Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) CSR

On 31^st July, participants from Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) Global Education came together for a meaningful afternoon of teambuilding activities with a special touch of community service element in it.

In collaboration with SIM and the chosen beneficiaries – Viriya Family Service Center and Whispering Hearts Family Service Center; charitable organisations which lend a hand to provide both community and social services to low-income families in Singapore. There were a total of 65 children and youths of different ages, races and gender who turned up at the programme.

Prior to the arrival of the children and youths, the participants from SIM were split into teams and were tasked to design and create welcome gifts for the children. The teams showcased their creativity and craftsmanship by making DIY stationary cases from scratch as well as building nanoblock figurines. The children and youths were presented with the gifts upon arrival and it instantly brightened up the children’s faces.

After which, the participants accompanied the children into The S.E.A Aquarium Challenge! where they were given a colourful race booklet and had to search for the answers within the Aquarium. Through the race, the participants were able to interact much closer with the children, and at the same time the children were able to enjoy seeing the marine animals in the Aquarium, an experience that may not easily come by any other day.

At the end of the programme, all the efforts and hard work were worth it when we saw the wide smiles and also knowing that the children have truly enjoyed the whole session.

Feedback:
Everything was done so well that I’m sure we will engage FOCUS again in the future
- Tiurma

Thank you for supporting us and making the programme a memorable experience for our colleagues and the children. Our colleagues shared that the programme was very meaningful and they really enjoyed it.
Like what I have told you, our team is very impressed with your Facilitators and they have done a great job in keeping our staff engaged! Do pass our compliments to them Last but not least, thank you for being so prompt and responsive to our requests. Really a joy to work with you
- Angela Phua

Herzberg’s two factor theory and workplace satisfaction

My interest and inquisitive nature in a deeper understanding of people spurred me into studying psychology for my bachelors, and throughout my studies I have always been curious about motivational psychology and social behaviors. It wasn’t long before this curiosity led me to come across Herzberg’s two factor theory; and as all conventional and modern psychology theories related to motivation goes, it is undeniable that this theory was clearly influenced by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. And while Maslow’s theory was build on a foundation of 5 levels of needs, Herzberg went on further to add another dimension to these needs and hence giving birth to his two factor theory also known as Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene theory.

Among students studying psychology, it seems almost general knowledge that there are always two sets of factors that affecting any individual on any given day. External factors refer to external or things that you do not have control over, such as natural disasters, accidents or in the context of this article such as business climate and economic conditions; while internal factors refers to one’s resilience to different aptitudes among other intrinsic factors.

As mentioned earlier for his theory, Herberg divided the needs into 2 sets of factors:

- Motivators (examples of motivators are challenging work, recognition for personal or individual’s achievement, responsibilities, involvement in decision making, meaningful work and sense of importance and significance to his/her organization) are efforts that contributes to positive satisfaction but are derived directly from the intrinsic conditions and aspects of the job itself, such as acceptance, recognition, achievement, or personal growth, and

- Hygiene factors (examples of hygiene factors are status, job security, salary, fringe benefits, work conditions, good pay, paid insurance, vacations) are factors that do not give positive satisfaction or lead to higher motivation, and their absence will lead to dissatisfaction. Herzberg used the term “hygiene” in the sense that these are maintenance factors. These factors are primarily extrinsic to the work itself, and include aspects such as company policies, supervisory practices, or wages/salary. Interestingly and not without rationale, Herzberg often referred to hygiene factors as “KITA” factors, which is an acronym for “kick in the ass”, the process of providing incentives or threat of punishment to make someone do something.

According to Herzberg, discrepancies in the hygiene factors causes dissatisfaction among employees in a workplace. In order to remove dissatisfaction in a work environment, these hygiene discrepancies must be eliminated. Herzberg mentioned that there are several ways that this can be done but some of the most important/sure-fire ways to decrease dissatisfaction would be to pay reasonable wages, ensuring job security for the employees, and to create a positive culture in the workplace.

Through his studies and stronger empirical support (compared to Maslow’s theory), Herzberg considered the following hygiene factors from highest to lowest importance: company policy, supervision, employee’s relationship with their boss, work conditions, salary, and relationships with peers.

