Survival

What it is

Have you ever had to handle a crisis in the office? Surviving in the desert is a larger version of the same problem. The group is taken out somewhere unfamiliar and unforgiving and has to manage with what it finds there, without the resources it’s used to. Trainers who specialise in survival hand over the basics, and the real learning arrives while the team is solving things on its own.

Survival exercises

Survival in the desert is an adventurous and insightful way of seeing a team at work under demanding natural conditions. How well the team survives, and how comfortable it manages to be, depends on how well the individuals collaborate, communicate and support each other.

We take the members of the team out into the desert, to test them under strain and bring their problem solving and their crisis management out into the open.

Trainers who specialise in survival give the participants some of the basics of staying alive in the wild. But only after they’ve watched how the team itself goes about solving the problems and the challenges thrown at it. Even in an action format, our attention is mainly on building the team.

How do the members of the team react to what comes at them from outside? How do they communicate under strain? How, and how quickly, can they work out a strategy and a tactic for solving the problems put in front of them?

How the team develops

In the desert, where the reference points and the resources we’re used to drawing on are absent, what comes out is the ability to step outside your speciality and to improvise. Every member of the team is encouraged to use their own particular strengths to help the group get past the obstacles.

Being a good archer is worth little if you can’t read the ground. Being able to read a compass is worth little without a map. The ability to reinvent and repurpose resources meant for something else becomes fundamental.

And so does the interaction between people: what each member of the team has in them has to be used fully to make a group that is compact and complete, capable of solving any kind of problem.

What do we mean by survival?

By survival we mean the ability to face unexpected situations with resources that weren’t prepared for that situation. The team solves the problem itself, with collaboration, creativity and adaptability, and nothing is arranged in advance to be found at the right moment.

At work we lean on external solutions all the time, on a colleague, a manager or a process that already exists, and the problem-solving muscle goes slack. Out here it gets used again. Our Survival format contains a wide range of exercises, and above all it lets people see how far you get on your own and how few limits are left once there’s a team. Emotions run high in the desert and decisions have consequences you can see, which is exactly what makes it stay. The day after, the group knows what it does when the usual resources aren’t there.

Which exercises does the team face in a Survival?