Team Building Tampa

This event was a Rescue Buddies Charity Workshop 20 participants from T-Mobile in Tampa. Because this was a newly-formed team whose members travel all over the country and seldom have a chance to work together directly, we thought a Charity Workshop would be a great way to help them get better acquainted and teach them a little big picture thinking. All of our Charity Workshops tend to accomplish these goals, but we thought a Rescue Buddies event would be especially helpful in this situation.

Sometimes at long conferences full of lengthy meetings, there's a lot of input and not much output going on.  That's why a charity team building workshop can be the perfect antidote to "meeting fatigue"... precisely the reason Verizon scheduled our Bike-a-Thon™ charity workshop. 

3 Days of Meetings, 27 IT Leaders, and 1 Fantastic Workshop

We met at Verizon's corporate headquarters in Tampa, Florida, where the company was about to kick off three days of training and corporate updates.  There was a lot on the agenda, since the company would be undergoing some serious change in corporate structure very soon, and they wanted to make sure their leaders were up to date on everything.

That's all good and well, but it sure does make for a lot of input and one-way flow of information!  Good thing all our workshops, even the corporate training workshops, are hands-on.  We usually find that workshop participants coming from conferences and annual meetings like this are more than ready and willing to roll up their sleeves and dig into some interactive activities!

A Good Mix of Fun and Challenge

Verizon requested something fun, and they also wanted a way to give to the surrounding Tampa community of which they were a part.  No problem there- all of our charity team building workshops feature built-in fun!  But they also rest on a solid foundation of team building challenges, too.  Nobody escapes without some lessons learned... teamwork lessons.

We help all our workshop participants develop communication skills, at the very least.  If requested, we can also work on collaboration, big picture thinking, or working on diverse teams or other common office teamwork challenges. 

Bike-A-Thon™ Wins the "People's Choice" Award

After the workshop, our facilitator overheard one of the participants telling his colleague that he had done two other workshops like this but this one was the most fun.  Although our goal is always to develop important teamwork skills, we don't mind if people have fun in the process!

The "fun factor" might have a lot to do with our workshop structure: we always start out with an ice breaker (a few of them, actually).  These transition into more challenging activities where participants have to use teamwork to overcome obstacles or solve puzzles.

Then they earn their bike parts, and finally the bike assembly begins.  Finally, a charity may attend the final part of the workshop for a donation ceremony, and everyone gets to meet the kids.

It was a success in every one of those ways, and we wish our Verizon group of IT leaders success with their upcoming changes at work.