Building a Marshmallow Team (Tower)
My current path as someone who focuses on helping leaders build a more focused, powerful and positive workplace culture has its roots in Team Building. While large conference keynotes rarely allow for the opportunity to do something as cool as the Marshmallow Tower exercise, smaller workshops and corporate onsights do. I have both participated in and led literally hundreds of tower building experiences with and without marshmallows. However, when I saw the following video… and the supporting blog site I was excited to share it with you …knowing that many of you would desure to replicate this exerience for your teams.
The supporting blog site link is http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Instructions.html
(note the picture preceeding the video is a variation on the exercise which only allows for 1 large Marshmallow which is to be placed on top).
Remember…the purpose of tower building is team building. Even if the tower fails or falls…. the team can build and stand higher than before.
Kirk out
January 19th, 2012 at 8:58 am
Hey, Kirk….great team building idea! I don’t have pics or anything official but I’ve used 2 other “build them together” exercises to help with team building:
-build a free standing “bridge” that’s at least 2 feet tall, 3 feet long and can withstand a “stress relief / squishy ball” being rolled across it. The supplies consisted of 6-10 sheets of “white board” paper, 6 paper plates, masking tape and scissors.
-build a paper airplane that’s at least 2 feet wide and 2.5 feet long and then try to fly it the furthest of all of the groups. Supplies were 1 sheet of poster board, 5 sheets of “white board” paper, a 3 foot long wooden dowel (about the circumference of a drinking straw or smaller), masking tape and scissors.
I’ve seen some pretty creative solutions to both problems!
Keep up the great work…..I hope the family is doing well!
Keith Johnson
Manager, JB DME Provider Contact Center
January 25th, 2012 at 10:40 pm
We had the absolute BEST time doing this at a team building Christmas party this past year (2011). I had done it once before at a meeting as well. It is amazing how creative some people get … I even caught one team cheating by toasting their marshmallows into “glue” over the Christmas candle on their table!!! LOL! They found out it wasn’t as great an idea as they thought it might be.
The other good one is pretzel logs and peanut butter for glue, although granted, that one gets MESSY at times and you should offer up a package of baby wipes for each team to use while working.
Peace ~ Ang
January 25th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
PS … GREAT ideas Keith!!! I’m stealing them since I am the “team planner” for our meetings and usually have to come up with several “games” to play.