Category: General

MiniTreasure is our second oldest virtual team building activity. Launched back in 2011, we originally had just the one scene for this unique virtual treasure hunt. It quickly gained popularity with our geographically spread clients with virtual teams. So we added another scene to its fold. And then a third scene quickly followed.

A bit of a gap.

And then we rested. We developed and modernized the interface over the years, but we didn’t add any new scenes. The reason for that was two-fold. Firstly, our focus was on developing our other activities – especially MiniScavenge (our most popular virtual team building activity) and VirtuWall (our flagship flexible platform for larger and more important events).

Secondly, we just didn’t feel the need. Clients have tended to move up quickly from MiniTreasure, our entry level activity, to its bigger, more capable sibling – MiniScavenge.

Now, for the first time in just over 10 years, we’ve added a new scene, MiniTreasure’s fourth. It’s based on a social media infographic. It’s a fun option with all the classic elements that have made MiniTreasure such a loved option for our clients over the years.

Virtual treasure hunt – the mechanics

How does it all work? For those who have yet to have had the pleasure of participating in a MiniTreasure event, let us explain. Groups are generally organized into teams. It is a team building activity after all! Every participant goes to the same webpage using their device. All devices are accepted, though laptops and desktops are the norm. Basically, they have more screen real estate, making the activity more immersive. On that page is a large two-dimensional scene – one of our now 4 scenes that organizers can choose from. The page allows people to zoom in and out of the scene and to pan across it. All of which is very necessary as participants try to answer some interestingly presented clues.

Our virtual treasure hunt has 60 clues in total with each scene. 20 of them are straightforward – that is easy to understand, but not necessarily easy to answer! 20 of them are a bit more fun – they are a little more cryptic and in rhyme. And the remaining 20 are image based.

Loved by all

Without exception, every participant loves MiniTreasure. And for those who have experienced more than one scene – of which we have many! – they love every scene.

Want to see the scenes? You can see them here on our MiniTreasure page. Better still, we’ll be glad to demonstrate it for you. You can schedule a demonstration here.

Happy hunting!

The term “team building” is often misunderstood. If you add the fact that many people need team building delivered virtually, it’s easy for misunderstandings to grow. Team building activities that can be done virtually isn’t as straightforward a proposition as it might seem. Why so? Team building is often seen as interchangeable with team bonding. Those of us in the profession know that they are two related yet very different offerings.

Team bonding is about giving people in the same team, of whatever size, an opportunity to get closer together. Perhaps even to get to know one another better. To have a shared experience, perhaps. And if that experience happens to have a beneficial effect on the team’s effectiveness in the workplace, that’s a bonus.

Team effectiveness

Team building is about improving a team’s effectiveness back in the workplace. If that happens to be delivered within an enjoyable experience, it’s more than a bonus. It’s almost certainly a requirement. It’s a fact that people find it easier to assimilate new or better ways of doing things if they enjoy the delivery mechanism that provides that learning. So, a fun team building activity stands more chance of measuring up as an opportunity for a team to improve than a dull one.

Can you have team bonding without team building? Yes! Can you have team building without team bonding? Let’s just say that we wouldn’t advise it!

So, if we’re looking for team building activities that can be done virtually, what does the discussion above mean in that context?

Integrate with your technology

If team building requires a focus on improving team performance, we think it means the activity must have a good degree of relevance to a team that needs a virtual delivery. Why would a group need team building activities that can be done virtually? We think the answer is clear. Because the team members are not all located at the same place. In a geographically spread team’s day-to-day life, it will rely on technology to bring team members together. Whether that something is as simple as regular – or even occasional – virtual team meetings using the likes of WebEx. Or if a team is fully integrated into a technology base such as Slack.

Our virtual team activities are all entirely complementary with such tools. Meaning they work alongside of them. So, participants engaging in one of our activities will use the tools they are already familiar with to communicate with one another and to work as a team. Indeed, from time to time, we have clients who are introducing new technological tools that use our activities as a way to encourage people to start using them! Including some clients who created those tools and sell them globally as a SAAS offering!!

We’re nothing if not useful. Well, maybe also nothing if not fun. Fun and useful. If you’re looking for team building activities that can be done virtually anyway!

