In recent years, the range of Team Building activities and formats on offer in Hong Kong has grown considerably. Yet plenty of people will tell you that many team activities stay skin-deep — they spark nothing, and can even become a box-ticking exercise that wastes time and resources. So when you set out to pick an activity that suits your own team, what should you keep an eye on?
From quantity to quality — mindfulness is the key!
In recent years many large companies, such as Google and Facebook, have placed particular emphasis on "mindfulness" (mindfulness) as an element of their Team Building activities. Mindfulness is a mind-training tool backed by a large body of psychological research, designed to make thinking clearer, to manage emotions and stress more effectively, and to boost creativity and focus. As a form of team training, mindfulness activities can also help reboot relationships between colleagues, the team atmosphere, and even attitudes towards work.
According to one survey, companies that take part in mindfulness activities see each employee gain an average of 62 extra minutes of productivity per week, an average 36% reduction in work stress, and average savings of HK$20,000 in costs per employee per year. To unlock the hidden potential in your team members' minds, start with Team Building!
Find the right training, and create real team value!
So how do you bring mindfulness into a Team Building activity? Just as team training comes in many forms, mindfulness isn't about sitting still and doing nothing. Here we recommend four activities that genuinely help teams put mindfulness into practice.
1. A magnifying glass for the senses: Horticultural Creative Workshop
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Contact with nature helps heal body and mind. Horticultural therapy works through hands-on contact with plants, soil and other natural materials: in the process of arranging and caring for plants, it relaxes body and mind and heightens the sense of beauty. The Horticultural Creative Workshop has you working up close with plants while making a potted arrangement, observing the fine details of the natural world, and so sharpening focus at work and aesthetic awareness. Experiencing a meaningful creative process helps generate a sense of accomplishment and belonging; learning to care for plants helps a team treasure growing together.
Best suited to: industries with particular demands on aesthetics and creativity — for example, design and quality assurance.
Bonus: once the workshop is finished, you can take home your very own potted plant, or choose to keep it at the office and tend it together, deepening that sense of belonging.
Details: https://bit.ly/2Ej1f8d
Relaxation rating: ★★★★☆
Teamwork: ★★☆☆☆
Fun factor: ★★★☆☆
2. A new team flavour: Mindful Cooking Class
The Mindful Cooking Class uses cooking as the means of practice: by observing the subtle changes in food, you observe the state of your own mind, and so arrive at a mindful experience. In the Mindful Cooking Class, team members learn to use all five senses to observe the subtle changes in food, which effectively sharpens focus at work; sharing a meaningful creative process and the results of the team's cooking effectively strengthens team cohesion and a sense of achievement at work.
Best suited to: any team, and especially good for improving communication across departments.
Bonus: once the workshop is finished, you can eat the dishes the team has cooked together through its shared effort.
Details: https://bit.ly/35qO3K5
Relaxation rating: ★★☆☆☆
Teamwork: ★★★★☆
Fun factor: ★★★★☆
3. Stepping into MindForest: Mountain Hiking
Nature humbles us, and there is no better way to feel how small we are within it than to walk right into it. On a mountain hike, team members leave the noise of the city behind together; the climb encourages mutual help and encouragement, helping deepen their understanding of one another and strengthen team interaction. Practising mindfulness out in the wild and sensing the textures of the natural world effectively soothes the anxieties of city life.
Best suited to: improving communication across departments; office workers who work indoors long-term and lack the chance to get out into nature.
Bonus: TreeholeHK designs hiking routes that balance activity and stillness, meeting the need to take in the beauty of the great outdoors while also suiting a team's quiet retreat.
Details: https://bit.ly/2PnZjBA
Relaxation rating: ★★★★☆
Teamwork: ★★★☆☆
Fun factor: ★★★★☆
4. Stretching body, mind and spirit: Mindful Yoga Studio
As an integrated way to exercise body and mind, the Mindful Yoga Studio works through observing the state of body and mind, cultivating both inner and outer, helping with deep relaxation and unlocking the latent potential of body and mind. Mindful yoga emphasises bodily practice, helping lift team morale and productivity; by stretching body and mind, mindful yoga helps relieve work-related stress, helping you reach deep relaxation and improving focus at work.
Best suited to: participants with any level of familiarity with yoga, across different age groups. Especially well suited to people with a faster pace of life who need effective ways to relieve stress and to get moving.
Bonus: a yoga studio with a mindfulness element helps participants build the grit to train body and mind, achieving a unity of knowing and doing.
Details: https://bit.ly/2RRWsCC
Relaxation rating: ★★★★★
Teamwork: ★★★☆☆
Fun factor: ★★★★☆
Mindfulness "through" objects
By letting team members create their own potted arrangements, we encourage them to use plants to express their thoughts about themselves and the team — so that even in a quiet, simple activity, the team can still deepen their understanding of one another and communicate more profoundly. Creating a horticultural piece together as a team also strengthens collaboration and rapport.
Full contact with nature
Leave the indoor team building behind, let the team embrace the natural environment and find its own rhythm in the freedom of the great outdoors. Along the way we will invite your team to use natural resources for team building activities, creating comfortable, enjoyable shared memories for your team and strengthening mutual understanding and relationships.
Purpose-built mindful experience workshops
A TreeholeHK original: mindfulness X 3D printing X team building activities. Let the team relax body and mind amid a busy workload, using mindfulness not only to care for emotions and cope with stress, but also to weave mindfulness further into team communication, genuinely understanding team members' needs, and using a 3D pen to give the colleagues beside you a small, heartfelt gift.
Comments
No comments yet — share your thoughts.