Reducing/removing dissatisfaction is only one half of the task of the two factor theory. The other half requires increasing satisfaction in the workplace. This can be done by improving on or increasing motivating factors. Motivation factors carry an imperial importance to motivate an employee to higher performance. Herzberg went on to further elaborate and classified our actions and how and why we do them, for example, if you perform a work related action because you have to then that is classed as “movement”, but if you perform a work related action because you want to then that is classed as “motivation”. In other words, the initiative taken behind an action classifies whether an action is a movement or motivation. Herzberg thought it was important to prioritize eliminating job dissatisfaction (eliminating discrepancies in the hygiene factors) before going onto creating conditions for job satisfaction simply because the efforts behind the two would work against each other.

According to Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory there are four possible combinations:

1. High Hygiene + High Motivation: The ideal situation where employees are highly motivated and have few complaints.
2. High Hygiene + Low Motivation: Employees have few complaints but are not highly motivated. The job is viewed as a form of sustenance or a paycheck.
3. Low Hygiene + High Motivation: Employees are motivated but have a lot of complaints. A situations where the job is exciting and challenging but salaries and work conditions are not up to par.
4. Low Hygiene + Low Motivation: This is the worst situation where employees are not motivated and have many complaints.

Herzberg’s theory focuses on the importance of internal job factors as motivating forces for employees. He designed it to increase job enrichment for employees. Herzberg wanted to create the opportunity for employees to take part in planning, performing, and evaluating their work. He suggested a few ways of doing this:

- Removing some of the control management has over employees and increasing the accountability and responsibility they have over their work. This would lead to an increase in employee autonomy.

- Building and creating natural work units where and when it is possible. An example would be allowing employees to create a whole unit or section instead of only allowing them to create part of it.

- Providing regular and continuous feedback on productivity and job performance directly to employees instead of through supervisors.

- Encouraging employees to take on new and challenging tasks and becoming experts at a task.

Critics:

Although Maslow and Herzberg’s theories have been significant to the humanist and motivational psychology; it has been pointed out repeatedly that there are inadequacies in the need for hierarchy and motivation-hygiene theories. The most common criticism for both of these theories is that it contains relatively explicit assumption that happy and satisfied workers produce more, even though this might not be the case; and that happier workers may not be more productive.

Another alarming criticism is that these and other statistical theories are preoccupied with explaining “average/common” behaviour, despite substantial differences between individuals that may impact one’s motivational factors. For instance, what might be a motivational factor for an individual may not be another’s motivator. An example of this is that in their pursuit of status a person might take a balanced view and strive to pursue several behavioural paths in an effort to achieve a combination of personal status objectives.

Maslow hierarchy of needs and Teambuilding

Resonating Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs theory of a person and applying it in a Team.
I have always been intrigued by theories created by the founding fathers of Psychology, and among these founding fathers, Abraham Maslow is perhaps and arguably one of the more profound ones. He stressed the importance of focusing on positive qualities in people as opposed to treating them as a “bag of symptoms”, which led him to found and create his theory best known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

His theory, namely Maslow hierarchy of needs suggests that there are 5 levels of motivation and each level has to be achieved before one can proceed to the next level. These 5 levels are namely, Physiological needs, Safety Needs, Belongingness and love needs, Esteem needs and finally self-actualization.

For the rest of this article, although profoundly abstract, this article would demonstrate how Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs theory can be applied into the Teambuilding framework.

First of all, the most basic level, Physiological needs refers to the physical requirements for human survival. In Maslow’s context, an individual has to first satisfy this level of needs before him or her can proceed on to the next level of needs. In the context of Teambuilding, the team must have some form of compensation or revenue for it to continue its survival.

The second level refers to safety needs; safety needs refer to absence of threats to physical safety such as war, natural disaster or violence. Safety needs also include personal security, financial security, health and well being and safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts. In the context of an organization or a team, it would refer to the trust and faith in the skill sets of the individual team members and that each team member would have the backing for one another. It could refer to competition from other competing teams and/or organizations which could threaten the source of revenue, resources or compensation. Hence the team would have to ensure that their survivability is ensured.

