Team Building Middle East

Corporate playgrounds… page 1 2

From company cricket tournaments to desert survival courses, teambuilding is big business, and the Middle East is emerging both as a developing market in this sector as well as a venue for challenging and different programmes. Kathi Everden reports

Teambuilding hit the headlines recently, albeit in the sports pages of international media, when it was revealed that the venerated Tiger Woods was made to join in a singing session organised by the Ryder Cup team captain in a bid to generate fighting team spirit prior to the US/Europe golf tournament. Unfortunately, the US failed to play in harmony and suffered yet another defeat, but the attempt to bond together a group of normally individualistic golf players signalled the value of teamwork, an area increasingly highlighted as a key to success in the corporate world.

This sector – designated teambuilding, team development, corporate bonding, and various other decidedly clunky terms – is one that is taking off in the Middle East, where potential to exploit the relatively immature nature of the corporate culture in the destination is exciting the interest of global specialists from overseas.

And, with increasing demand for new and challenging events from international clients, the region is also being targeted as a corporate playground for innovative products organised in conjunction with a conference or incentive – adding a new dimension to the MICE product on offer.

Across the world’s mature markets, teambuilding continues to enjoy intrinsic value as a corporate tool but it is a sector where ROI has entered the equation, upping the ante for organisers to add in a measurement tool to justify expenditure.

Director of Asia-based Tirian, Andrew Grant, concurs with this view of the increasing sophistication of the market. “Most organisations now recognise that good teams require ongoing targeted improvement, not a one-off fix,” he said.

“Basic games that focus on the ‘feel good’ factor can be perceived as childish and are no longer as popular as programmes that are more intelligent in their approach, as companies have to justify the outcomes and see the results.”

And, while fun and games has become serious business, Grant emphasised that ‘teambuilding’ itself is a term that now has more depth than the perceived notion of homogenising a cross section of people into a harmonious whole.

“Quality teambuilding programmes should help people recognise their personal strengths and areas of challenge in the context of a team. They should also enable individuals to become more tolerant of each other and develop communication strategies vital in multi cultural regions such as Asia and the Middle East.”

He stressed that teambuilding events should not simply promote ‘group think’ between like-minded people but instead encourage expressions of diversity while working with a common goal in mind.

But, as the science of teambuilding reaches more sophisticated levels and aspirations are on the rise, achievable results are not always matched by budgets or delivery.

According to Anne Thornley-Brown, president of Toronto-based Executive Oasis International, many companies still tend to view teambuilding as a discretionary expense. “Companies such as ours have to be more creative in what we present and the key challenge is to differentiate yourself in the market by presenting options that focus on applications – however, clients are rarely realistic in their expectations.” Thornley-Brown said a cost per person of between US$200 and US$350 could be justified for a business related teambuilding session, dropping to US$100 for a team recreation session, but many companies allocate just US$50 and request multiple facilitators, debriefing and business applications.

“One factor contributing to this ‘sticker shock’ is customer confusion about teambuilding versus team recreation since many organisers market activities that are strictly recreational and try to pass them off as teambuilding.”

It’s a trend that Tirian’s Andrew Grant also robustly decries: “We design programmes, we don’t just run games,” he said. “Those DMCs that copy us have no concept of the thinking behind our events and why particular activities were set up.

“We had one exercise where a team of bankers had to develop a strategy to cross a river and the whole point was they had to consider risk versus return, which is integral to their business – it was not just a matter of building a bridge, which was what outside observer would have seen,” he said.

“There is a need for education as the market expands as clients often don’t know what to ask for, while a hotel might offer a teambuilding product that simply entails the recreation manager supervising a beach Olympics.”

Orgueil has found similar trends in Europe, where teambuilding is moving away from the old image of outdoor games and bungee jumping.

“Events should be based around learning and team dynamics, but it has to be a fun environment away from the office where participants can relax and have a good time away from office politics,” he said.

While there is market for longer away-day retreats and survivor-type exercises, Tirian sees a great deal of growth in the conference-related sector.

“By taking the intellectual content of the morning conference and building on this with a team session, participants can apply what they have heard about and it becomes a three-dimensional exercise from learning through to facilitation.”

In response to this demand, those companies specialising in team development have become more cerebral in their product offerings, moving on from simple song and dance between-speech sessions to intricate games and events.

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