Teambuilding with Eggs

I put together a little teambuilding exercise for the staff on Tuesday. I gathered the staff together and presented them with two eggs, and I asked them to achieve the impossible (as they attempt to do every year with the students--some very fragile, some not as much):

I asked them to drop an egg from the third floor onto concrete and prevent it from breaking.

The guidelines were simple: The egg had to be dropped by me, an impartial party, and it had to land on the concrete. The only tools they had were as follows, and they were to be used to created some sort of structure around the egg to prevent it from breaking:

One sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper
A small piece of duct tape and a small piece of blue tape
Two paper clips
A foot of ribbon.
A small paper plate
A rubber band
A business card
Two coffee straws

We divided into two teams, but interestingly enough, they decided not to be competitive with each other. Rather, everyone decided they wanted to save the eggs. They just thought that working in smaller groups would prove more productive than working in one big group.

In the end, one egg shattered on impact, while the other barely cracked. The trick is that even though your instinct is to protect the egg--securely wrapping it in paper and tape--what you really want to do is reduce the velocity of the drop. That's what makes the biggest difference. Comparing it to our ministry, I'd say that we try to bring out the gifts in students and young adults that give them the abilities to be whole in the post-collegiate world, not find temporary fixes that aren't going to help them in the long run.

We also had a great discussion over lunch following this exercise. We talked about working in teams and how positive energy can provide a team with a much better result than if even one team member comes in with a negative attitude. We also talked about possible solutions we can use to teach students and young adults whose default attitude is more negative to recognize that and start to diffuse it.

All in all, I think everyone enjoyed this egg drop teambuilding activity.