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Experience Based Team Building – a conversation with Daniel O’Sullivan Team building expert
10 Plays3 days ago
Experience based team building brings remote workers together
Daniel O’Sullivan is the founder of Team Building Experiences.co.uk which does what its name suggests, providing team building experiences for every size and type of company.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Daniel and host Michael Millward discuss how changes in the way people work and socialise is changing how teams form and build at work.
Their conversation covers
- How smaller businesses are seeing the value of experience-based team building activities.
- Changing work patterns can create isolated and lonely workers
- How employee attitudes toward work are changing
- How social connections at work can improve work performance
- How the ‘know’ ‘like’ trust’ sales model applies to work relationships
- Changes in employee approaches to team building
- The barriers employers create that hinder team building.
- The team building that Daniel provides for his team
Discover more about Daniel O’Sillivan and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr and The Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster. The all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production process so easy. All the details are in the description.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abyssaida and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:32
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abbasida.
Meet Daniel O'Sullivan and Team Building Experiences
00:00:36
Speaker
Today, I'm going to be learning about teamwork and team building from Daniel O'Sullivan of the teambuildingexperiences.co.uk.
00:00:45
Speaker
Daniel is based in Oxford, the city of Spires. If I ever get to go, which I haven't done yet, I will make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can get trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, and so many other travel purchases. You can as well. There is a link and a discount code in the description.
Purpose of the Podcast: Thought Provocation
00:01:06
Speaker
Now that I've paid some bills, it is time to make up an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to.
00:01:18
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Daniel's Career Shift and Business Evolution
00:01:26
Speaker
Hello, Daniel. Hello, Michael. Hello, how are you doing today? Very well, thanks.
00:01:30
Speaker
Could we please start this episode of The Independent Minds where you're explaining a little bit about who Daniel O'Sullivan is and how you came to to set up team building experiences?
00:01:40
Speaker
Certainly, Michael. so I've been running an events and entertainment business now since 2012. We started that business just after essentially the financial crash that happened in 2008 that um led me from a banking career essentially into setting up and an events company in a spare bedroom. Quite a shift, isn't it?
00:02:02
Speaker
Banking to events? It certainly was. I mean, my my background was that I was always the person that was organizing everything for everyone. So I would always be the the the group organizer effectively. um And what I spotted um but back in 2012 was that there was essentially with the internet and the way that people were booking activities was changing. I built effectively a marketplace for events for um groups of people that wanted to go on HEN events, STAG events, birthday events, and also corporate and team building events. I ran that company until 2020 when we had the the pandemic, essentially. yes That completely changed my business. Overnight, we weren't able to get people together. And as a business that gets people together, that was a problem. So we looked at how we could actually start utilizing what we'd learned in the previous eight
Adapting to Virtual Team Building Needs
00:02:58
Speaker
years. and focused on what people actually wanted now. Then that we found from the corporate market was that people wanted experiences.
00:03:10
Speaker
We set up a brand called team building experiences, and we started promoting virtual entertainment for companies all over the world. And that was a ah big uptake for those virtual entertainment.
00:03:23
Speaker
So it was things like game shows, bingo nights, quizzes, all sorts of different virtual entertainment. And what we found is that with everybody obviously stuck at home, they were craving um a shared experience.
00:03:38
Speaker
In 2021, when the pandemic started to ease a little bit, people started to go back to wanting in-person experiences. So we launched our Keeping Things Fun brand, which was team building experiences in person, where we build relationships through experiences. And we've been building our own fun team events that has now taken us to to where we are today.
00:04:04
Speaker
Where are you today in terms of the types of events or the number of events that you're organizing and the sorts of organizations that you're working with? So we organize about 500 team building events each year. Daniel, I must admit, I was not expecting a number of that size. mr the minute it's ah It's a fairly large organization now. So the in in events terms, we're we're up to around 20 people now.
00:04:28
Speaker
We've got two bases. So we're in Oxford, in Rotherham. The types
Understanding Client Demographics and Preferences
00:04:33
Speaker
of experiences that we we look after, we have about 12 in-house events now, and we deliver those experiences all over the country to companies ranging from FTSE 100 right down to companies that have about 15 people. You're covering quite a range of different different types of events and different types of organisations.
