Participants will participate in an experiential learning activity requiring participants to work together as a team to achieve the program mission. The mission requires participants to communicate, strategize, problem solve and creatively achieve the program’s mission. Facilitators will debrief the process and discuss how personality, team process, team functional and dysfunctional relationships impact the effective team process. This program is highly experiential and aimed to help the team experience how their specific team works together (effectively and ineffectively) to achieve the mission. Minimum one-day program with option for multiple days. Customized content can be developed based on client needs to include individual and team performance, change, conflict, understanding personalities, communication, leadership and followership, etc. Assessments can also be added.
Three options available:
Rescue Behind Enemy Lines
Participants work together to plan and execute a rescue behind enemy lines.
Canyoneering in Southern Utah
Participants travel to Escalante, UT to work as a team as they Canyoneering in the slot canyons of southern Utah.
Paralympic Sports
Using Paralympic sports participants will have a physical strength limited or taken away (i.e. use of arms, hearing, eyesight, etc.) and everyone would have work together as team to play against their opponent.
Presented in partnership with Trigena Halley, Muffy Davis, and Archie Tew
Muffy Davis
Muffy was practically born on skis. She began skiing when she was three and began ski racing when she was seven. Always a goal setter, when she was eight, Muffy told her mother, “God made me to be a ski racer!” and declared that she would ski race in the Olympics. As one of the top junior racers in the country, Muffy was well on her way to accomplishing that goal. Having grown up and competed closely with Downhill champion Picabo Street, it was very likely that Muffy, too, would make it to the top. Unfortunately tragedy struck in February of 1989. While downhill training in her hometown of Sun Valley, ID, Muffy went off course and slammed into a tree, crushing her back and resulting in complete paraplegia.
Needless to say, Muffy was devastated at the loss of her chances to become a skiing champion, but she was never one to stay down long. Where one door appeared to close, Muffy saw others open. She chose to refocus the time and energy she usually spent on racing towards academics and community service. After graduating Valedictorian of her high school class, she went on to attend and graduate from Stanford University, where she was awarded the Alumni Association’s only award for service to the community.
Though Muffy thoroughly enjoyed her time and adventures at Stanford, there was still a voice inside calling her back to the mountain, back to her old dreams. While in college, Muffy spent time learning how to mono-ski, adaptive skiing for paraplegics. Feeling as though she had unfinished business on the race course, after her college graduation in 1995, Muffy decided to give ski racing another shot!
Since then, Muffy has consistently improved and excelled in disabled ski racing. As a member of the United States Disabled Ski Team, her accomplishments include: winning Silver medals in the 2002 Paralympics in Salt Lake City, UT, two World Cup Overall Titles in 2001and 2002, a bronze medal in at the Paralympics in Nagano, Japan in 1998, A World Championship 2000 in Anzere, Switzerland, five World cup Titles and over twenty five World Cup medals. In Addition, Muffy was honored by the Paralyzed Veteran’s of America with their Outstanding Skier Award for her skiing accomplishments and community service. In 2002 she received the Most Inspirational Athlete of 2002 from Challenged Athletes Foundation and was awarded The Endurance Sports Award’s Disabled Athlete of 2002. And just this year she was honored with the IOC President’s Disabled Athlete Award.
In May of 2002, Muffy and three other paraplegics made history when they successfully ascended California’s Mt. Shasta, using hand-cranked machines called SnowPods. The trip took the climbers 5.5 days to summit the 14,162′ mountain and was the largest group of paraplegic mountaineers. And just last September, Muffy and a fellow adventurer made the first ever wheelchair ascent of Colorado’s 14,110′ Pike’s Peak. That makes two summits over 14,000′ for Muffy.
While skiing has always been Muffy’s first love, she is also actively involved in disabled waterskiing, scuba diving, swimming, weight training, horseback riding, hand cycling, mountain climbing and various community service projects. Now as a retired ski racer, Muffy is building her career in motivational speaking and is working on a book. Additionally, she is a spokesperson for Independence Technology, a Johnson & Johnson Company and the CDC’s Tobacco Free Sports Program. Muffy also works as a Development Officer at the University of Utah Health Sciences Rehabilitation Center.
Archie Tew
I came to the United States from England over thirty years ago. I met my wife, Alexis, in New Mexico, built a ‘green’ home in the Cerrillos Hills south of Santa Fe, and we gathered the family of our choosing around us. It was a life changer to leave the security of the familiar, but one that was to define my true and authentic self, because I could no longer pretend to be anyone other than who I truly am.
Living in the familiar can limit our growth and by choosing to risk, to take a chance, to trust my instincts, opportunities and possibilities opened in front of me. The question was whether I was courageous enough to embrace them.
All my life I had choices that I could make and many times I believed that I didn’t have a choice, which meant that I didn’t need to take ownership for the results in my life. But in reality I always had a choice.
I could choose how to surmount the pain of loss: The passing of family, the hurt of an abusive teacher, the sting of rejection or the lonely absence of friendship. I could also choose how to celebrate the small victories: The ‘A’ in class, the diploma, the great job interview, the new found love or an undiscovered talent.
All of this has been my life and much, much more. It is this journey, this constant learning, which is the foundation for the work that I do.
The first third of my life in England was spent exploring, trying to create the ‘what’ in order to discover the ‘why’. It wasn’t until I came to the US and lived the second third of my life, that the two entwined.
For almost all of the second third of my life I have been designing, creating and delivering experiential learning programs to thousands of people in diverse companies all over the world. My original mentor was Larry Wilson. For years, this remarkable man created an experiential learning laboratory known as Pecos River Learning Center. It became the preeminent action learning organization in the country. It was there that I cut my teeth, learning the skills of immersive learning.
I branched out on my own, forming companies and alliances with other practitioners in the field in order to build learning organizations, such as One World Learning and AsOne, Inc. During this period, I helped both Simmons and Interface become two of Fortune magazine’s ’100 Best Companies to Work For’. This entailed creating a cultural change program for all 7000 associates, working with all departments and associates from the shop floor to executive leadership level. International companies I worked with at this point have included: Philip Morris, British Airways, Ford, Baxter Healthcare, Kraft, and Perrier, to name a few.
After September 11, 2001, I realized, at the suggestion of my wife, that I could also create change within, arguably, the most powerful organization in the world: The United States Government. For over eight years I have been a faculty speaker at both the Eastern and Western Federal Leadership training centers, working with leaders from diverse agencies within the public sector. I have designed and delivered programs for multiple agencies focusing on innovation and creativity, change management, crisis management, legacy, team dynamics, communication, leadership skills and personal effectiveness. These include agencies such as TSA, NSA, CDC, FAA, DOE, FEMA, NNSA etc. I also designed and delivered Change Management programs for NATO at the Hague. I continue to work with teams and individuals in both the public and private sectors since both have their own unique challenges and both dramatically affect the world we all live in.
“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.”- Confucius