NYC Trivia Team Building Case Study
[UPDATE 8/16/12] This is a revised version of a blog post which was published on 8/15/12. The client whom this piece is about requested that their organization’s name not be mentioned here; to honor their request, this piece has been edited to remove our client’s name, logo and images from the event.
Yesterday, we had the honor of being invited once again to produce a high-energy trivia team building activity for the staff of a major nonprofit organization here in New York City!
Providing a wide variety of services around the city, country and globe in the areas of health, human services, education and community building, the organization is one of Gotham’s most important nonprofit institutions – very much like the 92nd Street Y, which was my longtime employer prior to founding TrivWorks.
It takes a lot of sustained effort to do the good work this organization does, and such a large nonprofit institution requires a large team of dedicated staff to ensure that their mission is fulfilled. As such, the entire marketing & communications department took their annual summer retreat yesterday far from their headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, setting up camp for the day in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn to gain strategic perspective on the coming year, as well as get to know each other better.
Following a full day of training and development, the 50-person team was then treated to a “surprise team building activity” – which, of course, was us!
Already broken down into pre-assigned teams based on practice area and managerial level by our contact within the organization, we kicked off with a “General Knowledge/Pop Culture” round, including plenty of questions relevant to the organization’s mission. We then moved into an exciting “How Well Do You Know Your Organization?” round, testing attendees’ knowledge not just about the institution (“In what year was the institution founded?” but also about each other (“Which of the managers in attendance has an infatuation with Giordano’s stuffed pizza?”). If the group didn’t know everything about each other before that round started, they sure do now!
We brought the event to a fever pitch with a multimedia round, playing snippets of 10 songs randomly selected from an iPod “borrowed” from one of the organizations’ senior executives (Smashing Pumpkins & Wilson Philips – who knew?). The event was capped with a team building wrap up, followed by an awards ceremony for the winning team – who, as always, walked away with the official TrivWorks lip balm (raspberry flavored, SPF 15 FYI).
I was incredibly delighted to see such a high-energy event following a long day of training, and especially happy to have attendees come up to me afterwards thanking me for a fun activity! However, the real reward for me following an NYC team building activity such as this was in seeing a group of hard-working New Yorkers leave a day-long seminar having gotten to know each other better, while at the same time practicing positive workplace skills such as collaboration, group decision making and communication skills which will allow them to do their jobs better – and ultimately, help an important nonprofit organization fulfill its mission.