Teambuilding in Belgium 2022 – Sheep Herding

Company & Culture

Sparkle Belgium decided to do a fun teambuilding event in October 2022 for everyone that wanted to join. Like usual there would to be food and drinks involved, but there was also a surprise activity announced that the organizers managed to keep secret (well done!) until the very last moment: Sheep herding!

Read this article or watch this short movie to get a glimpse this fun event.

3 Challenges, 4 white sheep and 1 black sheep

It was a dry, partially overcast but nice average Belgian weather day. Sparkle invited a Belgian-Scottish sheep herder with his shepherd dog and 5 sheep. The shepherd used to own more that 1400 sheep. He organised an obstacle course where the sheep needed to be guided around. The Sparkle colleagues were divided in 3 groups and had to compete in 3 challenges to test their team strengths in: People herding, sheep herding and sheep intelligence. After an introduction from the sheep-master including some funny sheep stories it was time for action.

For the 1st challenge 1 person of every team was selected, as democratically as possible but with sometimes hesitating consent, to be blindfolded. The rest of the team needed to guide that person around the course laid out in the field using only their voices with a set of agreed upon navigational sounds. Happy chaos is what followed…

The 2nd challenge was the real deal. Now that everyone was familiar with the obstacle course a group of 5 sheep needed to be guided around it. The fastest team to complete the obstacles would win. This turned out to be a real team effort in terms of levelling the correct amount of team proximity around the sheep to direct them in a calm and controlled way. Too much pressure and the sheep could run away out of control. Some people also discovered that trying to outrun a sheep was impossible and the team had to collaborate and communicate with patience and calmness.

The 3rd challenges was an intelligence quiz about sheep that the teams had to complete WITHOUT smartphones during the 2nd challenge. The shepherd master took everything into account, and after some deliberation, he announced the winning team.