After reading
the OD Application: EcoSeagate and Team Development and watching both videos I
was so pumped up by how well the teams managed to work together. The power of teams collaborating and working together
to reach a common goal outside of the work area showed with how enthusiastic they
were and how into it they all were. The singing and growling, the dancing…. they
did it together! No one was complaining
or trying to take the credit they were like family. They moved like one and I am sure that there
were many friendships to come out of this exercise. I definitely can see the value of the team
development process with EcoSeagate especially when the CEO Bill Watkins came
on board. He could see that something needed
to change. People were fired all the
time and the CEO had a grenade on his desk so what kind of message was he sending
to his employees?
Bringing
people together has so many benefits when developing teams. In the text they talk about sports teams and
how well they must work together. We
must be able to work together similar to a basketball team or a dance troupe. Everyone needs to know their part, when they
must move, how their part interconnects with the other teammates or dancers and
that when they practice (a form of communicating) by going through drills or
with the music they can trust each other to be there. When the dancers first come together they do
not know the dance so they must watch the instructor so they know what they are
doing. They must listen to the music for
their ques so that they know when to perform each step. As they learn the dance, some will pick it up
quickly while others will need more time.
This is where the other dancers AKA team members will come in handy. They will assist and coach until everyone has
it done perfectly. They are working as a
team to accomplish a task by solving problems (getting everyone on the same
page with the dance) and improving to reach a common goal (win the basketball
game or get high marks for a performance).
In the
videos they talked about the importance of being able to get comfortable with
conflict to not be afraid of it. Working
together can force teams to be able to get comfortable with conflict and being
able to tell your teammate that an idea is not good and them not getting upset
by it. This will help to open up the
channels of communication. They also
talked about how bringing people from different backgrounds helps one learn to appreciate
each other’s differences. This can work
to a team’s advantage because you can use the diversity of the group to bring
it together to get reach the common goal.
I
definitely think my organization could benefit from a similar activity. I also believe it would be a way to weed out
those who are not team players and who are not interested in learning and
growing with the organization. While it
may not seem like a big deal if everyone doesn’t want to be a part of a team or
participate in team building exercises it really does hurt the organization as
a whole. Of course that is not the point
of doing this kind of activity, to weed out the ones who don’t want to be team
players but it will become apparent pretty quickly. We don’t have to do a zip
line or brave the rapids but forcing people to step outside their comfort zone
can get them to open up and become more comfortable with conflict and dealing
with it in a better way. We can even do
something like a field day where we are teamed up randomly so that we can get
the full learning experience and bond with people we may not have thought twice
about talking to before. My department
will be doing a retreat in a few weeks and one of the main things we are going
to do is take a self-defense class where we will learn not only self-defense but
also the importance of team building. We
don’t get to go on many retreats and this one will be the first one where we actually
have to be part of a team and I think it will really bring our department
together and make us more cohesive.
Perhaps it can also help us in dealing with conflict in a more
constructive way.
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