Achieving the Impossible: How Estée Lauder Companies Hong Kong Inspired a Culture of Excellence with Team Building Asia

The Estée Lauder Companies is a global leader celebrated for its commitment to quality, elegance, and innovation. With more than 30 prestigious brands across skincare, cosmetics, fragrance, and haircare, the group continues to set the benchmark in luxury beauty worldwide.

For the third consecutive year, The Estée Lauder Companies (Hong Kong) partnered with Team Building Asia to deliver a custom-designed corporate team building experience that went beyond engagement; it was about transforming mindsets. Centred around the theme “Achieving the Impossible,” the program empowered teams to embrace challenges, think creatively, and strengthen collaboration across departments.

By integrating interactive learning and experiential design, Team Building Asia helped Estée Lauder cultivate a culture of innovation, resilience, and shared success reinforcing the company’s position as a pioneer not just in beauty, but in leadership and teamwork excellence.

  • Inspire a Mindset of “Achieving the Impossible”
  • Strengthen Collaboration
  • Integrate Sustainability & Citizenship
  • Moving Participants Out of Their Comfort Zone
  • Designing Activities with Estée Lauder’s Themes
  • Embedding Long-Term Impact
  • Customised Escape The Maze
  • Signature Tasks like Karate Chops & 3D Trust Fall
  • Inspirational Storytelling with UN Goals
  • Stronger Stretch-Goal Mindset
  • Sustainable actions & Collective Commitments

A Fully Customised Experience

Inside the Maze
Participants were equipped with iPads, backpacks, and targets before being placed inside a maze. Guided by technology, they uncovered hidden challenges and were tasked with overcoming assignments that often seemed impossible.
Scoring system: Each challenge completed awarded points.
Breakthrough stage: Once teams reached a benchmark, they unlocked three intricate jigsaws.
Collaboration: Solving all puzzles together revealed a final code, empowering team leaders to escape the maze.
By combining focus, teamwork, and resilience, participants achieved what initially felt unattainable.
Signature Challenges
To align with Estée Lauder’s objectives, Team Building Asia created bespoke activities under the theme Achieving the I’Mpossible.
Karate Chop
Led by a black belt professional, participants learned to break a wooden board using not just strength and technique but mental focus—encouraging them to think beyond the obstacle and embrace a stretch-goal mindset.
3D Trust Fall
Elevating the traditional trust fall, one participant from each team fell safely from a considerable height into the arms of their teammates. This built confidence, strengthened reliance, and demonstrated that stepping outside comfort zones fosters collective achievement.
Stretching Limits and Shifting Mindsets
Throughout the programme, participants’ mental agility was tested through reflective questions and inspiring stories.
Radical Tactical Shift: After watching Lewis Pugh’s Arctic swim, teams were challenged to identify shifts they could apply in their own demanding market.
Future Commitments: Inspired by motivational content, participants committed to limit-stretching activities—such as joining the Estée Lauder team for the 2020 Dragon Boat Races.
Embedding Sustainability
Sustainability was woven into the event. Participants engaged with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and explored practical ways to create daily impact at work. This reinforced a collective “We Can Do It” mentality, ensuring the lessons extended beyond the event.
Outcome: Through customised design, innovative challenges, and powerful storytelling, Team Building Asia helped Estée Lauder’s teams embrace resilience, agility, and sustainability—proving that with the right mindset, nothing is impossible.
Anonymous

We are impressed that Team Building Asia were able to fully customise an event for us around the themes of ‘Challenger Spirit’, ‘Achieving the Impossible’ and ‘Radical Tactical Shift’. This enabled teams to experience special tasks and activities that could deliver a focus on resilience, agility, citizenship, sustainability and transparency to achieve recognition and enhance ELC’s reputation. No challenge is impossible for Team Building Asia.

Anonymous / Director of Human Resources, HK & Macau Affiliate, The Estée Lauder Companies
Estee Lauder Escape the Maze

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