A Team Development Day Designed to Build High-Performing MBA Teams

Participants: 15 MBA students from various industries
Duration: Full Day (9:15 AM – 3:15 PM)
Service: Experiential Team Development Day
Delivered by: Dynamic Events
Delivered for: One of Ireland's Leading Universities

Overview 

Starting an MBA means meeting a new group of people and, very quickly, having to work together. For this group of 15 students, that meant getting to know people from finance, tech, healthcare, consulting and other industries.

The university wanted to give the new cohort a full day together before they moved into team-based consultancy projects. Rather than filling the day with introductions and icebreakers, we designed a programme that got them straight into working together.

Across the day, the students took on three very different team challenges: Dome Works, Cake Factory and Windfarm. Each introduced a different type of problem and gave the group a chance to see how they communicated, made decisions and responded when things didn't quite go to plan.

The Brief

The students were at the beginning of their MBA journey and came from a wide range of professional backgrounds. They needed to get to know each other, but the day also had to feel relevant to the programme they were about to begin.

The brief was to create a shared experience that would get people working together quickly while introducing situations involving leadership, communication, strategy, problem-solving and stakeholder engagement.

With consultancy projects ahead of them, we wanted to give the students a chance to experience some of those team dynamics for themselves rather than simply talk about them.

What We Planned

We built the day around three activities, each giving the students a different challenge to tackle together.

Starting with Dome Works

We kicked things off with Dome Works.

Working in teams, the students had to construct a geodesic dome using limited materials and within a set amount of time. It gave a group who were still getting to know each other something practical to focus on straight away.

They had to decide how to approach the task, divide responsibilities, communicate clearly and adapt when an idea didn't work. Most importantly, nobody could build the dome alone. They had to figure it out together.

It was a simple way to move everyone beyond introductions and get them working as a team from the beginning of the day.

Next Up, Cake Factory

Next came Cake Factory, where the students were put in charge of their own fictional bakery.

Their job was to produce and deliver a range of cakes for a demanding client, played by our facilitator. That meant thinking about workflow, delegation, quality control and continuous improvement, while also managing how they communicated with their client.

As the activity progressed, the pressure increased. Teams had to look at how they were working, spot problems in their process and make changes rather than simply carrying on with the same approach.

For an MBA group, this introduced plenty of familiar business challenges, but in an environment where they could experiment, make mistakes and see the consequences of their decisions straight away.

Finishing with Windfarm

After lunch, the group moved into Windfarm, a hands-on corporate team building challenge where teams design and build a wind-powered device while competing to keep their CO₂ footprint as low as possible.

This brought a different type of challenge. Teams had budgets and sustainability considerations to manage while responding to changing conditions, negotiating with others and making strategic decisions over several rounds.

A decision that looked good in one round didn't necessarily remain the best option in the next. Teams had to keep reviewing their approach, take new information on board and decide when it was time to change direction.

It was a fitting final challenge for the day, bringing together strategy, negotiation, planning and decision-making in a competitive environment.

How the Day Went

By the end of the day, the students had spent several hours working alongside people they had only recently met.

They had built something together, run a fictional business under pressure and made strategic decisions in a changing simulation. Along the way, they had opportunities to see who naturally stepped forward, how they communicated under pressure and how the group responded when a plan needed to change.

The activities also created useful moments for reflection and discussion around leadership styles, individual strengths, blind spots and the different ways people approach teamwork.

Feedback from both the students and academic staff was positive, with the programme highlighted as a standout part of the MBA experience.

Why These Three Activities?

Each activity had a different role to play in the day.

Dome Works gave the students an immediate, hands-on challenge. Cake Factory introduced process, pressure and client communication. Windfarm finished the programme with a more complex strategic simulation.

As the students moved through the programme, our facilitators used debriefs to explore what had happened during each challenge and connect those experiences back to working in a professional team.

The programme was tailored around the university's academic and behavioural objectives rather than using an off-the-shelf team building day.

Planning Something Similar?

We've been designing and delivering team development programmes for more than 30 years, working with corporate teams, universities, graduate groups and leadership programmes.

If you're bringing a new group together, we can build a programme around what you want them to experience and learn, whether that's for an MBA induction, graduate onboarding, leadership development or the start of a new project team.

Tell us about your group and what you want to achieve, and we'll help you design the right day.