Thought I’d share a couple lines on a simple, cost-effective team event we created recently. The audience was a tricky one – they don’t take well to ‘team building’. 

Nothing new, as groups can have pre-conceived ideas about what team building is… typically based on stuff a ‘friend of a friend’ has encountered a dozen years back.

But we get all that. This group was the senior leadership team from a global insurance company – 60 executives who just needed some energy injected into their meeting and something to grease the networking/communication wheels. The client wanted to stimulate conversation, help facilitate connections – old and new – and inject a bit of fun into proceedings.

The solution was a simple, relatively low-cost, easy to stage and quick to set up team event – designed to engage guests in learning something new and different; something they may even take home with them and share a story or two about the experience. Impress their friends at a dinner party… or maybe the kids!

The ‘Master of All’ event was based around two ‘masterclasses’ – a magic and a caricature workshop, lead by an expert in each field. Over 2 hours, guests learnt a couple of nifty tricks (and took away a branded deck of magical cards) and created caricatures of their colleagues. All without having to leave the 5* hotel, and definitely without having to fire any paintball pellets.

The event would lend itself to a host of similar masterclasses – antiques dating, chocolate making, cake decorating, circus skills… even flower arranging! The trick is tailoring to the audience.