We are Sandstone Limited of the United Kingdom and Global Team Building is our online brand. But it wasn’t always so. Our first online team building activities were showcased under a different brand. Team Building Rescue. So, we thought we’d use this post to tell you a little bit about how and why Team Building Rescue morphed into Global Team Building.

We started corporate life way back in 1992 and our focus in those days was on training. Probably even then our greatest passion was promoting good teamwork. As the millennium drew to a close we started moving into innovative team building. All our team building activities were delivered in person in those days. Remote teams were up and coming, though, and we started planning so that we could offer virtually delivered options. But we were just too busy to turn our great ideas into reality.

Crash!

Then the 2008 global financial crash happened. And suddenly we weren’t quite as busy. So, we had the time to develop the first of our remote activities. It was a development-focused activity, and we called it Space Rescue. And it is still going strong today! It was (and is!) an automated activity that didn’t need us to facilitate it. Which kept the cost down. And it had a classic team building activity style. A bunch of people were in difficulty and needed a team of people to rescue them. How they went about tackling that challenge was the mechanism that delivered both team fun and team learning.

At that time, we thought that it would have a wider appeal than to only remote teams. The global financial crisis had a big impact on training budgets and the event industry as a whole. We thought that an automated activity that kept the cost low would be of interested to co-located teams as much as remote teams. Budgets may have reduced, but the need for morale-boosting team building was higher than ever at the time. And so it proved. Space Rescue proved to be a big hit. We were running for teams with sizes ranging from 4 people to over 1,200 in no time.

Brand

We needed a brand to market Space Rescue by. And we came up with Team Building Rescue. It seemed appropriate. With the help of our then online marketing partners, Red Evolution (still highly recommended by the way!), we bought the teambuildingrescue.com domain and put Space Rescue front and centre. Our intention was always to develop the site with new activities and that we did as we started to expand our portfolio. MiniTreasure (also still available) came next and we added it to the site. MiniTreasure was swiftly followed by VirtuWall (you guessed it – another still available).

But our newer activities, as they were then, had no element of rescue in them. MiniTreasure is a fun treasure hunt and VirtuWall, even in its infancy compared with the comprehensive activity platform it has since become, needed no one to be rescued. Team Building Rescue was, simply, no longer sufficiently descriptive of what our activities offered. After much soul searching – no one likes killing off a first child! – Global Team Building was born. A then new brand that was not only descriptive of what we offered then but broad enough to be descriptive of what was to come.

It doesn’t matter where a team is based or how spread out it is. Anywhere in the world. We’re very confident that Global Team Building has options that will work for you.

Our clients and prospective clients often ask us how their remote team members can talk with one another during a virtual team activity. Indeed, clients often ask us: What is the best meeting platform? As with many such questions, the best answer usually starts with: It depends…

Depends on what, though? It could be so many different things. The activity run will affect the answer for sure. If it is something along the lines of a remote escape room option, for example, it will be vital that each participant can see the room in question. Some such rooms are constructed entirely virtually, while others are real rooms transmitted by one or more webcams. Either way, the best meeting platform for such an activity will necessarily offer video as well as audio for all attendees.

Required features

But don’t all meeting platforms offer both video and audio? Well, yes – unless you are talking about a pure audio conference call, that’s true. But it is likely than in such a scenario as an escape room, the activity provider is fixed to one or maybe two meeting platform offerings. You can expect to follow their lead.

Other activities, such as our own, are completely neutral when it comes to the meeting platform to use. Our technology platform is completely web based and doesn’t require people to install any software. It doesn’t even require people to share screens. So long as the meeting platform used allows people to use a web browser, such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari – as well as talk with one another – our virtual team activities will happily run in parallel.

Our options do not even need people to see their teammates! Participants of ours are always too engaged within the activity to want to spend time looking at their colleagues!!

Best meeting platform

Since our options are neutral, we can’t really speak to the best meeting platform for anyone running one or more of our activities. But we can mention those that clients most commonly use.

As one of our clients is Microsoft, you’d expect that Teams would be one of those – and it is! Many clients use Teams as their meeting platform of choice. Another of our clients is Cisco, so in the same vein WebEx is also a prime choice for many clients – especially for larger events. Zoom is probably the third most popular, especially with those clients not quite of the same size as those that use the two giants of meeting platforms. But we also have clients use other meeting platforms, such as Amazon Chime (Amazon are also clients) and Google Meet.

