Outdoor experience for indoor people

Work Study

ISSN: 0043-8022

Article publication date: 1 February 2002

115

Citation

(2002), "Outdoor experience for indoor people", Work Study, Vol. 51 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2002.07951aaf.005

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited


Outdoor experience for indoor people

Outdoor experience for indoor people

The consulting engineering group Ove Arup is working with Pera Integrated Training's facilitation team to help it build up its teamleader and teamworking skills.

"We are a project-based organisation and we require our new graduates and first-line managers to be able to work in, and lead, effective project teams," explained Ove Arup's training manager, Debra Larkman. "But these skills cannot be developed solely by sitting in a classroom".

The solution that Ove Arup uses combines a range of tools, facilitation and outdoor activities. For example, Ove Arup uses the Strength Deployment Inventory on the programme – an instrument that helps people to identify their personal strengths in relating to others. "SDI is an ideal tool. It provides an accurate insight into the way people interact in teams," suggests Larkman: "In a company like Ove Arup we tend to have people who either have their strengths in the areas of logic and self-reliance or are natural team players with strengths in consensus building. We need people to recognise and respect one another's differences and the facilitators on the programmes use these profiles to help people build awareness of their own motivations and behaviours."

As for the outdoor learning, although Larkman is not an advocate of sending people up mountains, she believes that the outdoors is absolutely the right environment for the development of Ove Arup people: "The concept of our people solving problems in an outdoor setting is pretty close to what we do for a living. The programme that we run at Middle Aston House is an outdoor experience for indoor people."

The outdoor exercises that are used on the Ove Arup programme include a "Trust trail", where people are led blindfolded through various terrains of the Middle Aston Grounds, and The Island Project which challenges delegates to cross an island on a lake with minimal resources. As well as highlighting trust and communication issues, these activities require good planning, resource allocation, project co-ordination, time management and delegation.

"What the facilitators do so well is to hold a mirror up to participants' behaviours," explained Larkman: "The exercises are well designed and the learning is highlighted in the review process. This is essential in helping people to appreciate which skills and behaviours are useful and which are not. Making that connection from the outdoor project to the challenges faced in the workplace is a vital part of this form of learning."

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