CASE STUDY
Jungle Escape How Would Your Team Survive? By Gary Turner, Turner Consulting If your team is struggling, HRDQ’s Jungle Escape game is a great way to put teambuilding skills into action and establish a road map for team success. Jungle Escape brings vital group-process skills to life through a hands-on design and interactive experience.
How It Works Team members put teambuilding skills to the test through action! They play a scenario where they are stranded in a jungle after surviving an airplane crash and need to assemble a helicopter within a 30-minute time frame by using limited materials and relying on teamwork.
“ It was a powerful learning experience in overcoming challenges and recognizing how working together helps teams function...” Example 1: Overcoming Challenges In partnership with HRDQ, seasoned trainers, consultants, and training managers from different organizations were put onto random teams to experience the Jungle Escape Game. Generally, when I work with intact teams, they finish the helicopter within 18 to 24 minutes. Since this team had not worked together before, they were very fragmented and found it difficult to finish the construction within 30 minutes. It was painful to see them struggle and fail to work well together at such a simple task.
Jungle Escape Learning Outcomes ✓ Understand the difference between Cohesive, Fragmented, and Divergent teams ✓ Learn and practice the nine elements of effective teamwork ✓ Experience vital group-process skills ✓ Establish action-planning steps for improved team performance
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The Jungle Escape Complete Kit includes Facilitator Guide, participant guides, parts, and accessories.
While the activity was very demanding on these participants, it was a powerful learning experience in overcoming challenges and recognizing how working together helps teams function in a more cohesive way. Each participant reflected on their individual team role and learned how the actions of one individual on a team can majorly affect group productivity. They took away straightforward action-planning steps that they could take back to their own department and organization to use as guidance for improved team performance.
Example 2: Revitalizing Successful Teambuilding A client at a chemical company asked me to do a day of teambuilding for a cross-functional improvement team. The 12 members had met weekly during the past year, so they were familiar with each other. Originally, I had split them into two even teams at different tables. When the exercise started, the team leader said, “Hey, we shouldn’t be competing against each other. We are here to learn how to work better together. Let’s all work around one table and build the two helicopters simultaneously.”
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