00:04:54
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. i've recently done a study and we found that 40% of our clients are actually um companies that employ less than 20 people. Very interesting.
00:05:04
Speaker
Do you notice a difference between the size of the organisation and the type of events that they look for? i would say the biggest difference is the types of events that people book, I suppose, when it comes to, if it's a whole company event, the the people that turn up at the event are obviously everybody that's involved from finance to management to admin to sales.
00:05:30
Speaker
It's a real company culture that kind of comes to the event. With the larger organisations, we will obviously have departments or areas of departments.
00:05:41
Speaker
And we tend to find that there is more of ah a connection with those larger companies because they're essentially, you know, they could be a sales team of 15 people or a sales team of 20 people. So they, they work with each other every day, but where you've got a company of 50 people and with all the remote work and hybrid work, you can have a lot of people that are based all over the country, even though they're one company that's fairly small in size,
00:06:06
Speaker
they don't actually get to see each other
Enhancing Teamwork through Unique Experiences
00:06:08
Speaker
that often. them And so when you've got that hybrid arrangement for your employees, and they're not the day to day connection, I suppose having some sort of structured, ah hesitated to use the word formal there, but to use the word structured event can actually enhance the teamwork that you that you have.
00:06:27
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we have um and a number of different events. One of our most popular events is the Crystal Maze experience. That experience I tend to find is a really good experience for companies of all sizes because it it basically incorporates problem solving.
00:06:44
Speaker
as well as the fun, creativity. But it's when people get together to solve problems from all different departments. When they first come to the event, you can see that they're apprehensive, they're not too sure who everyone is, they kind of stick with their groups. And then within about an hour,
00:07:02
Speaker
solving three or four different problems you know there's a competitive element which is the key thing that we install, everything changes. People start getting to know each other, they start talking, they start really motivating each other to do well. When you talk about the crystal maze that's linked to the television program?
00:07:16
Speaker
It's very similar, yeah, very similar. So it's um it's ah essentially it's our crystal challenge experience. The teams are looking to collect as many crystals as possible. They collect crystals by solving problems. That then gives them time within the dome that and enables them to collect the number of tickets with resulting in the team that collects the most tickets wins the overall competition. So there's a lot of collaborative and energy and entertainment from all um participating from the first minute to the end.
00:07:45
Speaker
Probably a lot of lot of noise as well, I should imagine. Yeah, absolutely. yeah An immersive type experience. I've got a background in ah HR and training and development, and teamwork is always a big aspect of the work that you do in in that type of role. Listening to you talk there, yes, I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly why that happens. It's to break down the barriers between the silos that exist within some organizations. But i'm is there a particular part of that process, which actually you can see the the team building in front of you, or is it an outcome that happens? If someone hasn't had the experience that we've had, then It's easy to look at something like that and go, well, yeah, you're playing a game, so what?
00:08:33
Speaker
But they do work in terms of team working and building that community within within an organization that crosses the boundaries of the hierarchy and the organizational structure. You you do see that.
00:08:46
Speaker
But I'm wondering about if you, looking at it from outside of that, can actually see there is a point where these group this group of individuals have now formed a team.
00:08:58
Speaker
Absolutely. I would say the the outcome is the is the clearest indicator for me. One of the focuses that I looked at was the fact that there's a lot of loneliness at work um with, you know, like I talked about with the the hybrid and the work from home. And what I will experience, I was on an event last week. We we run ah what's called a betrayer's experience.
00:09:22
Speaker
One of the guys that we were handing a form out to, the first thing he said was like, how long is this going to take? You know, like he he was given the impression that he didn't really know anyone there. He didn't want to be there. He was kind of just like, I'm here because I have to. I watched him throughout the experience as a two hour event.
00:09:40
Speaker
After the first half an hour, he was engaging with the table. Hour in, he was having chats with loads of different people and you know on the table. By the end, their team ended up winning and they were all stood up cheering, shouting. and He literally came over to me and he was like,
Addressing Workplace Loneliness and Fostering Connections
00:09:54
Speaker
that was brilliant. I really enjoyed that. Thank you so much.
00:09:57
Speaker
And that for me was the outcome. i I get what you mean about the loneliness at work and that has only been heightened. by people working remotely as well. But it's very easy, I think, for lots of people to be in a workplace, whether that's an office, a factory, a workshop, wherever. And although you're in a group of people, it can be very lonely because you are not there as an individual human being. You're there as a function, a job performer.
