NYC team building trust exercises

I have two young children, ages 1½ and 3, which means I get to watch the Disney movie Frozen more often than I’d like (far, FAR more often). By this point I can pretty much recite the entire film verbatim, but while watching for the umpteenth time recently I noticed something I hadn’t before.

There’s scene about halfway through, when Anna is attempting to climb up a sheer rock face and can’t quite make it – she let’s go and lands safely in the arms of Kristoff, and then exclaims, “Wow, that was like some crazy trust exercise or something!” As a producer of NYC corporate team building activities, this got me thinking: what’s a trust exercise anyway, and is it an effective office group activity, New York City or anywhere?

We’ve all likely done some form of these activities in the past: trust falls, balance beams, ropes courses etc. When I was a volunteer firefighter during my high school/college years, they even made us climb a 15-foot aluminum ladder, supported not by a wall at a 70 degree angle, but STRAIGHT UP in the air at 90 degrees, held in place by fellow firefighters. The intended purpose of this and other trust exercises is of course to instill a sense of confidence in your team, your company and yourself. But does it actually work? And how are these types of corporate bonding activities different from team building?

I am firmly of the belief that a positive shared experience is the bedrock of any successful event intended to reinforce workplace skills: teamwork, collaboration, communication, and getting to know your colleagues in a deeper and more meaningful way. However, as I stated in this U.S. News & World Report article on corporate team building last fall, I also believe that having clearly defined goals for the event is essential, and that a certain degree of structure and professional guidance must be implemented in order for the group to get the most value out of the experience. I’ve often wondered just how must more “trust” workplace teams have in one another, simply because they did trust falls at the offsite last summer.

Learn more about team building ideas NYC, as well as what structured corporate bonding events in New York City can offer beyond traditional “trust exercises.”