“Really great session getting to know my peers a little better.” – Angela
Team events and conferences are all about bringing colleagues together. Indeed, giving team members the opportunity to mix and deepen their relationships with peers has arguably never been as important as in today’s age of working from home, Zooming and hybrid working.
However, these events can sometimes be a little dry, dull and overlong. That’s why Team Building With Purpose takes a different approach to team building – holding events that are charged with energy, fun and excitement. And, when you add an extra sense of purpose to a team-building event, you know it’s going to hit the mark.
This was certainly the case with the Starlight ‘Sparklers’ team building session that we recently ran for IAG in Melbourne, for their Partners & Platforms team.
“What I enjoyed most was connecting with people outside my core business, learning about an organisation with great purpose, and being able to work together to create something that would help children and teens in need.” – Vic
With any team bonding session, it’s critical to provide a platform for team members to get to know their colleagues – especially those they don’t get the chance to usually interact with – and deepen the connections with those they only know through work tasks.
We facilitated this for the IAG Partners and Platforms team by staging a session where they learnt about the world of a charity – in this case, the Starlight Children’s Foundation. It gave the group a chance to shift the focus momentarily away from work-based discussions, deadlines and pressures. Instead, they talked about the really important things in life – friends, family, life itself and – specifically in the context of the Starlight ‘Sparklers’ session – about the incredible work that this charity does in bringing happiness and smiles to sick kids.
Besides learning about what the Starlight Foundation does, the group learnt all about positive psychology and how this underpins the charity’s work. The group also learnt how to make use of all the insights our team shared with them in their own lives, and how to use positive psychology to strengthen the team’s resilience and resolve to cope with the pressures of work.
By far the greatest impact on the group, however, came when they collaborated as a group to put together ‘Sparkle’ packs (toy hampers) for sick kids that were given to the charity to distribute to in hospital. This final exercise provided everyone with a sense of purpose and achievement, and left the IAG group with a meaningful legacy that they could be proud of.
“Knowing that we might have made even a small difference for a child was brilliant.” – Reid