Next level along the hierarchy of needs would be love and belonging. Superficially, this level of needs refer to the interpersonal relationships and feelings of belongingness; that said, it is highly important for an individual to achieve love and belongingness as deficiency in this level of needs can override the need of safety as witnessed in children who cling to abusive parents resulted with negative impact to the individual’s ability to form and maintain emotionally significant relationships. In the context of a team, it would refer to the loyalty of the members towards one another and if they feel a sense of belongingness to the team and if the team’s mission and values resonate with the individual. It would be of imperial importance for the team member to resonate with the team’s mission and values or in the very least align his/her values with the organization’s/team’s.

With the previous three levels of needs satisfied, the next level of needs would be Esteem needs. Everyone has a need to feel respected which includes the need to have self-esteem and self-respect. Esteem refers to the need/desire to be recognized, accepted and value by others. Maslow identified that most people have the need for stable and consistent self-respect and self-esteem. Malsow also noted that there is a “lower version” and a higher version” of esteem needs. The lower version refers to the need for respect from others (such as fame, status, recognition and attention) and the higher version presents itself as a need for self respect (an example is that an individual may have a need for strength, competence mastery of a certain skill , self confidence and independence). Maslow noted that this higher version would take precedence over the lower version as the higher version depends on individual competence through experience and deprivation of these needs may lead to inferiority complex, weakness and helplessness.

Esteem needs for a team could most likely be referred to branding or brand establishment. The need for an established and recognized brand is almost similar to Malsow’s identification of the need for stable self-respect and self-esteem. While the lower version of esteem needs seem to resonate with the principles of having a strong and recognizable brand, the higher version of esteem needs would refer to the team members achieving strong competency levels in what they are doing, professionalism and a high standard in its industry.
Maslow also emphasized that while he originally thought that the needs of humans had strict guidelines, he came to believe that the hierarchies are interrelated rather than sharply separated and that esteem needs and the subsequent levels are not strictly separated; instead, the levels are closely related. Thus, in the context of an organization or a team, the subsequent levels or the basic needs of survival and safety are just as important as belongingness to a team or a mission and also as important as developing core competency levels with professionalism.

The next level, self-actualization refers to what a person’s full potential is and the realization of that potential of that potential. In other words, “What a man can be, he must be”; for this level, individuals may perceived or focus this need specifically, such as becoming an ideal chef or in other scenarios, it may be expressed in paintings, pictures or inventions. Maslow went on to mention that the individual must master the previous needs in order to understand this level of need.

In the context of a Team or an organization, the Team/Organization would strive to achieve what is their ideal form in terms of utilizing individual’s strengths and weaknesses to complement one another.

In his later years, Maslow discovers a further dimension of needs, namely self transcendence. Throughout this process, he criticize his own version on self-actualization; “the self only finds its actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, in altruism and spirituality”. In other words, if a team were to reach this level, it would be giving itself a higher goal outside the Team itself. The Team/Organization would be looking at developing the industry, reshaping the industry, bringing or moving the industry as a whole. The Team would be concentrating its efforts into developing leaders and the direction of its vision as well.
With all these theories in mind, it begs the question of why would this Hierarchy of needs theory be useful in developing Teams or Individuals? Maslow theorize this theory in an effort to understand how do people improve themselves and why and what was their motivation; thus, if we know if an individual is on a certain level, what kind and type of motivation he or she or the Team requires to move up to the next level. Although there have been critics saying that this manner of understanding people is humanistic in nature rather than contesting on the facts that humans are perverse in nature, nonetheless, it is a useful theory in understanding and finding out how to motivate an individual or a Team.

Fundamentals of Teambuilding

As we identified ourselves as Adventure Learning facilitators whom organize and customize Teambuilding programmes on a regular basis, I came to realization that our learning curve here though steep, carries a very different model of learning. The current model of learning requires On-The-Job Trainees to experience the different elements of a programme before undergoing a deeper understanding of theoretical models and the rationale, needs and uses of these models; this begs the understanding of the general concepts developed by social scientists and how we should apply these concepts into our daily programmes, and if so, which of these concepts are more relevant to us.

