Team Building Blog

If your team typcially enjoys outdoor activites, laser tag (we call it laser shootout!) may be a good team building activity for you. Laser tag actually uses harmless infra-red beams instead of pellets or bullets like paintball. So nothing flies out of the muzzle of the guns when you fire, they just make loud noises.

Through laser tag teambuilding we can talk about leadership, communication, planning before execution and also motivation. Laser tag teambuilding is can be physical as it can involve a little bit of running (or we can exclude the running mission to make it less physical). One thing to note though is that the laser tag equipment that we use are of realistic weight, they are about 1+ kg to 3kg.

In a typical team building session or birthday party, the participants will paly 3 missions, people with extremely high energy levels may request for an additional mission, while most people are contented to stop at 3 missions. Team building sessions are usually slightly longer in duration as we give participants ample time to discuss and plan (scenarios are also more complex). Kids birthday parties are simplier and duration is slightly shorter.

Participants typically paly in competiting groups, however, for team building, if the group size is not too large or if we want to achieve collaborative team work, we can plant enemies (our staff) for your team to engage. However, be prepared for a tough fight as our staff are highly trained in combat operations (at least for the simulated ones).

Since only infra-red beams flies out from the guns, the game becomes a non-contact sport and it’s appeal extends to ladies and even children.

You can find out about our laser tag party here:

Laser Shootout - Laser Tag Games or kids birthday party

other active teambuilding programmes you may want to consider include:

dragon boat challenge

sandcastle WARs!

amusing races EXTREME! (includes combination of our synergy race with dragon boating, laser tag and other paid attractions)

Contact us to find out more!

We have recently traveled with a group of managers from Nokia to the Anantara Resort & Spa in Koh Samui, Thailand, for thier team building retreat.Anantara Resort & Spa lives up to their name as one of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World. The first thing that strikes us is the architecture of the hotel. From the extra high door posts that leads to the seminar rooms to the nicely decorated lobby to the intricate hanging lights and animal sculptures that adorn the hotel. We are deeply impressed by the amount of effort that was put in to set the hotel look and feel different.

Another very interesting thing that would strike anyone is something very private - the size of the bath tub. Never have we seen a bath tub that has the capacity of 2 human average sized adults comfortably (or so we estimated). We estimated it to be at least 1.75 times larger than the bath tubs you will find in most asian hotels.

The beds of the rooms are also very nicely deocrated, with a small balcony with thick cushion seats. The bathrooms are lined with decorated glass.

The beach at Koh Samui is simply superb, the sand is white and the beach streches out to the sea at a very gradual slope. The sand are of slightly larger sized grains as compared to Sentosa’s imported sand - not that our feet can tell the difference when we walk on it. (however, it sure means that if we conduct our sandcastle war there, the castles will stand taller!)

There are basically 3 types of leisure activities in Koh Samui - 1. eating, 2. drinking & 3. massage.

If you travel along the streets of koh samui, you will find rows and rows of resorts, restaurants, drinking holes (pubs) and massage outlets (traditional thai & others). Prices are comparable to what you would find in Phuket or Bangkok.

Below are some pictures of the resort taken during our trip, and yes, the resort looks nicer in real life.

3 monkeys greet you at the drive way as you approach the main entrance

The walls of the boundary are decorated with patterns

No expenses are spared when designing even the lobby counter and backdrop

 
Artistic lightings adorn the lobby area and other parts of the resort, including the seminar rooms!

Garden Huts where you can have your massage done

The restaurants also give a very relaxing ambience - this one is the Full Moon Restaurant (food is great).

Oversized doorway that leads to the seminar rooms

 
feature pond leading to the pool, pool side restaurant and beach (normal and panaromic view)

  
Soft and comfortable beds (you can open up the glass partitions to the bathtub and toilet so that you can watch TV in the bathtub!)

This is the thing that made us certain that the guys over at Anantara REALLY make every effort to make things look and feel great - we saw this alien looking thing during breakfast and sure enough, the honey tasted sweeter! *LOL*

All in all we had a very good experience with the resort and will recommend it for anyone with “flying budget” (meaning willing to pay for air tickets) the hotel room rates are in the region of S$250 per night but this will also depend on season of travel.

There are 106 rooms in the hotel.

Direct air transfer is only provided by Bangkok Airways which flies once a day to and from Singapore departure 0830hrs and arrival about 1900hrs.

Our events partner, Techmex roped us in to assist them with Microsoft’s team building event when they decided to shift their Bangkok team building to Singapore. They contacted us toward the end of September when the client decided on the change.

The timeline was a little short and they wanted some cutomisation to the team building game that they were playing so that they were able to test the participants on some technical information during the game. This added an interesting twist to the game.

The participants were very enthusiastic (which is the norm, especially when there are americans, japanese and koreans in the group, in fact, there was only a handful of locals in this group).

Today I learnt something from one of the participants. During one of the team building task that we gave them, where participants had to retrive an item from the sea with 3 given materials, one of the participants, Jorge (from Holland, if i remember correctly) said something that stuck to my mind.

It started when his team mate, Johnathan commented to the team, “I’m not sure what the balloon is for…”.

Jorge replied, “Maybe it’s just like Microsoft, we have lots of useful tools, but you don’t need to use all of them to slove a problem”. When I repeated that to the teams during debrief, they burst into laugher.

In a way, he was right. The balloon was a decoy intended to throw the team off track. After they head his reply, they decided to stick to the plan not to use the balloon and solved the problem.

What he said stuck to me because sometimes in business we spend too much time analyzing, trying to undertand every single piece of the puzzle before we make the next step. Very often, in doing so, we miss the opportune time to act.

Sometimes the best way to find out, is to get off the meeting table, roll up our sleeves and try it out. If it works, good for everyone, if it does not, at least we know what does not work, we should then pick ourselves up and try another method.

Accepting the fact that we cannot be in control of all factors in our environment can help us - and our team make more timely decisions.