On the 5th of June, Synergy brought all three of its offices together for a company Away Day at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in London — a rare and welcome opportunity for colleagues from across the business to share the same room at once.
The day was facilitated by Kate Simmonds, the Managing Director at the Leadership Growth Company Ltd and the team at Blue Hat. Firstly, it began with a business update from Managing Partners Declan Gleeson and Duncan Ball — a moment to reflect on everything Synergy has achieved together over the past few years.
A Growth Mindset
The overriding theme of the day was the growth mindset — exploring how we approach challenges, both in our professional lives and beyond. The morning unfolded through a series of ice breakers and group discussions, inviting colleagues to reflect on personal obstacles and the ways in which we might face and overcome them.
Hells Bells: A Knight’s Tale
After lunch, something unexpected awaited. The room had been transformed — colourful wooden objects, puzzles, and riddles were scattered across the space, and it quickly became clear that this was no ordinary activity. The challenge was announced: Hells Bells: A Knight’s Tale.
Set against a fantasy folklore backdrop, the immersive team activity posed a single question that could only be answered by working through a web of interconnected tasks: what was the date and time of the rescue? The clock was ticking.
There was, admittedly, a hesitant start. Colleagues drifted between objects, slightly dumbfounded, initially assuming they were working in separate teams. But with a few well-timed nudges from Kate and the Blue Hat team, something clicked — a shift in thinking that moved the room from individual puzzling to collective problem-solving.
What emerged was remarkable. A giant chain-reaction machine — part marble run, part Rube Goldberg contraption — began to take shape around a central clock. Piece by piece, the logic of the day came together. When the team declared it complete, three Synergy volunteers stepped forward to perform the story’s finale in amateur dramatic fashion, and the moment of truth arrived: had they cracked it? With a makeshift gunge tank looming over the volunteer actors, the stakes were high — fortunately, the team had got it right (ish!).
More Than Just a Day Out
What made Hells Bells so effective wasn’t just the spectacle of it — though that certainly helped — it was what it quietly demanded of everyone in the room: accountability, trust, and genuine collaboration. There was no single hero of the day; the activity only worked because the whole company worked together. It was a fitting reflection of the growth mindset that had threaded through the morning, and a reminder that the best outcomes — at work and beyond — tend to come when we stop working in silos and start thinking as one.
Here’s to the next one!
