Teambuilding NYC diverse groups

Last week, we produced another trivia teambuilding activity in Manhattan for our longtime client Pfizer. Unlike previous events with the pharmaceutical giant, however, this one was going to present a unique challenge: the group was incredibly diverse.

What do I mean by diverse? Not only was this particular group a broad mix of ages and managerial levels; they were in town for a conference from ALL OVER THE WORLD: Mexico, Venezuela, England, China, Japan and the Middle East – not to mention a healthy representation from the good ol’ USA. On top of that, about half of this group was new to either Pfizer or the group.

What, pray tell, is a trivia company supposed to do here?

After all, the key to a successful group bonding activity is a shared positive experience, and for TrivWorks’ unique brand of customized live trivia events in NYC and beyond that means creating an experience in which EVERYBODY feels they are participating, and nobody feels left out. But with such a mix of attendees with virtually no past shared experiences to go off of, how could we make this happen?

As always, we started our preparations for this event with a comprehensive customization meeting with the client, to get a clear understanding of not only the event’s specific team building goals, but a picture of who would be in the room. Because of the diversity here, we suggested conducting a brief advance survey of all attendees, to provide us with fun facts, etc. which we could then incorporate into the trivia itself: city/country of origin, first job, surprising things which everyone would be shocked to know etc.

With this info in hand, we set out to create trivia which would be highly appropriate to an audience such as this. When creating teambuilding activities in NYC for diverse groups coming from across the globe, we want to also make sure that each region where people were coming from is represented, both through our general knowledge questions (history, geography etc.) as well as our pop culture-centric ones (music trivia, photo trivia etc.). We rounded this out with rounds of fun trivia dedicated to Pfizer/the pharmaceutical industry, as well as a “how well do you know your colleagues?” round.

Add a bit of alcohol, and the result was explosive – the room was completely raucous the entire night, as teams reveled in getting the trivia questions right while learning about their colleagues from across the globe along the way!

I think what really made this event work was the customization we put into it. Though it took more advance effort on everybody’s part – ours, our client contact and the attendees themselves – in the end, customizing the questions to such a degree truly allowed us to create a fun, high-energy environment where a globally-diverse group such as this could really connect, and enjoy a positive shared experience to think back upon once they returned to their countries of origin.