Teambuilding is defined as the process of utilising various methods of interventions that are targeted at enhancing social relations and clarifying team members’ roles with the ultimate objective of increasing efficiency and effectiveness in achieving the organisation’s objectives, mission and vision.

Traditionally, these activities usually assign tasks to different members of the team to solve through collaborative means. Teambuilding activities are deliberately structured to surface interpersonal problems that affect functionality of the team and while facilitating this process could address current and potential issues; it also carries the possibility to resolve these issues as well.

Teambuilding, as according to Klein is commonly used for group development interventions in organizations today. Of all organizational interventions, team-development interventions were found to have the largest effects on financial measures of organizational performance.

Team building generally sits within the theory and practice of organizational development; it could be employed in many organisations or non-formal organisations and is applicable to sports teams, school groups, armies, flight crews and other contexts. Although past literature has raised many issues on the conceptual definition and understanding of team building, there is now, consensus and conceptual clarity about what team building is composed of. Its four components are:

• Goal setting: Aligning around goals
• Interpersonal-relationship management: Building effective working relationships
• Role clarification: Reducing team members’ role ambiguity
• Problem solving: Finding solutions to team problems

Goal setting refers to a form of intervention that emphasizes on setting objectives and developing individual and team goals. Team members become involved in action planning to identify ways to achieve goals. It is designed to strengthen team member motivation to achieve team goals and objectives. By identifying specific outcome levels, teams can determine what future resources are needed. With a clear action plan and objectives, resources would be more focus on achieving the specific objectives. Individual characteristics (e.g. team member motivation) can also be altered by use of this intervention. Successful goal settings help the teams to work towards the same outcomes and make them more task and action oriented.

The second component, role clarification refers to a form of intervention that emphasizes increasing communication among team members regarding their respective roles within the team and identifying their individual roles and possible contributions. Team members improve their understanding of their own and others’ respective roles and duties within the team. It includes an understanding of the talent that exists on the team, and how best to use it, and allows members to understand why clear roles are important. The members should also realize that they are interdependent and the failure of one team member leads to the failure of the entire team.

Problem solving is a form of intervention which emphasizes identifying major task-related problems within the team. Team members become involved in action planning, implementing solutions to problems identified, and evaluating those solutions. Problem Solving, as a form of intervention is also critical as it requires the team to self-diagnose and self reliant. If teams are good in problem-solving skills, they are less likely to need external interventions to solve their problems and in the future, much more cost efficient.

Interpersonal relations management refers to the intervention which emphasizes increasing teamwork skills (i.e. communication, open sharing and mutual understanding). This intervention is to help team members develop trust in one another and increase confidence in the team. It requires the use of a facilitator or a third party to develop mutual trust and open communication between team members. As team members achieve higher levels of trust, cooperation and team characteristics can be changed as well.

In other words, a Teambuilding session must be able to address at least 1 of these components, or in part, able to subtly suggest or surface probable underlying conflicts or in the very least, suggest propensity towards resolving situations or conflicts lying within the environment of team building.

Klein, C., Diazgranados, D., Salas, E., Le, H., Burke, C. S., Lyons, R. & Goodwin, G. F. 2009, Does Team Building work?. Small Group Research

Salas, E., Diazgranados, D., Klein, C., Burke, C. S., Stagl, K. C., Goodwin, G. F., & Halpin, S. M. (2009, 12). Does Team Training Improve Team Performance? A Meta-Analysis. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 50(6), 903-933. doi: 10.1518/001872008X375009

To lead an orchestra, you must turn your back against the audience.

People in your organisation are not sugarcane, they are your trees. You are the gardener, while your job is to facilitate their growth while they are your biggest assets.

Team building differs from team training in a number of ways, it is not necessarily formal or systematic in nature; it does not necessarily target skill-based competencies, and is generally conducted in settings that are not in the actual environment where the team conducts its day-to-day operations.

Team building core principles

Among the 4 components, it would seem that the easiest component one can manage on his/her own to the biggest extent would be arguable interpersonal relationship management. While in a team setting, strong and positive interpersonal relationship management might not surface strong return on investment, it is more than necessary for a team to run in the long run.

