The kitchen is a familiar, yet powerful, environment for simulating real world challenges and the perfect venue for team building activities.
The premise is simple. Using your team's individual kitchens as a learning environment, coworkers work together, albeit individually, creating their own gourmet meal, then sit down remotely, but together, and enjoy it. Challenges to the group’s creativity, communication, cooperation and time/resource management are inherent in the team building process. In addition, the experience is designed to allow everyone from the novice cook to a master chef to participate comfortably according to his or her previous culinary experience.
A successful culinary team building experience offers activities that help every team identify their strengths, as well as weaknesses, and then offers strategies for improving productivity and effectiveness. The versatile adaptability of one's own kitchen permits the participants to creatively address a wide range of issues, including communication barriers, resource allocation and conflict resolution.
In addition to the lessons learned in group dynamics, an important element of the culinary team building experience is new camaraderie. A cook/eat together lunch or dinner can break down existing barriers and build new bridges of friendship, in ways that few other group initiatives are able to do.
Cooking-based team building fosters the organizational positives of open communication, thoughtful resource allocation and successful risk taking. Working together in the kitchen and enjoying the results breaks down barriers and builds bridges.
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