This is how the students reflect after the team building session:

With the dawn of 2013, the master’s class was summoned to embark on the experience of a lifetime! Noting the anxiety, great fears and deep insecurities that were unique to the group, Prof Deon Meiring (MCom Human Resource Management and Industrial Psychology programme manager) decided to treat the group to an extreme team building session, during which team members had to challenge and strengthen the existing relationships within the group. Members were facilitated by the very well respected Andre Potgieter (Director of Psych-Xtreme), who supported the group members through its paces ranging from Xtreme hiking to Xtreme Psyche-exploration exercises.

The group very quickly transformed into a team working together. Members started to eliminate their perceptions of each other, by entrusting each group member with a task in the preparation of a potjie that would dare to satisfy the pallet of Michelin Chefs. This exercise forced the group members to trust the strengths of their peers and to create an environment in which “each person is allowed to be the best he or she can”.

The following day the group members were challenged to take collective capabilities and defeat the wilderness by culminating individual identities into significant team-member roles. Group members walked away from the survival-challenge with somewhat bruised muscles, but were rewarded with integrity-in-action.

The Human Resource master’s class of 2013 would like to thank the Department of Human Resource Management for the great support system they have created amongst the team and aim not only to sustain this gift but also to embark on the final stretch of this challenging journey – which is to become the leading industrial and organisational psychologists within the global arena!