Team Building Exercises New York City

Okay, confession time. Ready to be blown away?

I hate group bonding exercises.

I imagine you might be profoundly confused by this statement. “Wait a minute, David” you might be thinking. “Don’t you run one of the most popular NYC team building companies? How on EARTH can you come out and say something like that? It makes no sense!”

On the surface, you’d be right, of course. I did found a company specializing exclusively in employee bonding activities for the office, New York City corporate event entertainment and staff motivation ideas centered around a fully-customized team trivia competition. But why do you think I did such a thing?

Let’s start at the beginning.

As a camper, a student, and ultimately as an office worker, I absolutely loathed any sort of compulsory group activity designed to foster group cohesiveness. Call them what you will: icebreakers, teambuilders, whatever – in the end, to me they were always the same: horrible. Being forced to do some cheesy, lame, stupid thing with a bunch of people I either just met or didn’t like, well – forgive me for not taking joy in that. Maybe I was a grouch, I don’t know – but one thing’s for sure, I’m not alone.

I’m right, though, aren’t I? Just watch how people – and probably you – react when you see “team event” on the meeting agenda. It’s a visceral response, one we can’t even control: dread. We have been conditioned not to want to do it, and for good reason (see above). If your experience was anything like mine, you associate these sort of things with the worst of the worst: trust falls, obstacle courses, memory exercises. Or how about embarrassing or awkward stuff like, “go around the room and tell everyone about yourself.” That’s always a blast, isn’t it?

Now let’s talk semantics. I’ve blogged about this previously, however the moniker given to these types of events kills me. “Exercise” – really? As if the activity itself doesn’t have a poor enough stigma, now we have to go and name it after something that sounds grueling, boring, and tedious? We might as well just call them “team slogs” or “morale destroyers” while we’re at it.

No, I’ve always hated this stuff – which is exactly why I started my own company specializing in group events designed NOT to suck.

The thing is, I always knew in my heart that it IS possible to create meaningful bonding opportunities with colleagues, provided that such a moment is centered around a positive shared experience which is tailored and appropriate to specific groups and goals. When I first got into this line of work ten years ago, it was to produce and guide corporate scavenger hunts. Why did I go this route? Because I had unique firsthand experience in creating these things (how many people can say THAT?). But yes, it’s true – in both high school and college, I volunteered to design and execute my own scavenger hunts for friends, fraternity brothers and other groups. I thought it was a fun creative and intellectual challenge, but also I just loved watching people enjoy themselves once that first clue had been opened and they were off and running. It only made sense that I find a professional version of this to latch onto, and of course here in the Big Apple, there were actually several to approach (I ultimately went with City Hunt, and freelanced for them for two awesome years).

Much as I enjoyed creating the hunts – and the participants no doubt enjoyed going on them –  I couldn’t help but feel that there was something missing as far as creating a truly special group experience. What I mean is, there’s only so many ways you can customize it; the clues, the neighborhood or venue, the route, all of that is pretty limiting. Fun, yes, but limiting. There’s also pretty finite lines as to who can participate (able-bodied people of a certain age), when they can be run (usually nice weather only), and there’s a lot of things outside the control of the organizer and producer alike – you could write the perfect hunt, only to find out the day of that a street has been shut down, a museum exhibit replaced, a landmark closed for renovation.

With trivia, I realized pretty quickly that you can fine-tune the material to fit each group perfectly. It’s consistently fun and competitive, while at the same time being social and accessible. I’ve truly found it to be a means of delivering the dreaded “bonding exercise” experience, without the requisite bad mojo which so often gives it a bad name. Even now, seven years after starting TrivWorks and ten years (!!!) after I first picked up a microphone to host bar trivia nights in Manhattan, I still love the response an audience gives to a great trivia question which is perfectly written just for them.

It’s weird to think about, but something I’ve never been able to do (for obvious reasons) is attend one of my own events that I’m hosting. Yes, I’ve been to plenty of events I’ve produced which have been hosted by others, including our “Special Hosts” NY1 morning news anchor Pat Kiernan, comedian Christian Finnegan and corporate magician Ryan Oakes – however, as far as the experience I deliver when I’m personally emceeing a gig, I don’t know what it’s like being on the receiving end of that. So I can’t say definitively that it IS a fun experience – however, I CAN say that people come up to me after every gig I host, and say the most incredible things: “that was so fun!,” “that was a blast!,” “that was the best event we’ve ever had!” I am of course incredibly honored, humbled and proud whenever I hear that, because it’s definitely NOT something I’ve ever said after attending a team event when I was a corporate employee.

So yes, to come full-circle here: I created something new in direct response to something I hated, and am happy to say that people have found it to be enjoyable and valuable as a group bonding experience. Can’t really ask for more than that!