Cooking Up Teamwork - Innovative Teambuilding

At last, for the less rugged amongst us, Lyle English offers us a innovative teambuilding activity that is suitable for trainees of all ages and genders.

For many years now, Team Building programmes have typically involved outdoors activities such as climbing trees, abseiling or building - often in cold and wet weather! Whilst these can be great fun, more and more companies are actively looking for ‘something different for their programmes.

Driven by this need and the passion that I have for cooking, an alternative teambuilding programme, ‘Cooking up Teamwork’ was developed and launched some 2 years ago. Since then it has proved a great hit with a variety of companies – some coming back for repeat programmes.

Teambuilding and cooking are remarkably similar activities – both require the participant to utilise creativity and experimentation inside clearly defined boundaries whilst also working towards a desired result.

Programme Outcomes
• It provides an opportunity to learn the skills required for effective teamwork. It also provides an opportunity to get to know the people you work with, away from the office. The team will be able to evaluate how they currently work together and to identify their strengths and weaknesses.
• The kitchen is a familiar environment to most people, so familiar that participants will forget they are in a team building or learning environment. The same skills and strategies that they use on the job follow
them into the kitchen.
• The team will work together and get to know each other better in an environment that is familiar yet, in a very real way, challenging.
• People have the incentive – good food.  And good food is the reward as long as everyone understands their role and their importance to the end product.
• You will now know that Bob from accounting can make a mean Tian of West Ireland Crab and that the CEO doesn’t look quite so foreboding with flour on his nose!

The Workshop, which can be one or two days, has two components. The first is the workshop itself, were our facilitator will employ a variety of techniques and activities. Activities are chosen based on your needs: whether the team needs to get to know each other better, build greater cooperation, trust, and cohesiveness or be more creative.

The second phase takes place in the kitchen where the team prepares a gourmet meal, which they will later enjoy. Inherent in the process will be challenges to the group’s creativity, communication skills, cooperation and time/resource management.

While sampling the delights of the kitchen, we lead a debriefing of the kitchen experience. This experience, like the classroom workshop, is tailored to the client’s needs. Everything from the menu to the preparation techniques is designed to underline the skills needed by the team to achieve its full potential.

The Fee Includes:
• A trained facilitator who will engage with the team to define their specific needs.
• A custom agenda of activities designed to facilitate the team’s needs.
• A master chef instructor to coach the team in the kitchen.
• Use of a fully-equipped kitchen and meeting room.
• Midday snack and gourmet meal.
• Complimentory Personalised Chef’s apron for each participant.
• Commemorative photos and ‘Big Brother’ style video.

Over the past two years ‘Cooking up Teamwork’ has been facilitated for a range of companies in a variety of service and manufacturing sectors.

Whilst some programmes have been held on one day, the majority have been held over two days, making it a very special residential, over night experience. As venues, two great locations have been used with much success.

One is the amazing Ghan House. Situated in Carlingford, it is a unique eighteenth century Georgian house. Just over one hour drive from Dublin and Belfast Airports and is recommended as one of the “Best 100 places to stay in Ireland� every year since 1998, by food correspondent John McKenna.

The other venue sometimes used is the Clontarf Castle Hotel in Dublin. Located in Dublin’s leafy Northside suburbs, Clontarf Castle Hotel is part of a privately owned Irish collection of hotels and is a stone’s throw from a city bursting with life, energy and vitality, history and history in the making. With turrets, tapestries and an ancient history, the thick Castle walls conceal a hotel interior that would not be out of place in Manhattan or Miami.

For further information and a quote for a very different teambuilding experience for your team, contact CCS Training on 028 3831 6060.

Lyle English