In Stephen M.R. Convery’s book “The Speed of Trust”, he theorizes that trust always affect two outcomes, namely speed and cost.  economics of trust in which more trust equals to less speed and less cost.
While team building doesn’t necessarily defines as building up the individual’s competency in his/her skills set to increase the productivity of the team; it does however, requires each individual to contribute their strengths (and plausibly individual’s weakness as well) to complement the rest of the team.

Trust and its importance in the process of Team building

4 components, of which, the most xxxxx is : Interpersonal – relationship management

There are 2 types of trust in a work place: Namely, trust in your competency and trust in your character. Cost of trust is xxxxx, and interpersonal relationship is built on this trust.

Prove that social emotional learning will help interpersonal –relationship management.

These team-development interventions have proven to have positive effects on cognitive and effective processes and performance team outcomes.

While team building doesn’t necessarily defines as building up the individual’s competency in his/her skills set to increase the productivity of the team; it does however, requires each individual to contribute their strengths (and plausibly individual’s weakness as well) to complement the rest of the team. More importantly, it requires each individual to be socially aware of their personal and team mates’ strengths and weakness. According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (www.casel.org), Social and Emotional Learning core competencies are made up of five interrelated sets of cognitive and behavioral competencies; namely, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making.

Self awareness refers to the ability to recognize and detect one’s emotions and thoughts and their influence on behaviour while accurately assessing his/her strengths and limitations and possessing a well grounded sense of confidence and optimism.

Self-management refers to the ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts and behaviours effectively in different situations; including managing one’s stress, impulses and motivation while working towards his/her goal.

Social Awareness refers to the ability to empathise with other’s perspective while understanding the social and ethical norms of behaviours of other cultures.

Relationship skills refer to the ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals including a strong ability to communicate clearly and negotiate constructively and seeking and offering help when needed.

Responsible decision making refers to the ability to make constructive and respectful choices about personal behaviour and social interactions under the consideration of ethical standards, societal norms, well-being of others and consequences.

Increasing the key domains of Social and emotional skills would increase interpersonal-relationship management.

There are five interrelated sets of cognitive, affective and behavioural competencies in SEL and they are clustered as five key domains of social and emotional skills.

Key Domains of Social and Emotional Skills	Description
Self Awareness	Identifying and recognising emotions
	Accurate self-perception
	Recognising strengths, needs and values
	Self-efficacy
	Spirituality
Social Awareness	Perspective taking
	Empathy
	Appreciating diversity
	Respect for others
Self Management	Impulse control and stress management
	Self-motivation and discipline
	Goal setting and organisational skills
Relationship Management	Communication, social engagement and building relationships
	Working cooperatively
	Negotiation, refusal and conflict management
	Seeking and providing help
Responsible Decision Making	Problem identification and situation analysis
	Problem solving
	Evaluation and reflection
	Personal, moral and ethical responsibility

Team building was originally a group process intervention aimed at improving interpersonal relations and social interactions. Over time, this activity has developed to address best practices for achieving results, meeting goals and accomplishing tasks. It refers to the activities in which teams can engage to change their context, composition or team competencies to improve performance. It is distinct from team training, which is also a team-development intervention that is designed to improve team functioning and effectiveness.
Team building differs from team training in a number of ways. Team building is not necessarily formal or systematic in nature, does not target skill-based competencies, and is typically done in settings that are not in the actual environment where the team works on the task.

Team building generally sits within the theory and practice of organizational development, but can also be applied to sports teams, school groups, armies, flight crews and other contexts. There have been many issues in past literature about the conceptual definition of team building. However, now there is consensus and conceptual clarity about what team building constitutes. Its four components are:

• - Goal setting: Aligning around goals
• - Interpersonal-relationship management: Building effective working relationships
• - Role clarification: Reducing team members’ role ambiguity
• - Problem solving: Finding solutions to team problems

These team-development interventions have proven to have positive effects on cognitive and effective processes and performance team outcomes. Team building has seen the strongest effect on effective and process outcomes. According to Klein et al. (2009), team building is one of the most widely used group development interventions in organizations today. Of all organizational interventions, team-development interventions were found to have the largest effects on financial measures of organizational performance.Recent meta-analyses show that team development activities, including team building and team training, improve both a team’s objective performance and supervisory subjective ratings on performance.

