Climbing the Corporate Ladder Getting Even More Challenging

Apparently it’s not enough these days for corporate executives to practically stand on their heads to improve their companies. Now, some will try swinging from a trapeze.

Coast Challenge this month will begin offering courses that challenge executives and other employees to hone team-building skills by participating in nerve-testing activities such as climbing a “rock wall” and taking the “leap of faith” from a 40-foot poll to a trapeze.

These types of activities can boost the productivity of employees who are accustomed to work environments where they are tethered to computers and where communication is compressed into e-mail messages, said Aileen Feuerberg, a partner in Newport Beach-based Coast Challenge.

“With the Internet and e-mail and computers, people did not have the face-to-face interaction that they did years ago,” Feuerberg said.

To encourage teamwork, for example, participants can climb the “giant’s ladder,” a 40-foot structure with rungs that get farther apart as the climbers ascend. The top rungs are 5 feet apart, which means climbers must find ways to boost one another to advance.

Some firms are signing up their executives while others are enrolling “everyone from the secretary on up to the president,” Feuerberg said.

Coast Challenge’s “ropes challenge course and corporate learning center,” at the Oaks/Blenheim Exhibition & Equestrian Center in San Juan Capistrano, will be open to the public May 18. Information: (800) 650-1988.