Client scenario: The purchasing department of a sales organization went through six months of dramatic turnover, resulting in a team comprised of four people new to the company and four people averaging fifteen years’ tenure. All seemed enthusiastic about their job and the company, but most reported their colleagues ranged from “somewhat difficult” to “very difficult” to work with.

An internally facilitated session to clarify the group’s mission and individual roles proved a good first step in bringing this team along, but participants voiced concerns about whether other group members would “walk the talk.”

The nature of the work this team was doing meant that members could operate for long periods of time without needing help from one and other….but needed to know without a doubt that their teammates were there when they needed them.

After considering several options, the team voted to spend a day on a “high ropes” challenge course. Essentially an obstacle course strung between trees approximately 30’ in the air, the high ropes course gives participants an opportunity to explore risk-taking in a controlled environment. The height involved gives participants a visceral sense of danger, but a safety system adapted from rockclimbing ensures that while perceived risk is very high, actual risk is virtually non-existant.

We devoted the first part of the day to teaching participants how to “belay” one and other, using ropes and harnesses to create a safety system. Over lunch, participants discussed their goals for the afternoon. Some wanted to complete several legs of the course while blindfolded (!), while others said they would be content to just complete one leg with full use of their faculties. Two expressed doubt they’d be able to do more than climb up to the 30’ entrance, and one declared her firm intention to remain on the ground.

The next several hours saw most participants exceed their expectations, one (the person who intended to charge through blindfolded) significantly re-define his goal, and one succeed in keeping both feet securely on the ground.

While belaying for one and other through this risk-taking undoubtedly had some “teambuilding” effect, the primary goal of the day was to give the team an action laboratory in which to explore what supporting each other was all about. In conversations following the last successful descent to the ground, participants talked at length about what it felt like to depend on other people, what they needed to feel comfortable putting themselves in others’ hands, and what behaviors signaled trustworthiness. To almost everyone’s surprise, the answers to these questions varied tremendously from person to person. Without prompting, group members then turned their focus to what kind of support they wanted from one and other at work.

“I’ve been avoiding working with some of you,” confessed one participant at the end of the day, “Because I wasn’t getting the kind of support I needed to feel comfortable collaborating. Today [another participant] made me realize I wasn’t asking for what I needed either. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to figure that out on my own.”