Google are yet to experience any of our activities, but we live in hope that one day they will join our happy band of regular clients.

Some clients come to us because they are searching for a fun activity to offer their geographically spread team members. They then find that our options offer much more than just fun. They deliver real improvements to team spirit and remote team effectiveness. Others come because they recognize that their team has one or more issues of some kind. And if they are affecting the team’s ability to perform to its highest level, then a good virtual team building session could help enormously. So we’ve decided to try and help those that are looking for help with real issues by writing some virtual team building white papers.

Industry by industry

Not all remote teams face the same problems. Indeed, we’ve noticed that teams in different industries tend to exhibit slightly different issues. So, we thought we would create our virtual team building white papers on an industry-by-industry basis. Because many (though far from all!) of our client groups are in the Tech Industry in one way or another, we thought we’d start there. And it’s available now here.

It’s not easy to write a good white paper. It needs proper planning, dedicated research, thought leadership and an academic approach to writing. There are some good ones to look at here. We hope that ours demonstrates all those characteristics.

We’ve given it all the classic sections. A good Executive Summary. A more detailed introduction. A focus on the benefits of good team building within the industry in focus. Importantly, a whole section on optimizing profits through great team collaboration. An easy-to-understand conclusion. And an extensive bibliography to show that our research has real depth.

More to come?

We plan to add more virtual team building white papers. But first, we want to see how well received (or otherwise!) this first white paper is. We’re keen to see how many people choose to download it, of course. But we’re also hoping that people are kind enough to give us feedback on it.

If you get the urge to do that, please do use our contact form to let us know your thoughts. If the feedback is good (that doesn’t necessarily mean overwhelmingly positive – we’re hoping for ideas on how we can improve what we provide) then we’ll certainly respond by expanding the series. So, if there are any requests for our next industry to focus on, please do let us know.

Here in the UK, as we type this, we’re in the grip of an extended heatwave. We’re forecast to reach over 40 degrees on the Celsius Scale (104 degrees Fahrenheit) at its peak. If so, that will beat the current highest temperature ever recorded here. So, we got to thinking about what the ideal summer team building activity might be.

Our criteria were simple enough. It must be fun. The activity needs to be something that people can dress down for, ideally in loose, cooling summer clothes. And it simply has to involve ice cream. Some adrenaline-fuelled elements would be good to have as well!

Physical

If the team was able to all get together physically, we’d have a list a mile long of suitable options. Anything too physical might deter a few team members from wanting to join in, mind. So, it would need to offer variety to ensure that everyone felt comfortable and ready, willing and able to contribute to the team effort.

We think that should also all apply to summer virtual team building activities. Fun, summer clothing, ice cream and the option of something more adrenaline filled. But virtually – how?

Virtual

It’s about making people feel like they are at a summer event. Part of that can be “getting into” the summer theme. Ensuring people attend the virtual session dressed for the beach, perhaps. Asking people to come with a picnic. Getting people to have their own ice creams to hand. Summer makes a great theme for people to get into, for sure.

Part of it, though, is also what they are doing. And we think we have the perfect option for that. Our MiniScavenge activity offers a 3D scavenger hunt and treasure hunt, complete with team puzzles for participants to get their teeth into. When they’re not eating the ice cream, that is! It has a choice of (currently) 7 different scenes to choose from. And one of those is … an amusement park!

It’s great fun and participants love it. Among the things they have to do is to collect ice cream cones and lollipops. And for the adrenaline junkies, they can ride many of the attractions! Indeed, to answer all the treasure hunt clues, they must ride a few of them at least. Have a look at our 30-second fly-by here.

Who doesn’t like a good amusement park? And our amusement park is a great one. Even if it is in cyberspace. When it comes to seeking summer virtual team building activities, you know where to come.

Looking back at previous blog entries, we see that we have often focused on groups that are completely virtual in nature. That is, every individual works remotely. Yet many of our clients have a different mix to that. A hybrid one. One where some team members are based in one or more offices and others work from home. And these are brought together as one team within what can best be described as hybrid virtual meetings.

