Bring Out The Competitive Spirit With A Soap Box Derby

How To Ensure The Competition In Your Organisation Is Beneficial

Competition can be either advantageous or limiting to a company – find out how a soap box derby brings the best out of your employees.

Whether your company holds an annual awards dinner, promotes internally for team leader positions or has an incentivised bonus scheme, most organisations are reliant on using the competitive spirit of their individual employees to create success. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Getting The Most Out Of A Competitive Workplace

Competitiveness in the workplace has been analysed by the Harvard Business Review, and the findings are quite mixed. Whilst competition is known to motivate employees and encourage them to put more effort into reaching pre-defined company goals, this strategy needs to be used with care.

Some studies have discovered a link between workplace competition and anxiety – if employees feel that they are under threat of losing their job, or being humiliated, then this competitiveness can stem their creative flow and cause them to act inappropriately. On the other hand, when employees feel excited by the challenge of a competition, the opposite is true; those who are motivated well are better able to solve problems and ultimately benefit the company.

So, how do you bring out the competitive spirit in your employees and ensure that it is beneficial rather than detrimental to the success of your organisation? The answer is with a soap box derby team-building event.

Building Your Team And Your Vehicle

From the beginning of this activity, your staff will love taking part in the soap box derby. They will be placed in two or more teams and tasked with designing, building, testing and racing their own soap box vehicle. At the end of the event, which lasts around 3 hours, the team to cross the finish line first will be crowned champions.

With the help of energetic events staff in the workshop, the teams will be guided on how to design their soap box. Following which, they’ll be shown how to create their vision, by using a range of tools to cut and shape the materials into something that resembles a vehicle. Painting and accessorising is all part of the design process, and may assist you with gaining sponsorship to help you nail pole position. The more attractive the car is, the higher up the grid it will be positioned.

But of course, before the final race begins, there’s a lot of testing to be done too. A number of qualifiers will help you identify and fix any issues with your vehicle. But it’s important that your team members don’t use up all their energy in this phase. All the people power that is essential for propelling the vehicle forward, will need to be saved for the final race.

What Your Team With Gain From This Competitive Event

Those with a flair for creativity will excel at this event, but these skills don’t come naturally to everyone. That’s why the soap box derby is such an important activity to give your teams – it encourages these groups of people to find their own individual qualities – whether that’s as a leader, presenting your vehicle to sponsors, making key team decisions or offering your athleticism to power the vehicle forward. Understanding your role within the context of the team is essential to the competition, which can easily be translated back to your function within the daily running of your organisation.

Above all else, the soap box derby is incredibly fun, acting as a morale-booster and ensuring that the competitive spirit within your company enhances productivity rather than suppresses it.