The Adventure Team-Build
Choose your activities from the following list, then spend time working together, communicating with each other and learning about each others' strengths, skills and potential in a non-threatening environment, whilst also having a great deal of fun! What better way to foster team spirit than to have an exciting time together, learning new skills, sheering each other on, laughing together and then to be able to talk about it back at work/ Break down those barriers in a new team, or realign people after a merger or hard season.
Why Adventure-based Team-Building?
why is the outdoor learning experience so effective when applied to Team-Building, increasing individual confidence and identifying potential development areas in teams and individuals? 
All organisations have to have structures and systems to be able to operate. These structures give individuals and managers opportunities to disguise part or all of their working practice (whether intentionally or otherwise) . This type of avoidance behaviour can often be difficult to identify.
Unfortunately, in the working environment, ineffective or partial communication can be missed or fudged. Responsibility and ownership for the management of tasks can be totally or partially avoided. Often behavioural outcomes from Training and Development input are not easily measured in the work place.
Training and Development in the outdoors has clear and specific measurable outcomes. For example, if there is a river or a stream to cross, a rock wall to be climbed or a raft to be built, there is a visual and specific measurement of success or failure.
Personal and team effort and successes can be measured very quickly. Effectiveness of problem-solving applied to unusual tasks offers insights into participants and observers alike in a short timeframe.
An individual’s confidence can be effectively stimulated and developed by being involved in the decision-making processes of a team dealing with challenging tasks. They will experience the personal feelings of success and achievement from completing tasks that on first sight may have seemed impossible. They will learn new skills and have the opportunity to apply their existing knowledge and skills.
The demands of Outdoor Training and Development programmes stimulate the use of a wide range of knowledge and skills. Participants will have to draw on their life skills and experience, which are often not recognised as beneficial when used within an organisation. Participants will also be required to apply their traditional management knowledge and skills.
Because the outdoor environment is novel and different to that of the work place, the use and abuse of organisational systems is not available to those who may like to use them.
Old habits that hinder success in an organisation: poor communication practice, non-application of active listening, poor delegation skills and lack of team involvement. These will all be challenged whilst trying to deal with tasks in the outdoors.
Potential Learning Outcomes
Gorge walking – supporting each other and communicating in new environments, a metaphor for change? Our expert instructors will guide you in ascending and descending a steep, rocky, riverbed. Once kitted out you and your colleagues will brave the water and together go exploring with your guide. Work together to master slippery climbs, fun squeezes, watery slides and adrenaline rush jumps. Remember though challenge is by choice, personally choosing to bypass an individual challenge is a positive decision, we know our limits, but working together in a supportive way can raise them. These gorges hold many surprises, slippery rock traverses, water jumps, and tight squeezes. Work together and you will achieve more than you thought possible, communication and team support are the essence of this activity. We supply buoyancy aids, helmets, and extra thick and warm wetsuits.
Open canoeing – working in small teams, developing skills and communicating.Working in pairs in each canoe you will learn new skills whilst communicating with each other to deliver achievable outcomes, going straight, turning the canoe, moving sideways and completing a journey in beautiful surroundings. This is the most accessible of watersports, the canoe is a traditional craft throughout the world, with good reason, beautiful to move and control, a canoe will take you almost anywhere there is water. Our coaches have canoed around the world and can bring a little of that experience to you.We supply boats, paddles, wetsuits, buoyancy aids waterproofs and well equipped and trained coaches.
Climbing and abseiling -Develop your trust and team work through climbing and challenge your inner self with a dramatic abseil.Under the guidance of your qualified instructor you will learn to protect and support members of your team, both physically and psychologically, we all need support to do our best and what better way to support every individual in your team than by helping them get to the top, and for the brave encourage them and congratulate them for taking the step of faith that gets them over the edge for an abseil down our local cliffs. Indoors or out the team will get stronger and share a great experience.
Mountain walking – Team work and support will get you to the top. However good the individuals skills and strengths with map and compass, however fancy the kit, you must work together to plan and achieve your journey. Make sure you have the skills and if not we can educate you. Choose to do it all your self or let us guide you, we will provide expert qualified supervision and make sure you travel safely and get to your chosen mountain or hill top. We have it all on the doorstep, from hilltop castle ruins to craggy mountains. A journey is a great time to contemplate and use your skills within a team and decide how to take that new awareness back to the workplace.
Bushcraft – since ancient times we have lived together in groups, building shelters, preparing food, making fire to cook on and whiling away the dark hours looking in to the embers and putting the world to rights. What could be more effective at bringing a team together than learning these ancient skills, putting them in to practice together and then talking through the days challenges, successes and achievements by a warm camp fire then off to bed in a shelter put together with your own hands and hard work. Better still on a island on a loch or in river in the wilderness after a days canoeing.
Team challenges – a role for everyone. Whether Implementer, Co-ordinator, Shaper, Plant, Resource Investigator, Monitor Evaluator, Team Worker or Completer Finisher we all have a part to play in solving problems and getting jobs done. Using development training exercises, appropriately chosen, framed, facilitated and debriefed you can understand better what makes you tick as parts of your teams and take away the knowledge how you can work better together and achieve more. Combine this with the psychometric testing and development training we offer you will make a real difference to the bottom line.
A team-centered and structured two day challenge, with your group broken down into smaller teams, with inter team competition, and an overall structure to the challenge. Below is a sample program, but we will tailor the course to your needs:
Day One (4-6 miles on foot):
A challenge hike involving orienteering and navigation with physical and mental team challenges on the way. Successes earn clues and resources to be used during the final challenge. An abseiling tuition session is included during the day.
Day Two (4-6 miles on foot):
Gather final clues and put them all together to locate and solve the final challenge, which uses the abseiling skills learnt on day one!
This two day challenge is all about using everyone's abilities to the best, most of the tasks given are simple, but need thought for success. Here communication, confidence, support, Process versus Product goal setting, and above all cooperation get looked at, reviewed, fedback and improved, all in the setting of the gorgeous welsh countryside
This pre-set event suits everyone, with about three miles walking throughout the event.
It's an Orienteering circuit with a difference, set in the countryside local to Llangollen. In smaller teams you must navigate your way to a combination of standard Orienteering checkpoints and Team-Challenge checkpoints (where you must complete a short task or challenge).
Half day and full day events are available. During a full day event teams will also visit an Activity Checkpoint, where each team will receive Abseiling tuition and complete an Abseil (optional).
