Mission to Mars – team building around communication

Every three years, a new team takes off to Mars. The goal is to land there as a Crew. The aim is to be the first nation to arrive there. But the mission can only begin when the team has deciphered a code, which itself consists of multiple small codes. In order to find the correct solution, the expertise from every single astronaut is needed.

At the beginning of the communication team event, the groups will be split into multiple astronaut teams. These will then enter the online simulation, each team finds itself in their own chatroom. A countdown of 26 minutes is visible to everyone – and an empty field in which a code of numbers and signs must be entered. But which one? Each team member receives cards with pieces of information that are only visible to them.

The team members begin to guess and puzzle – and ultimately find out that they have to put the pieces of information in a logical order to work out the number code for take off, to get the numbercode so that contact with the Mars station can be resumed in the first step.

In total, the Mission to Mars consists of three rounds of 26 minutes, plus a short, easy unit of 26 minutes which can be used either as a warm up activity or as a finish. With each round, the complexity increases: for example, the information cards are distributed randomly in the middle of the game, so that every team member now has double the amount of cards, and the information has become more detailed.

There is a break after every round where the whole group comes together and reflects: what worked and what didn’t? It then becomes clear for example, that even though a team worked quickly, it only solved the code correctly half of the time – because is hadn’t verified the information sufficiently. In every round, the team learns something new and receives enough food for the final reflection.

You can split the four units of the communication team event over a longer time frame with multiple dates. In this way, the team has the opportunity to transfer the knowledge to everyday life!