Team building with a difference

By Nick Rose, Sales Director – Sharp Business Systems

The vast majority of professionals have taken part in a team-building exercise of some kind at some point in their career. I can recall building a raft, navigating a co-ordinated escape from a horror-themed room, and walking the length of Hadrian’s wall. All good experiences in their own way, and all harnessing the valuable power of ‘one team’.

Recently, Lee Dinsdale (Logros Advisory Partners) offered me and some colleagues from Sharp UK the opportunity to take part in a team-building exercise with a difference – the chance to host our own live radio show on Unity Radio.

Entitled ‘Pitching Under Pressure’, Lee promised that the experience would help participants by improving confidence, engaging an audience and making an impact. All valuable skills for our people across many teams, and so we jumped at the chance to take part.

For most normal people, live broadcast is a truly terrifying prospect. Live, on the radio? No room for error. What if I stutter, or forget what I wanted to say? What if what I’m saying is just not interesting? All very real fears for any inexperienced broadcaster (and some experienced ones), but the truth is, those fears are exactly what made this exercise such a valuable one for our team.

It would be wrong of me to ruin any potential surprises, and so I won’t talk about the structure in too much detail. However I will say that we were given an expert workshop on how live radio works, and a detailed background for Unity Radio – including the history of the station, and how they do incredible work in the local community by inspiring and empowering young people to dream big. We were then tasked with planning the various topics for the live 60 minute radio show. Naturally we chose areas that were relevant to our business, but that would also be engaging for the average Unity Radio listener.

Observing my colleagues it was clear to see that there were some serious nerves before we went live. Lots of pensive looks, and long periods of silence. However, as soon as the show started those nerves turned into confidence, and I was blown away by the quality of what they produced. We had hundreds of colleagues tune in at our various Offices around the UK, and they too were proud of their colleagues. Afterwards, there was obviously a sense of relief, but also a huge sense of pride. This was clearly an ‘out of comfort zone’ experience, and one that represented both personal growth and team-work.

Going forward we will be working with Lee and the team at Unity Radio to ensure that our Sharp Sales Academy cohorts all benefit from this unique experience, and I would highly recommend it for teams of any size that are looking for an adrenaline rush and to feel an immense sense of achievement.

Unity Radio has very kindly offered pro-manchester Members the opportunity for free a teambuilding workshop to help raise awareness of this unique way to engage, develop and inspire employees

If you think your firm might be interested – please email [email protected] for further details