I Am Not Your Team Building Guru

I am not your team building guru and I got the opportunity to do team building with the Anthony Robbins Seattle Power Team, a Robbins fan and support group that is composed of many PNW stars.

“This was such a fun, event with a ton of experiential lessons. John and his team are professional from before start to after finish and over deliver. If you run a team, check him out.” -Noreen Brower, Power Team Coordinator and Anthony Robbins Coach

The Anthony Robbins Power Team is a powerful group of people who are committed to living full out.
They wanted to learn team building so they called Geoteaming.
Geoteaming created a customized course in Bellevue, WA.
The app-based scavenger hunt taught team building.
The surprise is that this event taught cross-team collaboration.
And it even taught valuable Tony Robbins skills.
While discovering new skills in their team.
Everyone has the opportunity to create a breakthrough.
While they had a blast exploring Bellevue.
Meeting new people, making new friends.
Every team won a prize!
Every team learned valuable team and leadership lessons.

How do we predict winning teams?

For this event, it was easy to think Team Spark with the green bandanas was going to win this event as they completed their team cheer first with a LOT of energy.

But over my 20 years of experience, I used to be easily fooled by initial team energy  Team In It To Win It took an extraordinary long time to choose their team name AND the difference is that they were really evaluating each other’s opinion and when they agreed, they all agreed, not the fake kind of “yeah, I’ll go along with that” agree, but with team commitment.  This signaled to me that this team could be detailed oriented, has established a team process and was willing to take the time to value each team member.  While it appears “slow” at the beginning, I believe “culture trumps power” for team work, a team that has a better process will almost always win against a team with pure power.  This played out in this game when there was unexpected construction at the mid-point meeting location, making the usual access not available.  With 3 minutes to go, In It To Win It found the mid-point, but Spark had attempted to short cut through the park and hit chain link fences.  With no additional buffer time, they arrived late to the mid-point, thus losing 1/2 of their points.  When Spark arrived, then I learned they got “stuck” at City Hall, with a challenge of counting all the stairs, they counted the wrong set of stairs and then stayed there for a long time until they finally figured out the correct answer.

It’s fascinating to watch team momentum.  We have a theory that says a team should complete the easiest mission first just to create team momentum before tackling the hardest missions.  In this case, combined with City Hall and coming in late to the mid-point, this team had a very difficult time recovering their momentum.  We like to say “the sign of a GREAT team not how the team is doing when they’re winning, it’s how well can they turn it around when they’re losing!”  In this case, each team huddled and met with themselves and each other and put together a much better plan.  Spark did recover by scoring much more points in the 2nd half and In It To Win It kept their lead to be the winning team today.

If you don’t want us to be your team building guru now and have as much fun and value as these people, don’t fill out the form below immediately.

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