Gemalto Sales Team Development Meeting

Last Updated (Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:34)

Quest were asked to work with a team from Gemalto once again in mid June, this time to deliver a team building event following a sales meeting the previous day.

The venue was the delightful Marriott Hotel Meon Valley between Winchester and Southampton in Hampshire. The delegates at the sales meeting were drawn from a number of Gemalto teams including sales, marketing, project management and operations. The overall objective set by the Gemalto commisioning team for the team building programme was that it should give the delegates the opportunity to work in sub-teams and experience some competition but also to give them an opportunity to work together on a larger overall task.

Integrating Teams

Quest ran a bespoke version of their Integrating Teams programme: At the beginning of the morning the 47 delegates were divided into 6 sub-teams and given a detailed briefing. Those sub-teams, accompanied by a member of Team Quest, then rotated around 6 Activity Points spread through the grounds and meeting room spaces at the hotel, and took part in a number of cerebral and physical challenges.

Those challenges ranged from solving a very complicated and large three dimensional picture puzzle; to having to move large quantities of water across a fiendishly difficult obstacle course and then use the water to release a ball; to learning the basic skills of shepherding and work with up to 4 sheepdogs in moving an obstinate gaggle of geese from one pen to another! (A very experienced shepherd was on hand to help!). These challenges linked with mastering muskets and mortars from the Battle of Waterloo era, and the skills of archery and golf meant that the teams experienced a varied, busy and demanding morning.

Careful communication, thoughtful role allocation and some creative thinking were in high demand to ensure that the teams completed each challenge and were awarded information tokens as a reward.

As the teams moved into the afternoon session they were enjoying the rewards of success and doing well with token collection, but as they then progressed to the final activity of the day not all of the available tokens had been earned and as the briefing for that final task was given, it was clear that they would have to start with some valuable information still missing!

The Bigger Picture

The final challenge, which required all of the 6 teams to come together and operate as one large team, involved all of the delegates painting a giant picture, 'The Bigger Picture'. The A5 sized tokens that teams had earned during the morning and early afternoon all bore parts of a painted image, but all the tokens were mixed up, (and four were still missing). The team had to sort the images, scale them to fit the artists canvasses with which they were provided. They then had to reproduce the images using all of the painting equipment provided by Quest.

Spread across 6 large painting tables the teams set to with real enthusiasm and before long, the meeting room looked like a scene from the TV show 'Art Attack!' Gradually the overall bigger picture started to take shape, and with minutes to spare before the countdown clock ran down, all 36 canvasses were laid out on the floor and The Bigger Picture was complete. All 47 delegates working efficiently together as one team had created an amazing picture, and had enjoyed a terrific day of team building.

2009-gemalto-sales-team-development-meeting