How Does Outdoor Team Building Bring the Team Together?

Getting teams together to share in a meaningful or fun experience can seem like a daunting task at first. Especially if you are having difficulty forming a good balance of professional and personal relationships with decent rapport in your team.

Bringing teams together under one key goal or challenge is one of the best ways to form lasting connections, motivate, inspire, and break down the barriers that hinder collaboration and success in teams. Outdoor team building activities are the best way to bring your team together in one central location under a common goal.

Take your team out of their regular workspace and give them the opportunity to collaborate in a new environment while soaking up some much needed sunshine. Your team will thank you for the opportunity to get to know their colleagues in a unique way that isn’t just your average Friday afternoon drink.

6 Outdoor Team Building Activities to Bring Teams Together

1. Aqueduct

An indoor or outdoor activity, Aqueduct is a team building activity where teams work together under one common goal. There is no winning team in the Aqueduct challenge. This activity will see your team constructing a water pipeline or Aqueduct out of only pipe, bamboo, and sticky tape. Your delegates will at first be divided into teams and asked to construct a section of a working Aqueduct. Some members of the team will be holding the sections together while others tape. Each team will have a limited number of resources available to them so they must use each material wisely.

Once the teams are almost finished building their section they will be stopped and told that they now must connect each section of the Aqueduct together using the leftover pool of materials from all teams. Your entire group will need to work together to complete a single goal, building a working Aqueduct. This event has an all-hands-on-deck approach and is the perfect outdoor team building activity for bringing teams together under the one-team and one-goal intuitive.

2. Amazing Race

Amazing Race is a classic and popular outdoor team building activity, and for good reason. The Amazing Race is a scavenger hunt style event where your group are broken up into teams to race around your chosen city, resort, or local area. The race consists of checkpoint challenge sites where each team will compete in a fun challenge designed to increase problem solving skills and use lateral thinking to complete. These challenges will see your team working together, engaging, and communicating in new alternative ways. Forming better relationships with their teammates and larger cohort through friendly competition.

There are several unique challenges that each team will participate in. These challenges include pyramids, where teams will have to restack a set of wooden blocks of varying lengths in a relay style, but you can’t place a larger block on top of a smaller one. There is a number triangle where nine numbers are spread out in a triangle shape and the team must arrange the numbers so that they equal the same number on each side. The challenge Zoom where teams must put a storyboard back in its correct order – the trick is it must stay only in your hands. There are many more engaging games that are available on an Amazing Race. You can even tailor the specific challenges and themes to match your company values or conference themes. If you're worried about the physical capabilities of your team, don’t worry. The Amazing Race is technically not a race as the first team to finish is not the winner. It is more about the points that are accumulated along the way.

3. Scramble

The Scramble is perfect for groups who are short on time or on budget. The key difference between the Scramble and the Amazing Race is that there are less facilitated checkpoints. Instead, there will be more challenging questions, IQ tests and unfacilitated bonus activities located around the city or resort.

4. Ransom

Your boss has been taken hostage, and it’s up to you to save them before the kidnapper’s strike! This is a fantastic event for those looking to spice up the average Amazing Race style activity. This outdoor team building activity is sure to bring your team together as it focuses on a central cause, getting the boss back from the kidnappers! Although traditionally this event focuses on the boss or important company information, you can take anything of your choosing hostage. Whether you want to fit a certain theme like Christmas, maybe Santa’s sleigh has gone missing, and he can’t deliver his presents, or Rudolph is missing (again) or even Santa himself. If your team loves their office space, coffee machine or Friday arvo drinks, you could even take them hostage. Whatever you feel will motivate your team the most. What team will be the one to save the boss!

5. Survivor

Survivor is the perfect event for teams looking for an outdoor team building event that will help bring teams together in one central location. Your delegates will be split into teams, or you can call them tribes for the sake of this event, to compete head-to-head in a rotation of fun and exciting challenges. These challenges will see your team working together through alternative means to win the greatest number of points for their team. Once each team has figured out the first challenge, they will go off to their respective first checkpoint. At the checkpoint they will compete head-to-head in a round robin style format. They will have a certain amount of time at each of these sites and once the buzzer sounds, they must move on to the next challenge. Some challenges include elimination footy, catapults, pyramids, cubes, archery, and shape shifter. The aim of the game is to work together in order to earn the greatest number of points for your team. The winning team will be crowned with real fake gold medallions!

6. Mini-Olympics

Bring the excitement of the Olympics to your next corporate event with a Mini Olympics. This outdoor team building event is designed to engage your team and bring them together through fun and competitive activities. This event may seem a little too physical and daunting for some at first, however you can tailor this event to suit the physicality of your team! You can choose whether each team would like to represent a country or if they would only like to be identified by the colour of their bandana. They can even make their own war cry. This event will see teams of 7-10 people rotate through various round robin style challenges. As you can imagine this event requires a large, flat grass or sand (beach) area to be facilitated on. This activity may also need a council permit which your organiser will get on your behalf.