Interns at accounting firm Cherry Bekaert learned a thing or two about the team building during their Charity Team Building Events Rescue Buddies event. They also proved a stereotype wrong (accountants don’t know much about liberal arts) and provided the Charity Team Building Events facilitator a surprising first.  How did this happen?

It all started with an icebreaker activity in which the facilitator delivers a wonderfully detailed story to the group.  What the participants never know during this classic icebreaker activity is how the story has a underlying purpose.  The object of the “game” here is for the group to guess the purpose of the story.

Accountants Prove That Accounting Isn’t All They Know

For the first time ever, a group got it right!  The answer was that the story gives a key to memorizing the 13 colonies in the order that they became colonies.  A little knowledge of history helps with this activity and these Cherry Bekaert interns proved they had the right stuff and guessed correctly.  Keep in mind these were accounting interns! Just goes to show: you can’t judge a book by its cover and you never know the strengths and skills your colleagues might possess at work.

Reminds Us That We All Have Hidden Talents

The lesson learned here with the accounting interns kind of sums up some of the key learning points in many of Charity Team Building Events’s team building workshops, actually!  Take The Big Picture, for example: that’s a workshop designed to show that everyone has different strengths, but we need each of them to complete a task.  In other words, diversity is a great thing!  Fostering an environment where everyone feels comfortable contribting in their best way…that’s the way to greater productivity and a collaborative, healthy workplace.

Groups Choose Their Rescue Buddies and Show Amazing Creativity

You wouldn’t think college kids who chose accounting as a major would be great at developing TV commercials.  That’s just what occurred, however.  After they’d competed to earn their items to complete a Rescue Buddy set (birth certificate, ribbon, card, heart), and after they’d chosen names for their Rescue Buddies and written up the birth certificates, it was time to get even more creative. A regular exercise in this workshop is to have teams produce television commercials for their Buddies. Each team had to tell how the Buddy had helped them through a tough time.  There were plenty of hilarious college scenarios worked into the commercials.  Again, the facilitator was impressed by the surprising skills of these accounting interns. The rep from the receiving charity, Ronald McDonald House, came at the end and gave a talk about the charity and presented a certificate to the group.  That capped a great day with a wonderful group!