In the morning of the 30th of May, all trainees and students of TecAlliance followed the call of training manager Kerstin Langohr and took part of our 2 days trainee meeting in Weikersheim locally or remotly via Go-To-Meeting.
Rare moments to meet so many colleagues at once, as most of them are distributed to our different locations. Because of this fact it makes the meeting more beautiful and more interesting for everyone.
After a short greeting and small hints to the topics from Kerstin Langohr we started with a discussion. We talked about different topics which include positive and negative facts and first approaches for the problems were acquired. Now we defined some rules e.g. how to give feedback, managing our out-of-office messages and for sure the correct behavior with our communication media and the behavior of information transfer.
In addition to this it became a little bit tricky. Each participant got two cards with different information. Our task: How much does Mr. Mayer’s journey by taxi, train and plane cost? The solution of the problem could only be reached by good communication. At the beginning, it was a little bit chaotic but we improved the strategy step by step and the problem was finally solved by helping each other and using a flip chart. We reflected our team performance and discussed what we could’ve done better and what mistakes we’ve done. Quickly we recognized parallels to our workday, where neither runs everything smoothly.
To further improve our communication we played a game like “Wer wird Millionär” splitted into two teams. Here we could see that we have more knowledge working together in a team and if someone doesn’t know the answer maybe the other knows it. Almost all questions could be answered correct by both teams.
Freshly strengthened by fruits and sweets and a little break it went on. The new task for our team: Bridge building!
We had to construct a stable bridge between two tables with the help of adhesive tape, scissors and small paper sheets. The bridge has to carry the load of two small toy cars and transport them safely and without falling down from table A to table B. Nobody wanted to take over the role of civil engineer, but all bridges fulfilled the requirements!
After a pronounced lunch break, we went on to do a sporting activity. In the glorious sunshine, Kerstin gave us the task of overcoming a rope stretched between two trees without touching it. With technology, strength and good organization, we mastered the task together, but we had only little time to look forward, because in round two, the rope was a lot higher than in round one. Now our discussion took much more time and we tried many ideas and we have failed. In the end, when we were about to give up, we still managed to finish the task together successfully.
The deserved reward of a busy but funny day came in the form of pizza. A great ending, where we talked a little bit in a relaxed atmosphere and shared our experiences with the others.
That’s it from Day One!