00:10:25
Speaker
And unless someone has a reason to interact with you, as a result of the job that you do, people get get ignored and it can become very lonely as a result of that. So what you're doing is is providing the the situation, the game in many ways, but the situation in which people can start to be seen as, well, this may be overdramatic, but I'm not sure that it is, but they start to be seen as human beings rather than a job title. A hundred percent agree. And, you know, for me, the work culture, the way we, we don't phone people anymore, we, we instant message them. We have, you know, video calls potentially with our camera off all these sorts of factors, enhance that feeling of being a number.
00:11:16
Speaker
Um, and not being part of, you know, a community and the community part is something that I think we help bring to the table. Because these days, the way that the the world works is has changed a lot. If we look at the the bar and entertainment industry, the vast majority of traditional getting together and having a drink doesn't exist anymore. There's a big push towards competitive socializing. So places like Bounce Path, Flight Club, Sixes, all of these entertainment places are where people come together to have a shared experience and have a chat with their friends.
00:11:57
Speaker
And essentially what we're doing is we're bringing that as a mobile experience to their place of work or their away day. to enable them to have that similar experience that they would have potentially with their friends um down you know in the city.
00:12:10
Speaker
I remember, especially early on in my career, where the day would be normal, but then somebody would say, let's go to the pub for lunch. And of course, once you're outside of work, you're in an environment where you have to talk about other things. But what you're saying is that because of the way in which people are working now, the more remote remote workers, the hybrid workers, the people who are on the road, that doesn't happen as much as it used to. And people don't go to pubs generally as much as they used to. So what fills that gap?
00:12:46
Speaker
What fills that gap is the organizations, the employers themselves, have to provide that more structured situation where people are encouraged to learn about each other, which then forms the bonds and the experiences, which mean that they can then consider themselves to be part of a group, the building the community.
00:13:09
Speaker
What we're actually moving towards is perhaps that when we talk about or used to talk about teamwork, and we still do, but maybe we need to start thinking about the community of work. Absolutely. And, you know, for me, it's it's also that friend element as well that, you know, if you have a friend at work and, you know, you feel part of a community, you're going to produce better work. There's ah an element of, I'll do my best because I don't want to let the team down. I don't want to let my colleagues down. so I always remember doing a team building event back in the day where one of the things we were trying to do was improve customer service and the quality of the products that we were selling.
00:13:46
Speaker
We got people from different parts of the organization who were involved in the different stages of delivering a service and a product to the customer. and realized that they were all operating in isolation. Although
Aligning Company Culture with Employee Values
00:14:00
Speaker
to improve the customer service, we had to get them to acknowledge, identify and take ownership of the fact that none of them at any of the stages was actually communicating with the people before or after them in the process. It was just, this is the way I do my job.
00:14:17
Speaker
You're either happy with it or you're not happy, but I don't care either way. I've done my job. Getting them to, first of all, break down some barriers so that they could actually have the conversation. So some social type activities, The games um the laser games were very popular at the time, I remember.
00:14:34
Speaker
And then getting them to go through the process and in quite a lot of detail identified the faults, but it wouldn't have happened without that getting to know the person as a human being first.
00:14:48
Speaker
You couldn't have started and said, right, okay, this is the process. Let's identify what's wrong with it because everybody puts their... their barriers up and it's always someone else there's always someone else to blame but when you've built that social connection through some sort of joint experience shared experience people are more willing to have a conversation with people on a on a level playing field so to speak yeah absolutely and you know shared experience is is something that's not um very common these days um you know if you if you
00:15:22
Speaker
go back 10 years um working in office. i I worked in Canary Wharf. you know you would You would walk in um on a floor of 200 people and you could literally hear a pin drop and everyone's just typing away. there's no you know There's no noise, there's no interaction, everyone's whispering to each other. So to take people out of that environment and actually give them something that they will remember but remember that person by. you know The old cliche was the you know the water cooler moment that you actually get around and you that's the only time you talk to someone, right? Well, if you're able to go, oh, God, I was on the event weren we last year with you know when we did that crystal maze or when we did that port betrayers event, and that really brings that bond that you're then more likely to be able to get that person on side.
