Teamwork and Teambuilding Efforts

As a facilitator, I have been asked if I conduct teambuilding. My response: yes, I conduct teambuilding events. Can you help my build my team? My unreserved answer: no, I can’t.

There are limitations to teambuilding activities. You own your team. You have built your team. You can do more to enhance your team capability. Teambuilding events and activities provide a platform in which to challenge an organic team, to allow it to express itself distinctively, through its team dynamics and team values. No facilitator, worth his/her weight in integrity, can help build your teams. What they may do is, facilitate discussions around the team, with the team, to explore and build on their collective competencies and potential. Through astute observation and acute clarity, a facilitator can bring into your awareness what is working, or not within your team.

Team engagement involves participation and involvement. You want to engage as much of both from members. You want to activate functional dynamics instead of dysfunctional dynamics. You want your team to focus on useful behaviors, team values, and healthy relationships. High-performing teams avoid the energy-sapping efforts of ‘office politics’. They focus on seeking solutions instead of only shame-bringing problems. They regularly indulge in productive conversations, and they create experiences of worth. They feel valued as individuals and as professionals. They believe that you are fair, equitable and impartial in your decisions and delegation.

Build as much value as you can when in your team. Engage in synergistic collaboration, and collaborative synergies. Your team can then face any challenges that comes it way with a sense of optimism, purpose and clarity.

Billboard Philosophy

I happened to notice this quotation by Alfred Lord Tennyson (from his Locksley Hall) on an unassuming billboard at the International Airport in Auckland, New Zealand.

As I read the verses in my mind, I felt that it reminded me of my recent Ironman triathlon in Lake Taupo. Each line seemed to resonate with my experiences of race week, and thereafter.

Think about it - if you begin noticing things around you, you may consider the power of details in observation. The fictitious character, Sherlock Holmes was acutely observant about little things. The devil is in the details, so it is said.

Until we have cast our eyes above us, and seen the splendour of a star-studded sky, do we see the beauty of the night. Certainly, if our sky is filled with clouds and haze our observation has to shift perspective and purpose to be able to capture the myriad details present, but hidden from sight. Have you ever described clouds as familiar objects? The maiden and the rabbit on the bright face of the moon, is one centuries-old example. Tennyson saw magic sails, pilots and costly bales.

If we focused on dysfunction, disappointment and dissent in our teams we may sabotage our efforts to focus on things we can be grateful for with our members. Instead, by focusing on the collective intelligence, efforts and results of projects gone well, we can appreciate more of each person and the value they bring to the team.

What do you relate with/to in Tennyson's poem?

Just Having Fun

This afternoon, I conducted a teambuilding session for leaders in education. It was a short session that emphasised, among other outcomes, having fun.

Having fun - sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? How do you have fun? Is it about playing games, and having a few laughs? What is having fun all about?

What we learnt at the end of the session - when I had them reflect on the experience - was that fun was a welcome addition to a working day. Having fun could mean: learning a new skill; solving a puzzle; realising that there are other creative ways to solve the same problem; enjoying a joke; or discovering that we shared similarities.

Having fun may boil down to making a choice. If you decide you want to have fun, you probably will. Fun involves emotions that make you feel good. Don't we want to feel good? Sure, you do. We can feel good by giving or receiving a compliment. We can encourage somebody to do more, because we express that we believe in them.

When you have fun, time appears to go by quickly. It involves values like passion, enthusiasm, curiosity, and intrigue - and these make us more alert, and interested in others.

So, go ahead - have fun at work, and at play!