Often (though not always), those in a particular office all join from a single conference room in that office. If there’s more than one office involved, then those based in the other offices will probably act likewise, joining from their own conference rooms. And truly remote team members join the hybrid virtual meeting from their own locations, of course.

Chairperson quality

If there’s an issue with that style of meeting it is that those in remote locations find it harder – psychologically and logistically – to play as full a part in the meeting as their co-located colleagues. The quality of the chairperson makes a big difference to the quality of the meeting. An excellent chairperson will ensure that remote members get the same opportunities to contribute as those within the office.

Of course, the quality of the chairperson is also important for the quality of 100% co-located meetings! But for hybrid virtual meetings, the word “vital” applies. A chairperson of lesser quality can lose remote team members completely during the meeting. And, crucially, affect remote team members detrimentally post-meeting too.

Team activity

A key aspect in delivering well-run hybrid virtual meetings is delivering a session that is both productive and enjoyable. Having a team activity of some kind can help a lot in achieving both of those. A fun team activity will certainly increase the levels of enjoyment for the group. A well-designed activity can also provide the participants with learning that enables them to be more productive as a team post-event.

Overcome the risk

Many chair people choose to include a team activity of their own design and delivery. Yet that takes time to get that right for the group. And it comes with the danger that, if it fails to inspire the team, it can actually have the reverse effect than that intended. It can lower the quality of the meeting and demotivate the team. A well-chosen, professionally designed and delivered activity can overcome that risk.

If you’d like our professional advice for an upcoming meeting, please feel free to contact us.

Typical online team building events have a maximum number of people that is logistically sensible to run with. A few can genuinely handle very large numbers. But what if your team is at the other end of the scale? What if you need a small team online team building solution? Many online options really benefit from larger numbers and struggle to keep smaller groups happy with the experience.

We have options that are suitable for even the largest of groups. But what many clients don’t appreciate is that those same options are also suitable for small team online team building. Indeed, the smallest team size we’ve delivered for is just 3 people. And that’s something we have done many, many times.

Why is that?

Competition

Small teams present a different challenge than large teams. Whereas the challenge with large teams is usually logistical, the challenge with small teams is a lack of competition. That sounds odd, we know. But think about all of the team building activities you have experienced in the past. We think it was probably largely a competitive event. Competition drives most team building activities.

Our activities are suitable for small team online team building events because they do not need competition to enjoy them. Sure, competition plays a part in the experience when we do have a large enough group to have multiple teams. But they also present more than enough of a challenge for a team to get it’s teeth into without the extra push that a competitive, multi-team session generates.

Cost effective

Whether you are interested in something that is great fun or are looking for something more developmental, our options are worth considering. If development is your aim, check out Space Rescue. If you’re after something that everyone will enjoy, MiniTreasure or MiniScavenge are both great places to start. And all three of those are automated activities, they won’t break your budget either. Indeed, at the time of writing, MiniTreasure is only $15 per person.

And the great news is that all three of these small team online team building activities really will engage and challenge even the smallest of groups. No competition required to deliver a great event, happy team members and happy finance people. The phrase “no brainer” comes to mind.

As we have just finished tailoring our flagship option for a client, tailored online team activities are to the forefront of our thoughts just now. Indeed, we have been so focused on creating the ideal tailored experience for our client that it’s been a couple of weeks since our last blog entry. As we type this, the action for our client starts tomorrow and we’re ready. Ready enough, in fact, to now be able to create this blog entry – finally!

Tailored online team activities is something we’ve offered our clients ever since we launched our first online (Space Rescue) activity, back in 2008. In 2011, we launched what is still our flagship option – VirtuWall. Back then, clients usually ran it to give the participants a fun time. Occasionally, people also wanted a little bit of learning from it. Mostly, though, they were happy to offer everyone a good time with a fair amount of company-specific action for people to enjoy.

Widening horizons

Over the years, our clients have widened their horizons and wanted more and more from VirtuWall. And they’ve taken our horizons with them! We still very much do have clients who want just the fun aspect of VirtuWall. It’s fair to say, though, that the majority probably want more. This current client is an example of that. They see it as an ideal mechanism to deliver company-specific knowledge that they want the participants to assimilate. And along the way, to test them on it. That way, they get the statistics on how their folk are performing.

