Tools & Resources

Team Up offers the opportunity to take a closer look at how we interact and offers a safe place to try out new practices and share an experience that can be the beginning of new understandings, improved relationships, and enhanced team performance. Through confronting and solving a series of challenges it is believed that an individual can gain an increased sense of personal competence that results in increased positive self-esteem and an enhanced ability to work in a group. These activities arouse emotional, mental, and physical reactions that are present in all challenging life situations.

Team Up! Components

Team Up! teams with both mental and physical problem-solving activities. Through carefully designed and led activities, individuals and teams explore self-imposed boundaries and develop strategies for improved performance.

1. Warm-ups and Icebreakers: Activities that prepare participants physically and start to establish a safe learning environment.
2. Initiatives/Challenges: These activities require minimal physical activity but require a high degree of interaction as the team works collaboratively to solve problems.
3. Low Ropes Activities: These activities involve physical and mental tasks conducted low to the ground on permanent or portable structures. Success requires team effort and physical support.
4. Odyssey Course: This is a series of unique team challenge activities that take place high in the air! This heightened level of perceived risk further challenges teams to truly overcome very tangible obstacles and puts everyone at the same level, as it is new to them all!

The common factor to all events is challenge. The experience consists of a series of planned challenges that require problem-solving skills, teamwork, individual commitment, and cooperative action. Team Up! utilizes experiential learning, i.e. "learning by doing." Though the ropes course is fun and exciting, you will find that our ground based activities provide the most value in building stronger relationships and developing specific communication tools to transfer back to the organization.

Some Activity Examples:

Ground-based initiatives/challenges:
Zoom: A group tries to create a unified story from a set of sequential pictures. The pictures are randomly ordered and handed out. Each person has a picture but cannot show it to others. Requires patience, communication, and perspective taking in order to recreate the story's sequence.

Group Pen: One marker is controlled by all members of a group by strings, and they must collaborate to write out a pre-determined word. It’s harder than it looks, and starts great conversations on perceptions of quality, intentions, and the give-n-take of group work.

Turnstile/Group Jump Rope: Participants must pass through a rotating rope, accomplishing a series of checkpoints that rise in difficulty. A fun way to look at group consensus making, perceived risks, and communication. No jumping necessary!

Low Ropes Elements:
Whale Watch: Teeter and totter on this extra large platform. Does your group need balance in the team, balance in life? Wait a moment … who gets on first? Who rocked the boat?

Low V/Wild Woozy: “Lean on Me” gains a whole new meaning as you and your partner work together to go the distance.

Mohawk Walk: Balancing precariously on a thin cable, your team attempts to cross the gaps between poles to reach your goal!

Nitro Crossing: With only a hanging rope, you and your team must cross the expanse Indiana Jones style, and face the challenges ahead.