• 1 The four approaches
• 2 Effectiveness
• 3 Effects on performance
• 4 Challenges to Team Building
• 5 Application of team building
  • 5.1 Intervention in schools
  • 5.2 Team building in organizations
  • 5.3 Interventions in sports
• 6 See also
• 7 References

The four approaches

The following are a summary of the four approaches as described by Salas and his team:
- Goal setting: this intervention emphasizes setting objectives and developing individual and team goals. Team members become involved in action planning to identify ways to achieve goals. It is designed to strengthen team member motivation to achieve team goals and objectives. By identifying specific outcome levels, teams can determine what future resources are needed. Individual characteristics (e.g. team member motivation) can also be altered by use of this intervention. Many organizations insist on teams negotiating a team charter between the team and responsible managers (and union leaders) to empower the team to accomplish things on behalf of the organization. Successful goal settings help the teams to work towards the same outcomes and make them more task and action oriented.

- Role clarification: this intervention emphasizes increasing communication among team members regarding their respective roles within the team. Team members improve their understanding of their own and others’ respective roles and duties within the team. This intervention defines the team as comprising a set of overlapping roles. These overlapping roles are characterized as the behaviors that are expected of each individual team member. It can be used to improve team and individual characteristics (i.e. by reducing role ambiguity) and work structure by negotiating, defining, and adjusting team member roles. It includes an understanding of the talent that exists on the team, and how best to use it, and allows members to understand why clear roles are important. The members should also realize that they are interdependent and the failure of one team member leads to the failure of the entire team.

- Problem solving: this intervention emphasizes identifying major task-related problems within the team. Team members become involved in action planning, implementing solutions to problems identified, and evaluating those solutions. They practice setting goals, developing interpersonal relations, clarifying team roles, and working to improve organizational characteristics through problem-solving tasks. This can have the added benefit of enhancing critical-thinking skills. If teams are good in problem-solving skills, they are less likely to need external interventions to solve their problems.

- Interpersonal relations management: this intervention emphasizes increasing teamwork skills (i.e. mutual supportiveness, communication and sharing of feelings). Team members develop trust in one another and confidence in the team. This is based on the assumption that teams with fewer interpersonal conflicts function more effectively than teams with greater numbers of interpersonal conflicts. It requires the use of a facilitator to develop mutual trust and open communication between team members. As team members achieve higher levels of trust, cooperation and team characteristics can be changed as well.

Walk for Our Children 2015

On 6^th September 2015, Singapore Children’s Society organised its annual 3km walkathon and carnival, “Walk for our Children” at Palawan Beach, Sentosa. Through this signature fund-raising event, Children Society aimed not only to encourage family bonding and fun, the spirit of charity was to be promoted as well.

Together with 20 organizations, FOCUS Adventure, CAMP CHALLENGE and Outdoor Adventures set up a carnival booth to raise funds for the beneficiaries under Singapore Children’s Society. A team of 8 staff across the 3 sister companies set up and managed “The Finger Blaster Challenge!” booth which attracted all walks of life. Despite the sweltering heat, the staff preserved till the end of the carnival.

The experience gained from this carnival was valuable as we do look forward to being involved and contribute in future like-minded events!

The Sailing Challenge!

 

Finally we’ve set off sails on our two new beautiful Sailboats called Maybritt and L’attitude. On our second sailing programme we brought both Maybritt and L’attitude to sail from Raffles Marina (Tuas) all the way to Sentosa’s One Degree 15; a 10-hour exciting journey down south!

The Sailing started in the afternoon with participants arriving at Raffles Marina to change up and to board the sail boats. With a little quick safety briefing from our very own two skippers, we quickly went onboard and did a quick understanding of the boats, terminologies and roles responsibilities.

