Amazing Race Team Building

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If you are a fan of the Amazing Race TV show you will love this Team Building exercise. This exercise is a small and adapted version of the show.

Greek philosophers said that you can learn more about a man in an hour of playing than in a year of conversation. The main aim of any Team Building is to strengthen the team through activities that appeal to each individual operating skills, integrating them with harmony and team spirit for a strong and motivated organization.

The Amazing Race Team building was an incredible race through Cheile Gradistei Fundata Resort in competition with other teams. The teams were in competition for arriving first at Finish and also for collecting the biggest amount of points / money.

The internet offers for this team exercise a lot of resources, starting with the game concept that can be found on Wikipedia.

I have adapted the concept as it follows:

The team are made not only by two, but by 7 to 14 members that work together day by day (from the same team/department) in order to strengthen their unity. The objectives of the game were:

• Finishing the race first 
• Gaining as much points / cash from the track

At the end there were two prizes: one for the team that finished the race first and another one for the team that gathered the biggest number of points through the race. The team that finishes first can also be the one that gathers the biggest number of points from the track.

Through the game there were 10 mandatory check points, 2 final challenges and also optional detours that led to extra points / money.

The route info map represented the resort plan and also the game’s instructions.

The track and Check points were marked with Route markers and they also had instructions that led to the next check point. The instructions were all riddles with hidden clues for the next check point. The teams had to plan, to organize, to communicate effectively both verbal and non verbal, solve riddles and work together in order to finish the race.

Fast forward option represented an opportunity for each team to buy, by credit the map with tips that led to all the check points. But the trick was that by the end of the race they had to collect all the points / cash that were available in the game (in detours) in order to pay the credit. If by the end of the race they couldn't gather all the money, even if they finished first they were disqualified because of debt.

Detours were optional but led to extra points / money and they could be found at some check points. In this game were 4 detours.

 

The Road block marked the end off all the check points and the beginning of final challenges. This one was an individual challenge. The team had to chose o team member to take the quiz. Before assigning the person they knew what the quiz was about in order to select the best person for the task. In this case the task was a small quiz from the driver’s license exam and some questions about the organizations values. But it can be anything from business or non business. The main idea is that the team selects the best person for the task and also the way they support this person through the task.

The Intersection was the final challenge of the race and was a team task. Here each team received an envelop with random words on each sheet of paper and with those words they had to create a sentence (“None of us can do alone as much as we can do together”). The trick here was that they had to complete this final task without speaking.

Debrief: Group dynamics was one of the aspects that we observed – how they divide tasks among team members, who took the leadership and how it coordinated the cooperation and collaboration between team members. During the debrief each participant was interviewed about his contribution to the team, about how he got along with other team members and not least how he felt in the team.

The objectives of the “Amazing Race” Team Building were:

• Increase trust between team members and mutual respect
• Team work
• Achievement of tasks and activities in informal conditions
• Stimulate feelings of belonging to the team and organization
• Relaxing, energizing and engaging team members

Amazing Race Team Building was more than a team-building, because it exceeds the simple idea of fun.