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« THE CREATIVE TEAM »

...a training adventure in Costa Rica.


General Objectives

This is a milder version of our adrenaline-filled team-building week. The focus of this agenda and curriculum is to increase your creative intelligence and to direct the output to "breakthrough thinking". It will benefit teams that are responsible for creating ideas, services and products.

Following this week-long creativity lab, the participants will have gained an important understanding of themselves and powerfull insights into brain/mind and its creative expression. They will also have experienced how they can more efficiently function as a team and explored the concept of synergetic relationships in "self-organizing teams". They will have learned how individuals can attain higher intelligence and performance.

The participants will have seen how neural mindsets limit perception and learned what they can do about it. They will have explored ideas like innovation, creative intelligence empowerment in team dynamics and how to communicate and work more effectively and creatively with others.

They will have acquired an impressive selection of creativity tools and exercizes and will have tested them on their own needs and expectations.

Above all they will have acquired a more cohesive way of functioning and working together.

This training week will help the participants &endash;

 


Daily itinerary

Day 1. Arrival at San Jose, Costa Rica

PM - Transfer to jungle Lodge - Welcome cocktail and introductions

Orientation meeting and Supper

You'll be met at the Juan Santamaria Airport and transferred to a beautiful and very comfortable Jungle Lodge, nestled against the Carara Biological Reserve in Costa Rica's Central Pacific zone. Following the breathtaking 90 minute drive down the mountains from the Central highlands in an air-conditioned Coaster, you might want to freshen up in your spacious, room, in this secluded enclave. A private entrance, in a "villa-like unit" scattered about the main lodge and pool, assures a trouble-free stay. Take a swim in the pool, explore the lush tropical gardens or the jungle paths just beyond.

A "Bienvenidos cocktail party" and a meeting with the animators &endash; Senior Jungle Consultants Suzy and Lawrence, your Driver for the duration, and other relevant staff.


Day 2. - Training theme : "Outstanding teams from creative self-management"

AM - Early morning Jungle trek and "Skywalk"

PM - Team-building exercise in the gardens : «Lost in the Jungle»

Seminar at the Lodge: Creativity and subjective limits…our personal paradigms

Begin the day with an early morning trek along a series of easy jungle trails and suspended bridges. Explore a wondrous rainforest of century old trees before entering the Carara Biological Reserve, considered one of the most fascinating parks of Costa Rica. Visit two overlapping biozones - the North's dry Pacific forest and the Southern rainforest. Blessed with an incredible biodiversity, the Reserve is the last refuge of the Scarlet Macaw, among other species. Your naturalist-guides will help you see the forest in spite of the trees and the thousands of other flora and fauna. Your training-guide will help you recognize how Nature manages via "self-organizing systems".

Maybe you'll decide to take a meeting - or a dip - before the next activity. After lunch, in the gardens by the pool, Suzy and Lawrence will facilitate a learning exercise called "Lost in the jungle". It will demonstrate the effects of "perception" on team dynamics and will illustrate the premise of the tonight's after-dinner conference - that we live in a world of paradigms. Lawrence will explore a powerful «Lesson from the jungle…» to explain how perception is limited by neurology, and what we can do about it.


Day 3. AM - Training theme : Brain/mind and inner maps &endash;vs- Outer expectations

AM - Jungle Rio "crocodile cruise".

PM Team building exercise followed by a "Lesson fron the jungle… and an animated discussion on: Survival of the wisest: The need for creative intelligence and innovation.

Today, we're off on an exciting river adventure. Visit the last home of the giant American crocodile. Cruise down a lazy jungle river to its estuary and "get up close and personal" - with these prehistoric survivors while learning about your own prehistoric wiring. Naturalist-guides will explain the estuary's complex biosystem as well as point out the many native and migratory bird species that live in the reserve while training-guides explain how Nature manages "creative intelligence".

Later in the afternoon - in the gardens by the pool - a team building exercise will bring the focus on leadership, communication and team spirit. Later on, after explaining the creative process used by Nature's self-organizing systems, Lawrence will animate a group discussion on creativity and innovation.