00:16:07
Speaker
Because with work and work culture, I find that most of the time, you know, you're trying to get people to do things that necessarily they don't want to do. So they're more much more likely to do it for someone they like than they are someone that they don't know. Right. So if you can get them to engage, get them to work with them, get them to have an experience that they're more likely to be able to talk to that person one on one and get them on side, then that culture is going to be much more beneficial than someone that doesn't have that experience.
Impact of Generational Shifts on Workplace Dynamics
00:16:34
Speaker
Yes. I can remember that when I started to run at Abacida, and I'm sure you'll have been given the same advice when you set up team building experiences and your other companies, was that you are an entrepreneur and that sell to people through advertising and and all these sorts of things. but
00:16:53
Speaker
The advertising is just the part of the process. That's where people get to know that you exist. Before they will actually really buy from you, they have to get to know you and they have to like you and then they have to trust you.
00:17:04
Speaker
And then once they trust you, they're likely to spend more money than if they don't trust you. Because if they have to buy from you, they will. But if they trust you, know you, like you and trust you, they will buy more from you.
00:17:18
Speaker
And it's a similar sort of situation in a work environment of a large corporation. I'm imagining when you talk about those skyscrapers of in any big city, you can walk in through the door You might nod at somebody who's a security guard in a uniform or some sort of receptionist type person. Go to the lift, go up to your floor, and then you find your desk. And like you say, there can be very quiet, isolating places. the The key to success is very often just to conform, to fit in, to be the same as everyone else. Don't put your head above the barricade. And you can go for a long time without having a conversation with anyone.
00:18:01
Speaker
the water cooler moments. As long as you're drinking at the same time as the other person every day, you you can start to bump into them in more detail. But there is a lot of reluctance to actually engage socially in a lot of offices, which is why people go back to their, know, you were at the same school or the same university or you play the same games, whatever it is. But I think people do crave that that sort of social connection as well.
00:18:31
Speaker
Definitely. And for me, you know, the world is moving towards where companies need to be a fun place to work as well as a working environment. So, you know, with the rise of social and the requirement for, you know, people who are coming into the workplace to have that sense of community, to have that collaboration between people. If you don't have a culture that is seen as fun, in a way, obviously within Remit,
00:18:57
Speaker
you will lose people, people will start moving on, they will try and find a better culture elsewhere. And i think the big shift that's happening and we've seen it happening is people are contacting us, companies, large companies, small, just saying, we just want people to have a good time. We want people to have fun together. We want them to come away with a day that they've remembered essentially.
00:19:20
Speaker
Something they can talk about other than work as well. Exactly. It's connected, but it's not connected. And that's what we need. That sort of social connection. It is. And they also want to put, you know, they want to put pictures of their team having fun together. They want to put videos together on their internal boards of, you know, teams doing things. because that reinforces the the fact that they are a place to work where other people want to work.
00:19:45
Speaker
And i think that's the big push where the Gen Z generation effectively, they don't just want money. They don't just want a flexible working arrangement. They also want to have a culture and they want to have a collaborative workforce that enables them to to almost feel like they're part of one um goal to try and improve particular area, whichever that company is for.
00:20:07
Speaker
Yes. It's almost as if the days of lunches for wimps and loads of money is is well and truly over. People aren't so much worried about work-life balance, I suppose. It's like, how does everything fit together to create a life rather than separate lives as such?
00:20:27
Speaker
It is. it's ah you know It's about status, isn't it? you know People are much more concerned with their status, who I am, who I work for, necessarily than how much you're being paid. you know And that's I think that's the big shift. Whereas previous generations, there has been that, you know like you say, you've you've got to earn as much money as you can. And no one really knew how much you were earning, but you tried to effectively state that you know in other ways, where now we've got social media, everyone's living their best lives. They need to look like the company is fun to work for. They need to look like everybody's having a good time. And that's hard to do.
00:21:04
Speaker
So if their employees require it and they're going to perform better if they do, that's where we have found kind of the experience-led team building has has really come in. um
Challenges in Event Planning and Team Building
00:21:14
Speaker
And that was our niche, effectively, when 2020 came in, that we were like,
00:21:18
Speaker
We're only going to focus on fun and we're going to focus on bringing those mobile fun experiences to people of all areas of the country that want either an away day or even in their offices. And we've started to find a big trend for companies to want to do the actual entertainment in their offices because obviously bringing people back into the office has been a big focus. Yeah, I can appreciate that.
