October 2006

Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter, Volume IV, Issue 4
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Dr. Clue: Solving the Puzzles of Teamwork

This Issue:

1. Dr. Clue Central
2. Teambuilding Ice Breaker: "Handshakes"
3. Feature Article: "Teambuilding, In Blue and Red"
4. Puzzle
5. Dr. Clue News
6. Reader Contributions

Dr. Clue Central

Welcome again to the Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter!

We're coming off our busiest time of the year-ah, September/October. September in particular was an amazing month, with 19 facilitated treasure hunts. Thank you to our clients for keeping us on our toes!

We've got another fun and informative newsletter for you this issue, including a hand-some icebreaker, an article that aims for the fences, and a puzzle you're bound to have two minds about (with the usual chance for prizes). Enjoy!

Dave Blum
Editor, the Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter

Teambuilding Icebreaker
Handshakes
Contributed by Michelle Cummings of Training Wheels, from the Training Wheels Newsletter

Set Up:
Divide participants into pairs, with enough space to move around.

Process:
Start out with an easy handshake, like a 'High Five'. Then have each participant ask their partner a simple, non-threatening question like "What's the best meal you've ever had? Or "What are three things we have in common?" After a few minutes of discussion, tell participants to remember who their 'high five' partner is, have them say, "See ya later alligator!" or "Adios Amigos!" and then ask them to find a NEW partner.

With their new partners, ask participants to try a different handshake and to discuss another simple question. (You can provide the questions or ask them to come up with one themselves.) Give each round a couple of minutes and then ask participants to change partners and try a different handshake and discussion question. Continue for 4-5 rounds of different handshakes with different partners.

Other handshakes:

• Cow handshake (one person interlace their fingers and turn thumbs upside down, the other person milks the thumb udders!)
• Salmon handshake (arms interlaced like a zipper and slap forearms like a salmon tail.)
• Cappuccino handshake (hold your coffee in your left hand, high five with your right hand then reach down and shake ankles with your right hand all without spilling your coffee!)
• Crab handshake (half squat and shake hands through your legs)
• Texas handshake (reach across with your right hand, grab hold and skip around in a circle while exclaiming, "Yee-Haw!")
• Sumo handshake (stomp in a Sumo stance towards your partner and spar with one another!)
• Low Five (pretend to high five then slap hands on the 'down low'.)
• Come up with your own creative handshakeŠ..maybe one for your school mascot, state bird, or other fun action that is unique to your group.

Finally, after about 4-5 different handshakes, do a 'Handshake Frenzy". Call out each of the handshakes one at a time and have participants quickly find and greet their partners from the previous rounds. So for example, when you call "High Five", people find their original partner and do a "High Five"; when you call "Salmon", people find their original "Salmon" handshake partner and do the Salmon. And so on. Continue until all handshakes have been called out.

Debrief: Ask the participants how they felt about doing each handshake: Were some handshakes more fun or more comfortable than others? Were some less comfortable? Did the process get easier as the activity went along? What memories did the handshakes bring up? Also ask the partners about their discussion questions: Which questions were the most comfortable or uncomfortable? What came up for you? Do you feel differently about your partners after sharing your answers with them? Do you see each partner differently after hearing their answers?

The Point:
Trust is built, in large part, on allowing oneself to be vulnerable with others. In this case, the crazy handshakes allow people to laugh at themselves while the one-on-one discussion questions allow people to get to know each other as real people, with their own stories - a nice pairing of physical and emotional vulnerability.

Dr. Clue is the premier designer of corporate teambuilding treasure hunts, worldwide. We begin with the cool museum or historical neighborhood of your choice, convenient to your office or conference locale. We then bring the area alive by scouting out its hidden treasures; its statues, plaques, murals, and monuments. To reach each secret location, you and your team will need to solve our challenging, Da Vinci Code-like set of puzzles, codes and ciphers. Along the trail, we'll coach you on the steps successful business teams take in working towards high performance levels.


To read about our hunt packages, click here. To see a list of our 75 current treasure hunt locations, including New York, London, Paris, Barcelona, Denver, Geneva, Chicago, Las Vegas, Madrid, New Orleans, Vienna and San Francisco, click here.

