Teaching employees to work as a team through a culinary experience can reinforce basic skills of negotiation, flexibility, adaptability and even a bit of persuasion. For the best results, try a chili cook off, a holiday bake off or a game of cooking on "Survivor" with your employees to enhance team building.
Chili Cook-Off
Hold the chili cook-off outside during the company picnic. Rent enough gas burners and grills from your local restaurant equipment company for each team to use, along with large stock pots and cooking utensils.
Visit your local warehouse club supermarket to purchase industrial-size ingredients: tomato paste and seasonings like cumin and chili powder, ketchup, garlic, ground meat, oils and beans. Be sure each team has the same ingredients.
Divide your group into teams with an even number of participants. Depending upon your goals, you can mix and match departments or divide the teams based on departments, such as accounting and marketing. Provide a cooking start time and allow the teams a few hours to create their masterpieces.
As you get closer to the finish time, assign each team a number that they will use to mark their chili for judging. Randomly choose four or five chili lovers from the picnic, who could be other employees, family members or guests, to act as judges.
Ask each team to prepare enough bowls of chili so that each judge receives one to taste. Be sure that the team number is on the bowl of chili so you can track the teams.
Provide water, soda and napkins to the judge's table so the judges can clean their pallette between tastings. Give each judge a rating sheet with only the team numbers and ask them to rank the teams from one, being the best.
Award big blue ribbons to the top three winners, with first place receiving a half a day off from work with pay.
Holiday Bake-Off
Ring in the holiday spirit with a team-building holiday bake-off. Create pairs of employees working in different departments; try to pair people who haven't worked together or had a lot of interaction at work.
Ask participants to choose a festive team name for judging anonymity. The only rule is that the teams need to deliver two dozen baked goods to the office holiday party.
Set up a table where employees can sample the items from the teams at the party. Label each item with the team's holiday name. Create a ballot on the table so employees can vote for their favorite. Assign a first, second and third prize.
At the end of the party, ask human resources to count the ballots to determine winners. Give away prizes like gift cards, cash or even a half day off from work.
When the recipients come up to retrieve their award, ask them to give a quick speech about why they decided to prepare that item and how they worked together on it.
Survivor Cook-Off
If you've ever watched contestants try to cook on the show "Survivor," you understand that the castaways have to get creative with their dishes. Typically contestants are given rice, a few spices and whatever they catch in the wild to eat. Castaways have to work together as a team to gather food and prepare a meal in order to survive.
Depending upon the number of employees, divide staff into groups of at least two or three people and provide each group with a small amount of food, such as three cups of rice, a gallon of water, salt and pepper. Rent small portable burners from a restaurant equipment store for each team. The goal of the game is to create the most elaborate dish using the given ingredients plus whatever they "hunt" in the office.
The way employees hunt is by answering questions about company products, services or sales policies correctly. The team is given a clue for a correct answer. The clue takes them to a place where an ingredient is waiting. Play the game until all questions have been answered correctly, then it's time to cook.
Ask a mix of employees such as receptionists, vice presidents and accountants to be the judges. The winning team receives bragging rights and a gift certificate to a local restaurant for lunch.
Tags: each team, Depending upon, each judge, from work, half from, half from work, local restaurant