00:21:42
Speaker
We're talking about all the things that go perfectly here. What have you experienced that is, well, what sort of things do employers get wrong? The biggest thing we've experienced is where there is a mismatch between the person that's booked the event and the people that are on the event.
00:22:00
Speaker
And what I mean by that is We have events that are more problem solving, thought provoking, that sort of, you know, kind of events where people need to be actually focused and doing what they, you know, what they're asked to do.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yet the organizer has arranged for a free bar and has got loud music playing. They want you know X, they want y and they brought in the wrong event, even though we probably advised them against it. And I would say that that's the mismatch because we then find that 50% of the group aren't actually drinking alcohol.
00:22:37
Speaker
The other 50% are, and there is that mismatch issue then. That for us is the biggest kind of learning curve over the last, I think, 18 months. it's almost like if you're going to build a team and do some team building, teamwork type activities, you've got to think beforehand about leveling the playing field so that everybody starts in the same place rather than separating themselves.
00:23:04
Speaker
It sounds so simple, but putting on the bar, or the alcohol, creates an immediate division between those people who are going to drink and those people who aren't going to drink or can't drink for one reason or another, and you've created something that excludes one group from the other, which will damage your attempt to build a team. Absolutely. And, you know, we have had events that, you know, it's got to the point where we're like, this this isn't able to continue for some of the people in the experience because they are just not interested. have already started you two or three drinks too many than they should have done. And, you know, that is a problem that we cannot solve because ultimately the person that booked has to be aware that that's going to happen with some people. yes
00:23:53
Speaker
And, you know, it has been a it has been something that we do now ah really essentially prepare people for that you know if that is going to happen we need to make you aware that this is what we've had in the past.
00:24:05
Speaker
um And what we've found as a result is that people are moving their events earlier in the day. So if we went back to just only three years ago, we had about 30% of our events that were in the evening.
00:24:18
Speaker
So we had a lot of after work events. Now, At Christmas just gone, we had 90% of our events during the day. And that is a dramatic shift. So we've had people, instead of wanting to spend their you know time outside of work going to these events, they want to have them during the working day.
00:24:37
Speaker
And as a result of that, they're not incorporating that drinking culture that previous years they would have done.
Continuous Improvement in Team Building Experiences
00:24:43
Speaker
It's really interesting. I can see that makes a lot of sense. I am tempted to ask you about, you know, you've got a team of 20 people. What's the team working activity, team building activity that you put together for them, your own team?
00:24:55
Speaker
So we're very lucky because we have an events team, and because they're out delivering events. We put on showcases for our own team regularly. So whether that be we're trying a new experience or we're refining an existing one.
00:25:10
Speaker
So I would say this year already, we've had about five team experiences together where we've either hired a venue, got the team together to try out a new experience. Like we've we've just launched Beat the Box, for example. We've launched Betraya's Evening of Deception, was which is like our evening version for companies that want to have more different interactive puzzles.
00:25:31
Speaker
We have found that obviously as a result of that, we're doing these experiences almost by a monthly basis, sometimes twice in
Conclusion: The Value of Teamwork in the Workplace
00:25:38
Speaker
a month. The feedback is these are these are great experiences that people are enjoying, but at the same time, because we're doing it so often, we're getting to know our own experiences even better, essentially. Yeah, sounds great.
00:25:50
Speaker
It's been very interesting, Daniel, to to learn a little bit more about the science, I suppose, behind teamwork and team building and how to create these these types of events. It certainly yeah made me think. So thank you very much. Really appreciate your time today. It's been great.
00:26:04
Speaker
Thank you for having us on, Michael. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abusida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind Daniel O'Sullivan from Team Building Experiences.
00:26:17
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abusida.co.uk. The Zencastr technology has worked extremely well, as it generally does, but if you're listening to the independent minds on your smartphone and experience technical issues, You may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data, so listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code. That description is well worth reading.
00:26:54
Speaker
I am sure that you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Daniel and I have enjoyed making it. Please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:27:06
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:27:18
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.