Team Building Events: Ropes Course Challenge

File:outdoor adventure challenge course.jpg. (2010, June 28). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Outdoor_Adventure_Challenge_Course.jpg

Team Size: 10-100

Space Requirements: Outdoor

Duration: 3hrs-6

Physical Challenge: Medium-High
Event Brochure:http://www.corporateteams.com/wp-content/uploads/AC-Ropes-Course-Challenge1.pdf

Teams will start off with low-rope exercises that involve effective communication skills between team members, and will build up to higher ropes throughout the course of a three to six hour period. The purpose is to challenge each component of a team and leadership skills.

When teams are being introduced to the program they will be given a summary of what to expect throughout the day. Teams are expected to come up with goals to establish how they will work together to accomplish their agenda, and they are intended to come up with organizing a team and design their strategy. Teams are expected to create and explore unconventional approaches, come up with a plan and implement that plan to gain results. The objective is to correlate this outdoor activity and implement it in the workforce. The low rope challenges consist of ropes, Cables and wooden beams strung between trees and poles; the low ropes consist of problem-solving, collaboration, and coaching. The ropes are lower to the ground which gives the illusion that the risks are minor, but are still thought-provoking. Participants eventually expand their comfort zone and move towards higher ropes which will help them understand roadblocks they may be having in the personal or professional lives. The higher ropes are 20-50 feet in the air; each member must wear a harness and helmet. The structure contains cables, ropes, and wooden beams strung between poles or trees. Teams participate in taking risks, trust, and coaching. One activity is called the leap of faith, which consists of climbing up a 30 foot pole and jumping into a trapeze, A cat walk: where each individual balances on a beam suspended 30 feet in the air and must walk across the beam without losing their balance, An organizational ladder which consists of climbing up to your team member until the two members make it to the top. A 12 foot wall, the team must accomplish getting all team members across the 12 foot wall. The “heebie jeebie” each member must walk across a suspended beam 30 feet in the air walking across a cable using a hand rope for support, and a zip line where you zip across a cable line leaping from a platform that is 30 feet in the air.

In conclusion, The Ropes course Challenge is for companies to help their employees achievement through cooperation, trust, problem-solving, planning, and communication skills on moderate to high physical activities that stimulate individuals minds and learn how to apply these skills through team building exercises to everyday work environments to help productivity within a company.

In my opinion I think that the ropes challenge is an unconventional yet fresh approach to teaching employees the meaning of being a part of a team. Rather than having a meeting where a presenter comes to the office for a week or two to tell you what being in a team means and what it should look like.  I think having a physical activity with each individual discovering for themselves what it is like and what it really means and feels like to be a part of a team and to be able to trust, to count on, to communicate effectively with others are life skills that can be used anywhere other than the office. An individual could use these skills to help organize their social lives and learn how to communicate with different people, which have different interests or belief, but can still find some type of common ground between the two possibly opposite people.I believe that people learn in many different ways, and by stimulating the mind and the body this will be more likely than not successful in the long term, rather than sitting through various seminars that after they hear about teamwork the thoughts never leave the room.

"You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates."
-Richard M. Nixon

Corporate Teams. (2012). Adventure challenge: Ropes course challenge. Retrieved from http://www.corporateteams.com/events/ropes-course-challenge/