Team Building Business Students Take to the Dales

When you’re 30ft in the air, hooked up to abseiling harnesses and staring at the distant floor where your classmates are, you probably forget that you’re in a Business Studies class – but you still are.

As part of their coursework, over 50 Business students have been planning, and then participating in, team building exercises at Barnstondale Centre over the last week. As well as the physical side, students developed their communication and cooperative skills outside of their comfort zones whilst taking part in abseiling, rock-climbing, river-crossing and plenty of other sensory and strategic activities.

Working in groups, the students devised meticulous action plans before arriving at the centre, with every individual given a specific job within their team. All bases had to be covered, with roles within the teams covering budgeting, transportation, administration, planning, health and safety, security and general housekeeping.

Having experienced their day in the dales together, students now reflectively analyse their performances, both individually and as a team, and demonstrate how they worked within their groups.

Business Studies teacher and trip coordinator, Steve Hafford, said: “Along with learning for the coursework, a lot of students really develop their personal skills, interpersonal skills and independence. Learning how to be an effective member of a team is something vital to take with them beyond college – having the confidence to get involved and not be that person on the side-lines. By the end of the day, they were all identifying individual strengths and weaknesses and using motivational strategies to get the best out of each other.”

Steve continued: “Some students, up until this week, maybe never stretched themselves and took on a task that they’ve never tried before. Chloe, for example, didn’t do so well on the climbing but wanted to prove something to herself by doing the abseiling. It’s about challenging yourself and she did that; she did something that she never would have contemplated doing normally.”

First year Chloe Wisniewski, who joined us from Upton Hall School and studies Science as well as Business, explained: “I hate heights and I’ve never abseiled before but I found that it was mind over matter. I was making it out to be a bigger thing than it was. I’ve found that I’ve got more confidence just from doing something that I was really nervous about.”

Fellow first year James Halligan, who joined us from Abbeygate College in Chester, echoed Chloe’s sentiments, saying: “I’ve learnt to communicate better and I took on things that I wouldn’t normally. I had it in my mind that I wasn’t going to do the abseiling but I did it anyway. It’s definitely been character building.”

Business - Barnstondale Feb 2016