Context and Challenge

The Brief: Conference Theme: “Together, as one team”. This division of the Thomas Cook Group is experiencing rapid growth and success, but standing still isn’t an option. The objective of the conference was to bring people together as one team across all European markets to celebrate success from the previous year and motivate the team to make 2017 their biggest and best yet.

The key objectives were for Anna to deliver a keynote speech that would inspire the team to strive for continuous improvement and build on their success, motivate them to hit their stretch targets and maintain focus throughout the year. The objectives for the team building session were to reinforce the message that ‘nothing is impossible when you work well together’.  The team members were from all over Europe and some were meeting each other for the first time, so it was important that they got to know each other and learnt how to work well as a cohesive group.

The Solution

1. 45 minute keynote speech + Q&A

Anna’s experience of being at the top of her sport for 15 years and wining back to back world titles was very relevant to this team who also wanted to sustain a consistently high performance, keep delivering year on year and remain ahead of the competition.

Anna delivered content with key messages around:

• The concept of marginal gains and how this applies to the whole team
• The winning mindset: constantly striving for improvement in order to stay at the top of your game
• Working effectively, together as one high performing team and being accountable
• Dealing with challenges and obstacles that you will inevitably face
• Motivation to hit stretch targets and go above and beyond

2. Team Building Workshop

The team was divided into groups with a mix of people from different functions and from different countries and after some key learning on characteristics and behaviours of high performing teams the group engaged in a high energy, fun and competitive team building activity. In order to succeed the team needed to apply the learning about cohesive teams, including assigning a leader and being clear on their roles within the team. This was followed with some constructive exercises and discussions about how they could apply the learnings in their everyday roles and teams.