This was a Bike-a-Thon Charity Workshop for a group of 15 new staffers from Kaiser Permanente. We’d worked with similar groups in previous years with great success and this year’s batch was no different. Here’s a summary of how things played out.

Desire is Everything When it Comes to Team Building Skills

This was a new team and it was our facilitators’ job to get them on the path to great teamwork skills right away. They accomplished this by dividing the group into teams that they knew would be competitive and putting a unique spin on the morning activities that led up to the actual Bike-A-Thon.

Our previous experience working with Kaiser Permanente had told us that management wanted us to help the individual members learn their strengths and weaknesses so they could start to see one another in a slightly different light. Things got off to a decent enough start, but it was during the parts earning phase that the newbies really got into their teamwork groove.

Not surprisingly considering the enthusiasm in the room, they stayed in this groove for the rest of the workshop and the results were even better than expected.

There’s Always Plenty of Extra Incentive When a Group Like Help Kids Today is Involved

When the management team from Kaiser Permanente insisted right off the bat that they wanted to donate their bicycles to a great local charity, the Help Kids Today Bay Area Toy Drive was an absolute no-brainer. For years, this group has helped ensure that deserving local families are able to give their kids a great holiday experience.

We knew that working to help such a group would provide all the extra incentive this developing team needed to ratchet things up a notch or two and get to work. Not surprisingly, this turned out to be the case as the Kaiser Permanente people stayed focused on the big picture all day and were able to donate several beautiful new bicycles to an organization that would definitely get them into the exact homes where they needed to be.

The end result of all this preparation, hard work, and kindness was a fantastic workshop for everyone who participated. There were plenty of smiles and back pats after it was finished, a sure sign that we’d done our jobs well and taught skills that the team would easily carry back to the office.