Team Building with the Nissan Game Changers

Working with Nissan

Nissan has been one of the most popular automotive brands worldwide. They’ve made significant innovations and have put out so many interesting models the past few years. Personally, whenever I’m driving on the road, it’s delightful for me to see the contrast between the brute-and-macho vibe of their NAVARA, and the cute-sporty-sophisticated appeal of their JUKE.

Our family has always loved Nissan, and being given an opportunity to work with them got me very excited.

We had scheduled a team building activity with their head office, and it was going to be held in my favorite vacation destination, none other than surf town Baler, in the Aurora province. This town can be a bit of a long drive, but it’s worth it. We rode on a Nissan Urvan (that my family owns, yes) for 8 hours going to, and around 7 and a half going back.

On the trip going to Baler, we saw absolutely breathtaking roads through lush green farm plains, and relaxing curvy mountain ranges. At around sunset, we arrived at the beach, and proceeded to greet the Nissan team. We had dinner at the very prestigious Costa Pacifica Resort, and we had a team meeting to prepare for the following day’s activities.

Team Building

7 am the next day, our team was fired up and ready to go. We set up our function hall, and we waited eagerly as the participants came in. The day at the beach was perfectly bright and sunny, perfect to move around in.

One of the most fun twists when we do a team building is to actually create some friendly competition. Usually when you think of team building, you want people to be on the same team doing tasks together. But for this activity with Nissan, we decided to light a bit of their competitive fire and divide them into competing teams. And with competition, there’s always a prize! Nissan prepared a little reward for the winners, and that fueled the participants. The way it works is that for each of the activities all throughout the day, we award points for the teams which win competitions, and inviduals who share energy — whether it be by sharing insights, asking provocative questions, and by just being enthusiastically positive. And with the Nissan participants, they fought for each inch, each point of that we were giving away.

We began the day by dividing them into 8 teams, and doing a cheer dance competition. It was pretty entertaining, as it gave the participants a chance to show their creative side, as well as their teamwork. One team danced Egyptian style, one team did a cheerdancer-human-pyramid-formation, and one team even woke up everyone’s nostalgic side with their own interpretation of the classic ‘80s hit “Sunny Orange I love you!” Everyone was pumped up after this competition! The winning team celebrated ardently, and the losing teams agonized, but vowed revenge.

This energy was infectious all throughout the room that day, and it was the perfect environment to springboard the team into the next module. I proceeded to do a short presentation and quiz activity on energy giving. Energy giving is an absolutely important concept to understand in a teambuilding. Whether you are a leader or a follower, or both, before you can contribute your skills, values, or influence, you must be able to contribute energy to your team. How does one do that? Energy giving is that moment where you offer to pick up a cup of coffee for your stressed officemate, or to stay the extra hour to support your sub in their project, or sending an email of thanks or appreciation to your boss for trusting you with a difficult task. It’s the small moments where you give inspiration and encouragement to help push your team the extra mile. The Nissan team was very energetic, and it put a smile to my face just imagining them share this energy in their respective offices.

The fun was just beginning at that point, and the next part of our team building was to do a relay activity, amazing race style. We had previously set up 8 different stations that will test the physical and mental capacity of the participants, as well as their teamwork. We put a station where they had to fervently dance until they were able to drop coins out of boxes attached to their waists, another station where they had to be so still until they could build a house of cards. But what really struck me was a station where they had to move a candle ten feet against the strong winds of the beach.

I really liked this station because they had to solve a problem they could not control. Some teams created a dome around the candle with their hands, and one team solved it by running around and grabbing some old table cloths lying around and creating a curtain of protection. I felt that this parallels a lot of situations in the office where teams have to solve problems beyond their control. In any team, in any office, there will always be people who whine and complain when faced with certain adversity. Such is the nature of people. These are the enrgy suckers. But seeing the Nissan participants solve that problem head on — leaving no room for negativity, using laser focus and presence of mind to conquer the situation — I felt very much inspired. Nissan has been a game changer the past couple of years, and it became clear to me that it was because of these people.

It’s said by Zig Ziglar, one of the biggest names in sales globally, “You don’t build business — you build people — and then people build business.” These participants showed how committed they were to the goals of this amazing race, and I can imagine them being the same way when it comes to their company’s goals.

An hour or so after, we concluded the amazing race, and we all celebrated. Everyone was able to finish most of the stations! We had a bit of sharing about what the Nissan team could take away from this activity and bring back to the office. People shared experiences, and very heartfelt insights on their learnings.

Culminating Activity

As for the final session of our morning, we decided to do an epic challenge. We made the participants form a circle. One circle, one Nissan, one group of game changes. We asked the senior management to be in the center of the circle.

This is the ropewalk.

As the participants held on to a circular paracord, the leaders went up and walked on the rope. As one participant shared, this was very difficult, but their takeway was that “it was a good experience to know that the team ‘supports’ the leaders”.

Under that perfect sunny day sun, we concluded that teambuilding session having had fun, and having had shared energy with each other. The competition was fierce all throughout that morning, but what was more moving was the collaboration that the team showed. Thank you Nissan for bringing your game changers selves, and giving us, World Stage the opportunity to work with you. It was an absolute joy, and we’re looking forward to our next activity together!

For more info on how you can use emotions to get your team together towards higher results, contact World Stage at (02) 275 – 2090, or connect with us at www.teambuildingph.com