Last weekend I got to join a hoard of incoming MBA and MS students up in the mountains for some team-building and leadership exercises. At first glance this looked like a weekend of holding hands and talking about our feelings but I was freshly surprised by the programs they ran us through.
The Nature Place, a camp founded by 10th Mountain Division Vet Sandy Sanborn, was host to our group of 60ish eager new grad students. We spent the weekend in small teams completing orienteering tasks, climbing high ropes courses and assisting in a mock earthquake emergency rescue operation. My small team consisted of a multinational crew from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, China and the US. (Our team name was "Team Bang" which means "Team Awesome" in Chinese.) In all, the people who ran the show did an awesome job integrating team lessons into some pretty exciting activities that most of the guests would never dreamed of attempting. The pictures below show us working together through a pretty challenging weekend.
