It helped that early in the formation of my program, I set forth 3 strategic intents and firmly established that what we do and how we market MUST clearly fall within the boundaries of those intents.

As I have said for years, ANYONE can build a challenge course, but it is the quality of the program that separates a challenge course from a day at Six Flags.

Clearly the ‘why?’ of the activity needs to be established and a ‘what did we learn?’ plus ‘what are our new commitments?’ sessions would be great, but so often these are overlooked. I strongly believe in self assessments, 360 tools etc. in order to raise self awareness AND to share these outputs with other team members for joint / team awareness, and then we MUST answer the ’so what?’ question.

It’s also a leadership responsibility to know and declare ‘this is what we are going to do’ and ‘this is why it is important.’ Tasking the team(s) to work together more effectively through self discovery, within a framework set by the leader is very powerful.

Something like paintball can turn into a violent, gun-toting activity where cliques gather and are reinforced. Or, one can also preassign teams to dissipate the cliques and assign a collective task, where one person on the team has to be protected by the other team members, thereby creating a single common goal that requires a certain degree of planning and strategizing. On the flip side, a low ropes element like the Spider’s Web, specifically designed to foster group collaboration and communication, can be framed as a timed, competitive event and lose its learning opportunities.

I’m not saying that all team development solutions can be found in Paintball and Inflatable Olympics, but sometimes framing a learning experience in an activity that is fun and/or familiar to the client can be valuable. I hope to see a continued creative effort to turn these games into teachable moments.

I get frustrated by these articles as well and often feel compelled to react strongly, but for different reasons. Like many of the other contractors for companies that offer activities like drunken cruises and karaoke, I come from an educational background and see myself as a facilitator and educator first. And yet, the high-profile company names and hefty paychecks suck me into this type of programming from time to time. So where does that disconnect come from?

This is something I have struggled with for some time now, and I have come up with several reasons for myself. These are not truisms, but simply personal justifications.

First and foremost, not all business people who create these types of teambuilding companies have an experiential education background. I would like to think that, in this type of programming, I can bring some of my knowledge to a company. If I can suggest some debrief questions for an activity or offer up a Challenge by Choice philosophy for the day, then I can at least make the experience a bit more positive for the participants, and hopefully some of my knowledge can rub off on those delivering these types of programs.

Additionally, taking these occasional higher-paying days allows me to facilitate full-time, rather than having to sacrifice my passion and pursue a more “traditional” career. That is not to say that it is impossible to be in this field full-time otherwise, but having the cushion of these types of programs certainly helps in the slower winter season, especially for someone who is younger and may not have the same shot at the full-time Challenge Course Manager jobs.

And there are many great corporations and small businesses out there that recognize the value in content-based programs. Personality assessment tools, leadership models, and other business consulting strategies are becoming increasingly popular, and there are some great companies out there that offer these types of training and development programs. I am far more interested in facilitating these types of activities than, say, paintball, but if I can get the corporate face time and learn to speak the language by running these types of programs, that is not an opportunity that I necessarily want to pass up.

And finally, I know of several corporate facilitators who own their own companies and have used some of their profits to help support or create non-profit organizations that allow underpriviledged populations to participate in experiential programming. I think that this is a fantastic way to allow the experience of facilitation to come full-circle and help others, and hope and intend to make this a part of my career someday.

I realize that I may have deviated a bit from the point of the article – a three-day leadership retreat that involves a DiSC behavioral assessment and a challenge course experience is NOT the same as an afternoon on a Velcro Wall. But both have their purpose and their value, even if one is meant to develop teams and the other is a great outlet for the pent-up energy that comes with sitting at a desk all day.

My main concern is in branding: if one starts to call the Velcro Wall teambuilding, rather than recreation, how does that redefine our industry? If a company offers both services and markets them at equal value, does the more expensive, learning-intensive program get overlooked or devalued? As practitioners and experiential educators, it is important that we help define and draw these lines in the field, regardless of what type of programs we choose to run.