Team Challenge, Mandarin Oriental

A fun packed, outdoor team building day incorporating a variety of skills based and mental challenges.

Event Background

Last month EMG was tasked with creating and deploying a bespoke ‘team challenge’ event at the stunning Coworth Park in Ascot for luxury hotel group, Mandarin Oriental. Due to the high number of delegates the event was split into two days, with 40 delegates from a full spectrum of departments attending each team challenge day.

Event Objectives

Mandarin Oriental has a strong focus on quality management and service excellence; often winning awards in these arenas. With this in mind the day had a clear team-building objective – a cohesive team that works in unison is able to deliver better service to its clients than individuals acting independently of each other.

A breakdown of the day’s objectives included:

• Building cross departmental-relationships
• Improving individual performance within a team
• Improving team performance as a whole
• Energising and motivating staff
• Having fun!

Event Proposal

Each team challenge event was to be preceded by a full day of facilitated classroom style sessions, meaning it was important that there was a strong element of fun in order to maintain engagement and focus.  Thus EMG proposed a schedule encompassing five diverse activities which had the dual benefit of providing delegates with variety and momentum as well as engaging different skill sets that would help them to meet their objectives.

Event Outline

At the beginning of the day delegates were given a full briefing to outline their objectives and then divided into five teams which would rotate around each of the following activities:

Flintstone Car
As much crystal maze as it is Flintstone, in this activity delegates were armed with both natural resources from the forest and some 20th Century technology and tasked with building a car in 15 minutes that could transport passengers 100 yards. This task required true teamwork, with communication, trust and lateral thinking at its core.

Canister Retrieval
One of the most mental challenges of the day, in this task delegates had to retrieve a canister from an inaccessible area using only one piece of equipment – a rope! To add to the challenge nothing and no one could touch the ground inside the red and white taped area. Logic and working together were the key to this activity.

Duck Herding
Whoever said “never work with children or animals” had clearly never been duck herding! This unique activity was a clear winner for the employees of Mandarin Oriental who had never experienced anything like it. However, its not all fun and games, duck herding requires patience, communication and teamwork (not to mention the co-operation of your ducks) to herd the ducks around an obstacle course and into their pen.

Archery
This activity gave delegates a superb opportunity to test steady hands and their eye for the target! No matter their level of previous experience, a great instructor and compound bows gave all delegates a chance to excel at this challenging sport. Both physical and mental this activity put individuals in the spotlight.

Egg Launch
Encouraging teams to think outside the box, for this activity delegates were provided with only limited resources with which to build a catapult style launcher that would fire an egg the furthest. Careful planning and strategic thinking were a must.

At each activity teams were awarded points based on successful completion of the activity, teamwork and creativity. Points mean prizes so at the end of the day scores were calculated and the winning delegates awarded prizes for their efforts. To ensure that maximum benefit was gained from the day, delegates then had a full debrief to highlight areas of strengths and weaker areas for development.

The Client Perspective

EMG is an excellent company to partner with in order to support team growth and development. We have used them on several occasions as part of management development and the on-boarding process for the opening of our new restaurants. The results have always been excellent.”
Keith Edwards, Mandarin Oriental

 

“The Italian job team was a hilarious, fun packed team building exercise full of problems to solve and challenges to complete. This was the first time a number of our remote team had met face to face and it was the perfect activity to break the ice and get people working together.”

“The team at EMG is passionate about enhancing our ‘guest journey’ and constantly take the time to understand our guests’ objectives in order to seamlessly deliver the most creative and engaging events.”

“Just a quick thank you for all your help in making this event such a success…the feedback has been excellent. It was a real pleasure (but unfortunately something of a rarity) to deal with people who actually know what they are doing!”

“EMG is an excellent company to partner with in order to support team growth and development. We have used them on several occasions…the results have always been excellent.”

“We’ve worked with EMG for more than five years, not only do they provide engaging and exciting events but the service supplied mirrors that offered by ourselves to our guests… making EMG an ideal partner.”