Harbor Stone Construction Company – Team Building Paintball Outing

**This team outing took place in early February 2020.

Teamwork and comradery are very important to Harbor Stone Construction Company, as we believe in the importance of family, morals and commitment.  We recognize, on average, we spend more time at work than we do with our families.  Naturally, this can form a “work family” and like any family, in order to have a strong, cohesive unit, it is important that everyone understands the importance of relying on each other for support, being able to utilize everyone’s’ skills, strengths and weaknesses and having strong communication.

In construction, it takes leadership, communication, the ability to utilize our strengths and recognizing our weaknesses to complete a project on time.  In an effort to thank the team for all of their hard work and commitment, as well as strengthen trust, respect, communication and relationships outside of work we thought: what would be better than a little paintball fun?

We decided on paintball for several reasons:

1. Paintball is a way to relieve stress, while promoting teamwork in a fun and interactive way.
2. While on the paintball field, you realize that strength and speed are not nearly as important as strategy and communication.
3. Creating a reason for the team to interact with each other in a non-related work day, working together on a common goal, forcing them to work as a team if they want to win! Because in order to win, your team has to work together, communicate well and be willing to take risks.
4. Paintball not only requires employees to designate a leader, you must also formulate and plan strategy on the fly and that involves making plans and solving problems along the way.
5. Paintball not only forces you to make good decisions but also leaves you accountable by the rest of the team for those choices.

We had such a great turn out!  So many people were able to show up that we had to divide into two teams; one team for those “under 30” and the other team for those “over 30”.  It was interesting, both teams played well and enjoyed running around the fields, working together and aiming for the win but it seemed like the “over 30” team already knew how important it was to have a “leader” and communicate, they came out of the gate strong.

It may have taken the “under 30” team a few games to realize someone had to take the lead and they needed to start communicating, but they did realize it by the end of the day.  But there can only be one winner…and the winner was…the “over 30” team!

It was neat to see these teams come together, communicate and have fun in a non-related work day.  We will definitely be doing this annually, once in the fall and once in the spring.  We have not decided what we will be doing this spring but we are looking forward to it!