Feature Article:
Teambuilding in Blue & Red
By Dave Blum

So there I was this summer, attending my first Red Sox game at Boston's Fenway Park, and what an exhilarating experience it was. Although the game was only moderately exciting (as exciting as a 10-4 blow out by the opposition can be), what really struck me was the sheer spectacle of it all: the screaming fans, the colorful banners, the music, the pageantry. As a teambuilding specialist, I kept asking myself, "Where does this intense dedication come from? And how does one go about eliciting such a strong sense of commitment in the teams that we are leading?"

Frenzied sports fanaticism, of course, is nothing new; you find it wherever you look these days, and not just in baseball. Whether it's professional soccer, international cricket or college racquetball, you'll always have your manic sports enthusiasts, your face painters, your diehards, your bleacher bums. In Boston, though, sports zealotry seems to have reached an all new level. When you join the "Red Sox Nation", as the Boston fan base calls itself, you are joining a tribe, a religion, a gang. When the Bosox win, the town walks with a jauntier step; when they lose, the streets bleed blue and red. Boston fans sell out every home game, yearning for a chance to spend a few hours with their local heroes: the 42-year-old warrior - pitcher Curt Schilling; the sluggers - volatile Manny Ramirez, genial David (Papi) Ortiz; and the youngsters - Kevin Youklis (Yuuuuuuk!) and Coco Crisp (Coco Crisp?!!). It's hard not to get swept up in the passion of the Boston Red Sox fans, even if you grew up on the West Coast like I did, cheering for a different gang (the Oakland Athletics). No matter where you're from, a Red Sox game at Fenway is a flat out "event".

As luck would have it that warm summer Boston evening , the only thing available to me was a standing room ticket-less than ideal for viewing the field, but wonderful for people-watching. As I wandered from foul pole to foul pole, taking it all in, I kept pondering the "culture" of Red Sox fandom, and in a larger sense, sports-fan psychology in general. Just how does one go about uniting such a large group of people, so fanatically, around a common focus? Clearly there are a few basic ingredients:

Identity Building: All teams, whether in sports or in business, instill a strong sense of identity in their participants. In baseball, it all starts with a name and a color. The Red Sox acquired their name in 1907, when Boston Globe owner General Charles Henry Taylor changed the club's name from the Pilgrims to the Red Sox, in honor, no doubt, of the players' red stockings. These days the team is more commonly referred to as the Sox or occasionally, the Bosox. Their colors, traditionally red and blue, play out throughout the stadium, from the players' jerseys to the ever-present banners to the seats themselves. Although not actually part of the team on the field, Boston fans identify themselves as part of the larger team, the Red Sox community. Expressing their support (for the players and for each other), the fans show up in droves for each game, dressed from top to bottom in red & blue, often with the names of their favorite players written proudly on the backs of their souvenir jerseys. In a sense, the audience becomes the performers, if not physically than psychically and spiritually. And how often have we attended a business convention and seen the same thing: one group wearing bright-green t-shirts, another group wearing deep-blue wind breakers, and still another group sporting funny, red rabbit ears - all emblazoned with the company or team name/logo? As Kevin Costner might say (paraphrasing Field of Dreams), "If you wear it, team spirit will come."

Turf Sanctification: For Red Sox fans, Fenway Park is a holy place, home of the famous "Green Monster", the 37-foot-high left-field wall that gives the stadium its unique dimensions. Unlike most parks, which have short walls averaging 330-or-so feet from home plate, Fenway's left-field wall is not only tall, it is only 310 feet from home. A simple fly ball hit anywhere else in the Major League might easily fly over the Monster for a home run in Boston-that is, if you can hit it high enough. The Red Sox's skilled fielders know exactly the right angle for playing hits off the Monster, often turning a shot off the fence - a sure double in other Major League arenas - into a mere single in Fenway. Bostonians love their park with an almost religious devotion. It's different, it's downright peculiar, and it's theirs. And so do company employees love their corporate campuses-with many people spending hours of their free time there, hanging out, playing foozball and darts and ping pong. For them, the office is not just an office; it's their very own dorm and a frat party.

