Birdhouse
The team builds bird boxes to leave out in the landscape.
What it is
Teams build nest boxes for migratory birds, using recycled or salvaged materials. These birds cross thousands of kilometres to reach the region, and their eggs are very sensitive to changes in temperature, so a sheltered nest makes a real difference. Once they’re finished, the boxes get placed where the birds actually pass, and there they serve for nesting and for laying eggs under cover.
When it makes sense to choose it
It works well when you want something left from the day that isn’t a photograph. The boxes exist, they get mounted and they get used, and that changes the way the group works on them.
It works well on a modest budget and in ordinary spaces too: it needs simple materials and a table.
It works less well if you’re after adrenaline or movement. You sit and build, and the pace is the pace of working with your hands.
What it looks like
A video says in thirty seconds what a page explains in a thousand words: how loud it gets, how much laughing there is, what the hands are doing.
How it actually works
Each team gets materials and instructions and starts building. The eggs are delicate and sensitive to changes in temperature, so the measurements and the closure of the box decide whether it works, which gives the day a real constraint rather than a theme. Along the way people pick up a fair amount about local biodiversity and about what different species actually need.
It’s an activity where dividing up the work happens on its own within a few minutes, because the steps are sequential and whoever cuts can’t also be whoever assembles. The day after, the boxes are up on their poles and the team knows exactly which ones it made.
Three questions
Do you need to know how to use tools?
No. The materials are easy to handle and the instructions come before anything starts.
Where do the boxes end up?
Where migratory birds pass. They can also be installed in the green areas around your own offices, or given to a community space, and in that case they stay in sight as a reminder of the day. What they don’t do is sit on a shelf: they get mounted where they’re useful.
Can it be done indoors?
Yes. You need a space with tables, and a meeting room is fine.
When what surfaces deserves an afterwards
An activity surfaces a great deal about how a team communicates, decides and works together, and sometimes what surfaces deserves more time, more depth and a method. That is where a Team Coaching path can begin: a different road, to be taken only if it is needed, to turn what the day made visible into a new way of working together.
Discover Team Coaching →
Let’s talk about your next team building
You don’t need to have picked a format yet. Tell us what you want your team to take home, how many of you there are and where you’ll be, and we’ll do the rest: within 24 hours you get a considered proposal for your case, with the formats that hold up against your numbers, and what each one leaves the team the day after.
Prefer to talk? +971 50 795 9666 · info @ teambuildingincentive.ae