How do we do handle tailoring in such a case? Because we usually use a 3D scene as the delivery environment, we tailor the action to include both visual elements and message-specific tasks. For example, if we use our city scene, we populate billboards and posters etc. with client-specific (or message-specific) imagery. And/or we create 3D elements that are meaningful to the client. That might be as big as a store full of their products. Or as small as a few of their products around the place – or anything in-between. And usually plenty of 3D logos too!

Tailored tasks

For tasks, we take the message that people are focusing on and use those within the tasks. Some to simply highlight the messages. They may test knowledge (as for our latest activity) or to get the participants to engage with the message in some way. For example, if the client wants to focus on something like “innovation”, we give them a task that will require them to be innovative.

We want the participants to appreciate what our client contacts have done in engaging us to engage them! And we want to have fun with them too. We run VirtuWall and it’s a win-win for sure! Our contacts are thrilled with the feedback they get. Our participants love what the activity brings to them. And we’re equally thrilled when everyone is happy.

Degrees of tailoring

But we do not tailor all of our online team activities to the same degree. We often, for example, simply tailor a MiniScavenge scene to include visual elements for a relatively short team event. VirtuWall events typically run for weeks or even months (though they can run in an hour or so if required). MiniScavenge is usually run for an hour or two. So when a client wants a shorter tailored online team activity, we can respond to that too. Less time for the event, less tailoring required.

Leading a team with remote workers in is tough. Remote teams are harder to engage. The distance that people are from one another can have an impact. But the bigger impact comes from just being physically remote from one another. The lack of opportunity to just “bump into” people at the watercooler, for example, simply doesn’t present itself when there is no watercooler to bump into.

So if there are no “natural” opportunities for team members to develop their relationships beyond the daily workload, good leaders have to manufacture them. One great way of doing that, is to dedicate a small proportion of time within their whole team online meetings to something that is more about fun than it is about the day-to-day work. And there’s no better time to use them than right at the beginning of the meeting. People often call such agenda items “icebreakers”. For online meetings, virtual icebreakers are deployed.

Origin

Originally, the word referred to special kinds of ships of course. We’re focusing here on the other type of icebreaker. Yet, there are many similarities – hence the use of the word.

The ship version refers to the special ability of such ships to clear paths by pushing though pack ice – the frozen water on top of a canal or sea. Once a path is cleared, other ships can follow in the wake of the lead ship. If you couldn’t see this largest of links to meeting icebreakers before, you surely must now. Where leaders lead, team members follow. Hopefully towards a better, more productive meeting!

Meetings and professional options

What are the options, though, when a leader needs a virtual icebreaker? There are many, many websites that offer a collection of icebreakers leaders can run themselves. As far as we can see, they all offer the same kind of activities. And most of them are variations on party games of some kind. They can be fun, but people can quickly become bored with repetitive meeting exercises. There’s only so many trivia quizzes people can stand, for example!

That’s when people turn to professional options. The advantage of such activities is that they can add to the appreciation levels of the participants. People really can appreciate well designed virtual icebreakers. And that leads to nice, warm feelings for the leaders who introduce them to their meetings, of course. More than that, professional options often add some genuine team learning to the mix so that the session is more than just fun. And people appreciate that too.

There are some disadvantages as well. Professional activities often can require more time to be allotted to them than a meeting agenda can really afford. And, speaking of affording things, they can be difficult to justify financially for a relatively short time. And some are unable to cope with the group size – either because it is larger than the activity can handle or because it is too small to run effectively.

An excellent choice

Our MiniTreasure activity is, we think, an ideal option for anyone looking for virtual icebreakers. It has the advantage of being a professional activity, without the disadvantages of group size restrictions of any kind or cost. It is often used by very small client teams – sometimes as small as just 3 people! And also by very large groups – indeed, even into the many thousands. And it doesn’t cost an arm or a leg, either. As we write this, the cost per person for up to 100 participants is just $15. So, a team of 10 people can have a great icebreaker in a virtual setting for just $150. And as teams get larger, we publish a discount structure that drops the per person cost. That makes it even more attractive as the group size increases!

If your meetings sometimes feel frosty – especially at the start – you could do much worse than adding a good icebreaker to your agenda. It can be worth its weight in gold. And MiniTreasure is a great place to start if you’re thinking of making it a professional affair.