Day 4.- Training theme : Individuals, groups and teams

AM &endash; Climb into the jungle canopy

PM &endash; Back at the Lodge, a "Lesson from the jungle…" answers why Nature insists on self-motivated creativity

You'll divide into problem solving units to climb into the canopy - the penthouse where 70% of jungle life exists. A naturalist-guide will explain the great biodiversity and its importance of life above "the fray". To participate in this activity, the adventure-guides will explain how to climb up to a first platform, high in a giant tree, strapped in a harness, to then let them zip through the treetops on cables to other platforms and so on, across the forest. The traning-guides will have explained how to reach 4 kinds of courage.

This day, individual groups will sneak off to swing from trees during a "plenary" at the Lodge. In spirited discussions, you'll discover everything we need to know about personal and organizational needs and find out where motivated creativity fits into the overall plan. The "climbteams" will have prepared a skit for a "dinner show" on the pitfalls of self-management.


Day 5.- Training theme : Self-empowerment in personal and professional life

AM - Vamos a la playa &endash; The Gold and White Beach Hunt &endash; A team-building discovery

PM &endash; In the evening, back at the lodge: A Lesson from the jungle… Why Nature favors personal power and empowerment

A 700 acre tropical beach resort - where the jungle meets the sea - invites us to use their spacious facilities, meeting rooms, white sand and gold sand beaches, turquoise waters, swimming pools, jaccuzzis, tennis courts, water sports and much, much more, in order to let us enjoy some serious work. Big teams, little teams, flexi-teams, mixed teams, instant teams, high-performance teams --- you'll explore the details and the "best practices".

Participants will have the run of the resort &endash; before during and after a Beach Bar-B-Q &endash; and they will actively involved in a most unusual "treasure hunt". They look for visions of ideal and TQL (total quality life) and barriers. It'll all make sense when it's detailed, but in the meantime imagine finding the key to personal power.

Tonight, back to the lodge, we'll hear an amazing story about a powerful idea.


Day 6.- Training theme: Rising to the occasion... the high performance team

AM - Mountain climb to a "waterfall in a mystic cloudforest"

PM - Vision and planning exercises .

At an outstanding 650 feet, discover the tallest waterfall in Costa Rica; it will require a 5km trek up a moutain, along a wide, steep, dirt lane to the cloudforest home of the Quetzals, the Toucans and many other species. This level 3-4 trek, will expose you to some of the most spectacular views imaginable, as you'll be hundreds of meters high, overlooking mountains, valleys, jungles, with breathtaking oceanviews.

Once at the forest entrance, you'll need team work to get down a very steep &endash; and rather dangerous &endash; 15 minute long footpath. Bring your swimming trunks as the cascada has 10 very inviting natural pools. On your rather arduous trek up the moutain to the waterfall, you will have carried a backpack full of symbols you gathered over the week to represent the things that limit your creativity, your personal power and your optimum contribution to the team. As you ascended the mountain, Suzy encouraged you to "lighten your load" and to bury those limits along the way.

It'll be much easier coming down. Then, comfortably back at the Lodge, Lawrence will expose some ideas on Vision and how to actualise it; we'll examine Nature's slant on self-management and self-actualization in the context of a high performance team. And then you'll draw up a strategic action plan.


Day 7. Training theme: Taking it home...

AM - Power walk and power talk : The recapitulation

PM - Transfer to the Airport (San Jose)

Suzy will lead an early morning "power walk", Lawrence will recap what you've learned through all experiences and classes at "a power breakfast". Then you may want a last dip in the pool or stroll through the gardens.

Only time left to pack your bags, before boarding our Coaster for the 90-minute drive up from the Pacific coast to the Central Valley. We'll stop for souvenirs and Costa Rican coffee before you are deposited at the Airport for your flight home, or at one of numerous hotels from where you can extend your stay.


Package and Price

We recommend that you consider a "communication plan" and if possible a "kick off event" to promote the week and prepare the participants to optimize their experience. Further, if participants arrived from several different locations, we also recommend using a "staging location" in proximity to the Airport, in Alajuela region. If Europeans or people from the West Coast or with difficult travel itineraries are anticipated, we should arrange to meet them a day or two before.

THIS TEAM BUILDING PACKAGE

This complete training package for 12 people, for 6 nights 7-days, in Costa Rica includes:

It does not include airfare, airport taxes nor gratuities. Call or write for a quote.


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