Spectacular Team Building for IE

Team Building for IE

On Saturday, October 10th, from 10 am to 5 pm, at the magnificent Golf Canal facilities, Kaizen Coaching and Team Building ran its largest Team Building-format corporate activity to date, with a total of 770 registered participants. The day started cold, but the forecast promised fantastic weather for a team building day, as it ultimately turned out to be — much to the relief of participants and technical staff alike.

By 09:30, the first participants started arriving, their sleepy faces reflecting a long night, typical of the average age, around 28, of participants in the Team Building day, based on our famous mini Olympics, which for IE was named IMBA Unite. Attendees were pursuing an international MBA, and participants, the students themselves, often came accompanied by partners and children, for whom we'd set up a kids' zone with workshops, a go-kart track and a bouncy castle. Our instructors welcomed them with the biggest smiles and endless balloons, face paint and toys that delighted the little ones.

The event was scheduled so the year's 3 intakes could compete against each other: November, with 7 sections, April, with 4 sections, and September, with another 7 sections of around 45 students per section. Of the 18 sections, they'd compete to be the section with the most accumulated points across all the games, and there was also a special prize for the section with the most original costume, since each one was to represent a tribe, civilisation or organised group, whether real or fictional. Each team showed up in a themed costume — you could see dozens of minions, smurfs or Disney characters parading alongside Waldos, Vikings or Pamplona bull-runners, bull included.

The mini Olympics is the quintessential origin of team building days — you need to work as a team to optimise the result, since otherwise the coordination and skills needed simply can't be achieved individually. So, working as a team, they began tackling the first round of challenges. This team building day was made up of three rounds, with five games or challenges per round. In the first round, attention centred on the cooperative sack race, in which up to 6 participants per sack had to try to reach the finish line before the rest. A matter of strength? No, of coordination — the key is jumping all together. At the same time, the cooperative ski race brought out the best in participants — coordination needs to be almost perfect to move forward without falling. Knee trembler players had to pick up balls with their knees, with no help from their hands, and carry them to hoops at the end of their lanes. Meanwhile, in apples race, in pairs, one carrying the other wheelbarrow-style, they had to grab apples with their mouths and carry them to the end of the lane. This was without a doubt the most refreshing challenge, since the apples sat in a bucket of water. In the big groundhog challenge, they had to run crouched between their teammates' legs, very carefully, since rushing wasn't a good idea. The team building day was taking shape, and the first teams were already pulling ahead of the rest.

In the second round, crazy relay took centre stage — diver races, waiter races, individual sack races and wheelbarrow races delighted participants and companions alike. In balloon race, they had to carry as many balloons as possible, and in cookie relay, the same, but they had to eat the cookies with no hands, letting them drop from their forehead. Impressive. Meanwhile, the blind race showed the extreme trust needed between team members, since half of them wore a blindfold and couldn't see a thing. Finally, in soap race, they went wild trying to pass bars of soap to their teammates, backwards and without looking — tricky. True teamwork, for a true team building day.

In the third round, the mobile bridge challenge had participants bringing out their best — it's no easy task carrying a teammate through the air using only a few planks. Conveyor belt had everyone in stitches — participants, staff and onlookers alike — a hilarious challenge where they had to carry a teammate while rolling along the ground, and in the shortest possible time. In the hoop race, they had to combine team speed with the precision of placing hoops at the right distance, to move fast while minimising risk, since the smallest mistake meant having to start the challenge over. And so, challenge after challenge, participants let loose, checking the overall standings and calculating how many points they needed here or there to climb the rankings. Team building supremacy was on the line.

Alongside the competition, both participants and companions enjoyed fabulous attractions, like a mechanical bull, human foosball and wipeout — a real test worthy of a Japanese game show. They also took over the go-kart track, turning the entire Golf Canal venue into their own personal circuit, ignoring instructors' directions, who gave up in the face of participants' enthusiasm.

Challenge after challenge went by, and Team Katrinas took a slight lead, followed by the Waldos and the Minions, who ultimately couldn't catch up. So, the Katrinas took home the winner's trophy at the first IMBA Unite event, based on Kaizen Coaching and Team Building's mini Olympics team building. A fantastic barbecue awaited all attendees, with an open bar of soft drinks, beer and sangria, delighting every participant. Needless to say, players' voracious appetites meant the meat and vegetable supplies flew off the tables — good thing we'd planned for them to need to recover their strength after all that effort.

At Kaizen Coaching and Team Building we want to thank our staff for their great work, Abania's professionalism, Jorge from Golf Canal for his great support, and the fabulous collaboration of Inés, Marta and Jana from IE, thanks to whom this team building day was made possible.