Celebrating Heroes/Vilifying the Goats: Ghosts walk at Fenway Park: Carl Yazstremski-the Yaz. Ted Williams-the Splendid Splinter. "Nomah"-Nomar Garciaparra. The Red Sox management takes extra-special care in preserving the memories of their past heroes, commemorating them in innumerable signs and plaques around the stadium, in much the same way nations erect war memorials to celebrate fallen heroes. Fenway remembers its successes as well, with numerous, giant-sized banners scattered around the park celebrating play-off winners and World Series champs. As heroes are honored in Boston, so, too, are the goats villified: Bill Buckner, who let that ball go through his legs during the 1986 World Series; Harry Frazee, owner of the Red Sox, who sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. In a very deliberate way, Boston fans are directed to experience their team's history as if it is their own past, the story of their own ancestors. In business, too, you can't enter a company lobby these days without seeing awards framed on the wall, along with "Employees of the Month" and other "heroes" of the organization, including a photo of the smiling founder.

Focusing on a Common Enemy: At Fenway, there is only one consolation for a Red Sox loss-namely, a loss by the dreaded New York Yankees. The Yankees-those braggadocios in pinstripes, those swaggering Bronx Bombers from the big city-what Red Sox fan doesn't loathe the Yankees with the very fiber of their being? Membership in the Red Sox Nation requires that you both support your local team AND hate the common enemy, the dreaded Yanks, with a fire-breathing abhorrence just this side of pathology. If you're a New York fan with the guts to attend a Red Sox game in Boston, make sure you keep your feelings to your self, for your own safety. So, too, in an organization, there is always a main competitor, painted as the fire-breathing devil itself.

The Red Sox management clearly has a formula for building a solid, committed fan base. The question is, does this formula represent an appropriate model for creating business teams? Many organizations would say yes. As I mentioned earlier, we've all seen such work teams: their participants "branded" with colored t-shirts and logos; their leaders elevated to celebrity status; their competitors vilified as "the evil empire." Joining such teams can be like entering a cult. Your identity now becomes the identity of the team; uniforms and uniformity are the rule.

So does it work? In the short-term, perhaps yes. The "Red Sox model" may certainly engender a committed, enthusiastic, synchronous community. But such unity comes with a price. A business team constructed under the "sports model" may have difficulties partnering with other departments or divisions within the organization-after all, anyone outside of your group is the "enemy". Thus, rabid identification with the group can lead to an unwillingness to ask for assistance or offer help to other teams - a rather unproductive (albeit common) situation in organizations. Moreover, the "sports" approach asks for a certain homogeneity in outlook. There tends to be a proscribed way of being a "proper" teammate - talk this way, think that way, don't rock the boat. Successful teams, however - particularly those involved with generating innovation - require a high degree of diversity and heterogeneity. Simply put, most teams need people with differing ideas and differing outlooks. "Group think" leads to group stagnation.

Taken in moderation, lessons from the sporting world can certainly benefit the business world. By all means feel affection for your corporate campus. Wear your company colors with pride - at least on occasion. Celebrate your team successes and learn from your failures. But remember, too, that there is a big world out there, outside of your company team, which can broaden your own team's abilities and reach, if you let it. So I say, "Go Team!" but also "Go Life!"

What does a teambuilding treasure hunt look, feel and sound like?
Watch our 2-Minute Video and find out.

Puzzle

Answer to Last Issue's Puzzle

In our last issue, we presented you with a Common Bonds clue. When you added the word chunks, you should have gotten the secret message: "Stretch Your Brain"

DR. CLUE HONOR ROLL

Last issue's top puzzle solvers were: Becky Day, Holly Sugrue, and Anthony Palma. Congratulations all of you! (We hope you enjoy your prizes.)

Today's Puzzle Challenge
(created by Alexandra Dixon of T-Hunts.com)

We'll list our Top Three fastest puzzle solvers in our Dr. Clue Honor Roll next issue.

And, as always, we'll put all of this issue's clue solvers into a hat and draw five names for their choice of Dr. Clue-brand items (hats, shirts and mouse pads)! Email your answers to drclue@drclue.com to take part in the drawing.

Wondering how a typical Treasure Hunt CLUE works? Click here. to follow along with one.

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