Within 15 mintues we were off the ropes and started motoring our way out of the marina. Once we were out, the first 20 mintues was covered up with trainings on wind direction, how the boat works and terminologies. The participants were real quick to pick up the skills, and we did our tack trainings! Tacking is the action done for the boats to go on a “zick-zack” path to cut the wind on a thirty degree angle towards wind to go on a smooth sailing.

When a boat is tacked, not only should the skipper move the wheels for the rudder, but the entire sail will move from one end to another. This means the entire team has to release the ropes on one end and to tighten the other; this comes with coordination and communication. With much practice, the teams started to tack faster and faster. The timing was brilliant and the speed of the boat did not drop too much after every tack. The hardest part was to furl the genoa (front sail) in to bring it over to the other side. Now the rope used to furl is comparatively small with the others, therefore takes more strengths, and sometimes, more people!

Two gentlemen trying to furl the genoa in! 

With someone furling the genoa, another few had to pull in the genoa towards the other direction, and with the strong winds, it was almost impossible if it was not for the team’s enthusiasm and efforts put together! 

Three gentlemen trying their all to pull the genoa as close to the centre of the deck as possible!

Of course that was not the end of the task, since it is The Sailing Challenge! Teams were tasked to open up the second sail which was at the back called the Mizzen. As we were sailing and getting good at the tacks, teams wanted to move faster, therefore the call was given from the skipper to open up our Mizzen. Now, the sail had to be brought up while still traveling and this required loads of effort, balance and communication. As the sail sheets were pulled higher, wind started to catch the sail and it became heavier and heavier. With enough manpower, the sail eventually went all the way to the top!

Finally all three sail were up; the boat started to pick up phase, and traveled at an average of 6 knots. This was not the end as, there was a new challenge awaiting the team. It was seemed as though; every moment they overcame a challenge a new one popped up. This time round, the daylight was going down and the teams had to move faster to get closer to Sentosa before it became too dark out in the sea. Eventually the teams made it straight out and reached Onedegree15 at 2200 hrs. Everyone still had energy to jump off board and to give each other a hi-5! What was the most exciting part of the programme was asked, and everyone without fail shouted “Sailing!”

 

Our Sail is up, and ready for the next challenge!
Sign up now and try this new and exciting experience with your own team today!
Get ready to furl Sail is up, and ready for the next challenge!

Soar High with MINDS

This time round, FOCUS Adventure decided to conduct an indoor programme for the students at MINDS Towner Garden School to maximise our interaction with the students. On 11th July 2015, 19 students from MINDS Towner Garden School participated in our Angry Bird Trebuchet Challenge! Supported by 8 staff from both FOCUS Adventure and CAMP Challenge and tapping on our sister company’s expertise on managing children, it provided a more experiential development process for the students.

Working in small groups, the activity requires the students to construct their own trebuchet through the use of PVC pipes and twines. The students who are in Scouts displayed excellent tying and lashing skills. The second segment was the creation of the angry birds (i.e. projectiles) with the use of jumping clay. It allowed us to witness the creativity side of the students. The highlight of the activity was the successful launching of their projectiles by their very own trebuchet which destroyed their designated castle! A great sense of accomplishment was achieved when their projectiles successfully hit the castles!

It was yet another fulfilling day with the students, with much being learnt and shared amongst our staff and the students. Definitely looking forward to the next programme with the students!

Testimonial:
The activity was very interactive and the Facilitators were very enthusiastic in mingling with the students. Although most of the students had trouble with the knots, the Facilitators involved the students in ways they can contribute, like cutting the tape or holding the poles together. The students had the most fun kneading the angry birds out of plasticine and attacking the castle using the trebuchet. Thank you for bringing so much joy and laughter to our students!!!
- Ms Michelle Yeo, Job Coach

The activity was very interesting as it involved teamwork & problem solving skills whereby the students together with the volunteer & teacher had to figure out how it worked. The kneading of the angry birds was fun and the students enjoy the outcome of their creations. The volunteers were very helpful and committed in their way they carried out the activity with our students. Overall it was a very well planned programme. Good job FOCUS Adventure Team! Thanks for organising it. Both students & teachers enjoyed the activity.
- Ms Adeline Ong, Teacher