Team Building in Berlin

Team Building with Shell Again

Quest was delighted to be asked to work with Shell again in October. Following the great success of the team building in June, the decision was made to include the opportunity for the Retail Leadership team to work together on a task totally separate from normal work roles.

Destination Berlin

In the past seven years Quest has become highly adept at pushing its fully mobile team building services reputation to the limit, and this event placed another requirement for overseas delivery. The whole Shell event was to be delivered in the exciting German capital city Berlin, and due to the amount of equipment required driving was the only travel option.

A different Team Building Programme

Although the team building in October was to be delivered to a different team from the one that Quest worked with in June, unsurprisingly there are Shell people who work or are involved with both teams, and some of the attendees in Berlin, had already had a great Quest team building experience in England.

This team building event therefore had to be totally different, and in view of the time of year, Shell wanted it to take place indoors. After considerable debate with Shell event sponsors, it was decided to deliver a combination of filming and artwork, in a team building event called “Picture This ~ Its TV Newscast!”

A Stunning Venue

Shell had chosen the highly impressive Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin in which to run the whole event, and that venue was able to deliver terrific meeting rooms and break-out areas which made the task of delivery very straightforward. Linked with the levels of service delivered by the hotel staff, this made the whole team build a pleasure to run.

In addition to being highly efficient and well run, The Grand Hyatt Hotel is full of stunning pieces of painted and sculptured art including huge tables some of which are made from carved logs and others made of thousands of steel bolts that make musical sounds!

Teams from Shell Out-perform Again

Having worked with Shell on team building events on a number of occasions, Team Quest had high expectations of how Retail would perform. We were not to be disappointed.

The 95 participants were divided into three sub teams, and each one moved to their break out area. They then absorbed the highly detailed written briefing which told them they had 120 minutes to prepare a television news programme which would be filmed live and in one take and it had to be exactly 7 minutes long. Not 6 minutes 43 or 7 minutes 12, but exactly 7 minutes.

All team members had to appear in front of camera at least once, and to really make the team building a challenge they had an eye watering list of Shell centric items, some fun, some serious that had to be included. A huge task in a short time frame!

And Then it Got Tougher

As the three sub-teams tried to absorb all of that, they then turned the last page of their briefing to find that they also had to further sub-divide their teams in order to work on painting their third of a huge TV studio set back drop. This had to be painted on 72 artists canvasses for Team Quest to then mount on backdrop frames.

However, the catch was that each sub-team was required to paint their portion of the whole bigger picture on a random set of the total 72 canvasses. So great collaboration was required with the other two sub-teams to ensure the final backdrop all fitted together and looked the part. Some team building task.

Storming, Forming, Norming and Performing

The three sub-teams quickly moved through the first three of those classic team behaviour stages, and high performance was soon in clear evidence. As the clock ticked towards live camera, they were thrown further “curved balls” by Team Quest to keep them on their toes.

As we expected from Shell, perfection was their aim, and during the final part of the team building preparation phase, all three sub-teams moved to full rehearsals, as well as ensuring their part of the back drop was complete. Perfection was being delivered.

Stunning Performances

The clock counted down from 10 to zero and the gut wrenching words “Live Camera” rang out. The first team were in front of camera and their performance started. Just under half an hour later and the team building was just about done.

All three teams had produced terrific news programmes, which were professionally delivered, imaginatively thought out, and in places hilariously funny. Some of Team Quest then delivered a pacey debrief and wind-up, whilst others worked at the editing process for the videos which were eagerly anticipated for viewing immediately after Shells evening team dinner. A great success all round.