Put on your orange dress, drink some Oranjebitter and get ready to sing the national anthem. The best way to bond is to celebrate a national holiday together. So, let’s create that ultimate holiday feeling. Here are 3 tips team building based on King’s Day in Holland.
National holiday to unite your team
Once upon a time there was a little princess called Wilhelmina. She lived in the Netherlands, a country that was extremely divided. People didn’t want to do any activities together. Now, Wilhelmina celebrated her 5th birthday on August 31 1885. ‘A great day for a national holiday’, a newspaper thought. And so a new national holiday was born. It was called Princess Day and became a huge success. The Dutch people united, the nation was one.
I know it is a bit too much to ask you to create your own national holiday. It is a good idea to look at national holidays though. You can get inspiration on how to build & strengthen relationships . Let’s have a look at King’s Day!
Holiday feeling with old Dutch games: team building based on national celebration
The first tip for team building based on King’s Day actually comes from Princess Day. In that time the holiday did not have the same dimension as nowadays. Focus was on strengthening relationships within your family & local community. That happened through games. Using these old Dutch games for teambuilding is perfect as rules are simple, you don’t have to use your brain a lot. They’re just a fun activity to do together and a way to release any tension. Best part is also that you feel like you’re getting a taste of Dutch culture. Add some orange clothes and an orange drink (Oranjebitter) and you feel like you’re on holiday.
Why the royal birthday & flower parades in the Netherlands are connected
As the years went by princess Wilhelmina got older. In September 1898 she became Queen of the Netherlands and so Princess Day became Queen’s Day. Thanks to these two royal celebration; the birthday and the inauguration, the flower parades in the Netherlands became popular. Now, I let you think about it for a moment…Why is Wilhelmina’s birthday/ inauguration as Queen a good time for the flower parade? The answer is in the next blogpost.
Team building based on King’s Day flower parade
Tip two on team building based on King’s Day, is about these flower parades. Before WWII these flower processions were strongly connected to the royal family. Nowadays the processions are used to underline the local identity & the small community feeling. Now this team building tip decorate your bike, car or other vehicle. Set some rules before you start this activity. One of these rules should be about how you combine local, regional aspects with national cultural elements. What is typical of your city? What is unique about your family or friends? When you do this group activity with your colleagues, you can also include the corporate culture and team culture in these game rules. For complete instructions & customisation of this teambuilding activity based on King’s Day, contact me or book the We are one on King’s Day game activity.
Be like Dutch kids: sell what you love & they don’t need
Another typical Dutch element of King’s Day is the vrijmarkt, or garage sale/ flea market. This is one of the youngest traditions of the royal celebration. In the seventies, Beatrix was Queen. She is the mother of our present King Willem-Alexander and the granddaughter of Wilhelmina. She had married a German man and not everyone in the Netherlands liked that. Besides, you could again feel some tension building up in the Netherlands. The vrijmarkt already existed, but was not centrally organised. Here and there in the suburbs of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities these flea markets popped up. The idea was to bring these markets to the inner city centre, so the Dutch would get together in a central point. That worked!
How can you use this in a team building activity? The King’s Day vrijmarkt is the ultimate way for kids to practise their entrepreneurship. So tip three in the team building based on King’s Day is about negotiation skills. Try to find some traditions or habits in your family, group of friends or team that you like, but others dislike. Imagine these habits are one of the items you sell on the vrijmarkt. You are attached to them, they see no value. How would you sell these, the Dutch way?
Liked these 3 ideas? Then contact me for the full We are one on King’s Day teambuilding game.
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