Nothing brings a corporate team together like a Bike-a-Thon Charity Workshop. No matter if it’s a collection of seasoned veterans who think they’ve seen it all or a team of fresh-faced interns just out of college, working together for the greater good brings out the best in everyone. This was certainly the case when Kaiser Permanente sent a team of 15 relative newcomers to work on team building, communication, and big picture thinking at the Trans Pacific Center in Oakland, CA. Although this a new team that came in with a tiny case of the early jitters, it wasn’t long before they were able to put all that aside and play off one another’s strengths. Of course, it didn’t hurt they were donating their bicycles to a fantastic organization like Help Kids Today, a Bay Area group that works hard to serve local children in a number of important ways.

Teamwork Happens When Effort Meets Great Preparation

Like all of our Charity Workshops, the Kaiser Permanente Bike-a-Thon was designed with the company’s specific needs in mind. Meeting with management before the big day, we learned that although the team members were strong individually, they still needed to learn plenty of teamwork skills before they could even begin to meet their potential. Because of their inexperience, we designed the workshop in a way that both demanded and rewarded hard work at the individual level and a well-syncopated group effort.
Fortunately, the Kaiser Permanente staffers made our jobs easier by coming into the workshop enthusiastic, energetic, and clearly ready to learn. This combination allowed things to get off to a great start, with everyone overcoming some understandable early nervousness to whisk right through the morning challenges we’d devised for them. Moreover, they were able to keep this winning combination going as they transitioned into the parts earning phase and prepared for the actual bike assembly.

The Help Kids Today Organization Provided the Perfect Spark

The goal of all of our Charity Workshops is essentially twofold. First, they’re designed to get team members — especially newbies like we had with Kaiser Permanente — all on the same page so they can work more efficiently toward the company’s shared goals. Second, they’re intended to give something back to the community — a goal that’s typically achieved by putting new teamwork skills into practice.
This is exactly what happened this time around, as the new team members worked hard and stayed teachable all day to deliver several shiny new bikes to a fantastic charitable organization.