As soon as I saw the thumbnail from this video I knew I had to write a blog around the image. Title: Fun team building. What else could it be?!? And how well the picture and video below communicate the intense fun had by all at our recent program for the Owen Graduate School of Business at Vanderbilt University.
As part of orientation, Owen staff thought it would be a natural to welcome students to Music City by having them make music themselves. Table groups broke into teams, with each team creating lyrics to a well-known melody. With twelve teams working separately, yet sharing the same ballroom, spontaneous laughter broke out from all corners and the energy level intensified as teams competed to create compelling lyrics. It was fun team building for each group, yet in different ways, as teams quickly developed their own lyric themes, and their own way of collaborating.
Fun Team Building Evolution
Teams of about twenty each, all strangers, got together with an assignment. Create song lyrics about their expectations as new students, their hopes, their fears etc. We assigned each team a well-known melody so they could focus on lyrics and then on performance. As my staff of hit songwriters and I floated throughout the room, coaching each team, we noticed the evolution of energy; from hesitancy to tentative collaboration to energetic brainstorming and then…people were dancing. Actually, groups began to choreograph dance moves, acting out the lyrics and getting into a musically competitive spirit before they took the stage.
Twelve teams created twelve unique sets of lyrics about similar experience and the results were so entertaining. As each team took the stage, audience expectation rose waiting to see and hear what would come next. Every group got laughs. It seemed to me the on-stage improvisation rose with each performance. This was truly fun team building in ways that are hard to plan but have great payoff. The energy and the feeling of camaraderie that was created is still ringing in my ears.