Reality team building exercises facilitated for teams: when a matter of life or death counts

2-5hrs + debrief.
Select virtual or face-to-face training.
Teams of 5 – 50 staff participating.

Each team receives a Brief, telling them they are the support personnel for an exclusive part flight over a remote area of Gold Coast or Scenic Rim environments. We intercept them en route to a team conference retreat or holiday.

A bushranger all terrain and water plane is flying expensive IT hardware, however when the engine stalls, the plane crash-lands on the edge of wilderness, maiming the pilot and injurying 3 unverified VIP passengers.

The crashed plane lies pointing in the continued direction it was last seen flying. With the Bushrangers pilot’s last recorded words were “20 minutes flying time, 90 minutes elapsed, 1,200ft elevation, wind conditions changing, turbulence, engine stalling, we’ll struggle to make destination”.

Knowing their speed they can work out how far they are from their destination.

There are 15 items that have survived the plane crash.

No significant food or water however strategically useful items that could necessitated to help with survival.
Teams do NOT rank these items but can utilise them in any plan they come up with.

Each team’s objective is to plan a way forward – but they have limited time – just 60 minutes!

Should they stay with the plane? Yes a real plane encountered and utilised in this scenario.

Striking off into the wilderness, especially as two of the team are slightly injured, without food and water, compass or map could be disastrous – in this wilderness who will find them?

Teams must sum up the situation, list the options and decide on a plan. Clear thinking, common sense, good leadership and decisiveness are required. Lots of lively debate ensues!

Trainer’s role (full guidance supplied by Trainer).

• Divide your group into teams, with 3-4 people per team, and briefly introduce the activity as a team activity and give a time frame (do not go into details of what is on the Brief).
• Put teams into virtual breakout rooms and issue a Team Brief (PDF) to each team.
• Announce the time and tell teams they have 20 minutes for the task (you may want to shorten or extend this).
• Visit teams in their breakout ‘rooms’. Observe the teams at work.
  Note how their discussions progress, how they work as a team, whether they elect a leader or one emerges.
  How much conflict is there?
  How easily do they reach consensus etc?
• Stop the activity at the allotted time (or when you judge it right).
• Start the Debrief in a plenary session. Ask teams in turn to briefly report on how they approached the task and their final decision on what to do. Give a time-frame of, say, one minute for each team.
• Allow teams to quiz each other on their decisions.
• Finally, ask teams what key learning points they take from the session – about themselves and their teamwork, to take back to the workplace. A whiteboard on your virtual platform might be useful here.

Learning objectives

• to discuss an issue under time pressure
• to analyse a problem
• to work together as a team
• to see the usefulness of brainstorming
• to prioritise
• the need for consensus
• decisive leadership
• to express views with conviction