build team spirit or an exercise
that provides participants an active-learning environment to work on multiple
team building skills. The exercise establishes an environment to explore
the following skills:
• Communication • Planning
• Problem solving • Time management
• Decision making • Flexibility
• Conflict resolution • Enthusiasm
• Team Spirit
Team
Structure: Four persons with distinct roles:
Driver: Follow the instructions provided by three teammates.
Navigator: Has instructions for turns and speeds.
Timer: Has information for keeping the team on-time throughout the course and fills out the timing log.
Distance Manager: Has information relating to distance between instructions and references where instructions are to be executed.
Teammates are determined in one of two ways: 1) by the coordinator to ensure group dynamics are optimized for the exercise or 2) teams can be randomly selected. Drivers are selected from those persons willing to drive their own car in the event.
Length: Option A: Three to Four hour rally
Option B: Five to Six hour rally with catered lunch.
Option C: Options A or B plus Behavioral Assessment Profiles, fee for each profile.
Format: Before the rally begins, there will be a 50-60 minute explanation of what is needed to run the rally. At the finish there will be 30 minute exploration of how the teams dealt with the assignment followed by awards.
Once the teams are defined, assignments within the team are determined by the team members. Each team member will be given the element of the route instructions that pertain to their specific role on the team. The team can share this information any way they choose.
At the midpoint teams will take a short break and teams will be reconstituted.
There will be several check points or references along the route where the time of arrival will be recorded. These are defined as Controls. Some will be manned Passage Controls and some will be Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Controls.
The goal of the exercise is complete the course with the least deviation from true time. The Team with the lowest score will be declared the "winner," and can serve as the catalyst to a facilitated discussion on how they organized their team to achieve their goal. All teams will participate in the discussion as the facilitator probes on how each team chose to organize, the issues that arose and how the team resolved them.
Expectation: Each team will be composed of four persons who will likely not have worked together before. The team will have all of the information needed to be successful on the rally. They must however deal with many “real world” realities. The course is designed to present information overload at the beginning, and the team must devise a strategy to communicate to the driver in a systematic fashion without overwhelming him/her. During the initial stages of the event all members will have a piece of information for each intersection. Soon however, they will discover that they must proceed through intersections with less and less information, having to trust one team member’s information to follow the route.
At the midpoint, the team will have to deal with one of its member’s replacement, just like in the real world where teams must deal with retirements, new assignments, layoffs, etc. This is designed to place deliberate stress on the team and to challenge their skills at “picking up the pieces” and moving forward when unplanned events disrupt the continuity of the group.
The element of staying on time so that the team can arrive at each Control simulates the need to meet project timelines, deliver as promised and keep moving forward. There is provision for requesting additional time so that teams are never required to violate speed limits or laws in order to compete equally in this exercise. And like the real world, this places some additional burden on the team.
Offerings: Half Day Session. Begins with an hour long briefing on how to rally and what to expect. This is followed by a 3-4 hour road rally. The day concludes with a critique of the team building lessons learned and awards.
Full Day Session. Same as above except that the rally is 5-6 hours long and has a catered lunch break.
Price: For groups up to12 Half Day Session $1195 Full Day Session: $1995
For groups 13-30 Half Day Session $1995 Full Day Session $2995
Behavioral Assessment Profiles price is in addition to above and depends on the number of participants.
Above prices above are for sessions in Arizona or Oregon. Other states TBD.
Contacts: For more information on how we can tailor our sessions to your needs please write or call.
challengedriving@cox.net 480-390-3712