Well, it’s a request from the folks in the Airforce asking for a Team building program proposal. They have always requested for a training program on the cheap, and chances are given a choice, I think they would rather do it themselves. Like this session that went horribly wrong on the 24^th April 2009, for an Air force technician 2^nd Warrant Officer Poh Eng Ann (2WO Poh).

The activities described in this event, surprised even me. 2 teams with 4 servicemen went through games that involved penalties such as drinking alcoholic drinks mixed with wasabi. 2WO Poh was even tasked to tunnel crawl through the F-5 fighter jet engine air duct that spans over a distance of 5.18m. Upon finishing that crawl he was required to eat fried grasshoppers, crickets and maggots. All this in a guise of a regular, informal annual event organized for all newly promoted servicemen with the RSAF. The outcome of that stunt was the untimely death of 2WO Poh, due to the rupture of his pliable liver. It took the death of this servicemen and the coroner enquiry to bring this incident to the public domain. 

It is quite common for individuals who are not practitioners of outdoor adventure learning to get their que from watching the popular TV series Survivor, or Fear Factor to design activities for Team building sessions. The requirement to ensure the activities  are safe is usually thrown out of the window. It becomes even more dangerous when you have the following brew in the design of an outdoor activity;

• Having a ridiculously low budget
• Undertaking high risk activity with low costing is a perfect concoction for a mishap waiting to rear its ugly head
• Not undertaking a risk assessment of the activities that are designed
• Insurance are not taken for the participants.  Usually insurers will not insure activities that have been described above

Having conducted the team building activities for MNC’s and government agencies, we have always made sure that the safety requirements of both the participants and the facilitators are accorded the highest priority. When a request is made to provide a team building program at a ridiculously low cost, we usually decline. We have worked with officers from the Ministry of Home Affairs to corporate bankers and the approach has always been the same. Keeping the activities coherent, ensuring risk assessment for all activities are checked and mitigated, and lastly, lodging our program synopsis with our corporate insurers before any training program that is categorized as moderately high is conducted. For a safe training session in the outdoors that is steeped in learning and organizational performance do get in touch with us at Teamwork Bound on this e-mail office@teamworkbound.com or +65 6315 2586. The call from RSAF, we don’t dive to pick up that call anymore.

Reference

Chong, E. and Chow, J. (2011, October 13). Crawl through jet turns deadly for technician. The Straits Times, pp. A3

PMC has been developing team building games and tools for organizational improvement since 1993, basically as a result of Dr. Scott Simmerman’s attempts to improve the way companies involve and engage their people. A consultant to large organizations since 1978, and the former Senior Vice President of Operations of a well-known retail firm, getting people to align to visions and choose to work together to get things done was always a challenge. A real issue in organizations is that; “Nobody Ever Washes a Rental Car.”

To address this issue, Scott started using team building games and a series of cartoons first shared as one illustration and gradually evolving and metamorphosing into about 300 different illustrations and themes. The basic cartoon appears as:

The basic idea is a very simple one — SHOW the illustration to people and ask them what is happening. The very interesting result is that people see different things and focus on different aspects of teamwork, innovation, leadership, motivation, systems and processes and virtually all aspects of working. The really basic anchor point is that the Round Wheels are already IN the wagon – so why are they using Square Wheels???

What we do with the illustration is involve and engage people in discussions about the realities of improvement.

• One needs to “step back from the wagon to see things differently
• One needs to understand that stopping the wagon is an essential part of making changes
• It takes a team of people to accomplish anything and the leadership needs to actively support the change / improvement
• Improvements do not just happen on their own; the tendency is to NOT improve and keep doing things the way they work now
• Ideas can come from anywhere, but good ideas already exist
• One needs resources to actually mount the round wheels on the wagon

Innovate & Implement is a Square Wheels game designed for tabletops of 4 people. Understanding and already discussing the need to deal with the things that can work better, we share the rules of the game and then allow people to play with the ideas and issues around generating changes, The challenge to participants is to work within a structured environment and find the ideas for improvement (Round Wheels) that are hidden in different areas of the workplace.

The ideas for improving already exist within individuals and areas of the organization. The issue is that we can improve our forum for discussing what could be done differently to make things better in the future. Who needs to be involved, what resources are required, how will management pave the way forward and other issues are more easily discussed when people have a strong, shared interest in improvement.

Some elements of the game play:

• Set up with the Square Wheels metaphor – innovate by finding the Round Wheels
• Teams are encouraged to break the rules
• Teams are encouraged to look for lots of little changes they can make
• Pause the game after teams get settled in and ask for shared ideas about what they know and what they don’t know
• Perceptions and stereotypes of trainers and managers
• Training cards are beneficial but no one looks at the training tips
• Manager can offer help – game leader has dice in pocket and additional resources
• Teams do not ask for help. They do not challenge the rules. They work within boundaries regardless of whether they are real or perceived
• Very Flexible Debriefing can be structured around the real organizational issues and opportunities–perceptions and realities. Discussions link to things they can do and do differently to make better impact.
• Break the boundaries that participants impose on themselves.

This exercise is fast and fun. But the message behind it is that we need to identify the ideas, manage the roadblocks, involve the participants and do things differently in order to see improvements.

The exercise links neatly to YOUR issues and YOUR opportunities, at least as to how your people see them.

We are incorporating this exciting board game in out team building program centred on innovation and implementing new ideas. Do get in touch with us if you are keen to explore the use of “Innovate and Implement” team building session with your teams, at +65 63152587 or Email Teamworkbound

Organizations with Senior Managers whom we worked with

For senior managers team building activities designed with the business goals in mind, will get all team members on to the same page. It creates opportunities for all departmental heads to pull in one direction to meet the challenges facing the organization. It sets the tone and expectations. Managers walk away from such a program with a determined mindset to follow through on their goals and timelines they need to achieve them. Moreover, inter disciplinary collaborations with departmental heads breaks down silo thinking.

In our design, our experience have shown us that when senior team members are able to share their personal traits, behavioural preferences at work and their leadership styles, they tend to come closer. Use of profiling tools such as Belbin, DISC and leadership insights provides senior managers with subtle and tacit information that is useful to both the individual and when shared as a Team, it becomes impactful. We have helped departments to chart their Team’s best competencies using Belbin.

Patrick Lencioni, in his book, the 5 dysfunctions in a Teams, detailed, “absence of trust” as the core building block of a dysfunctional team. Hence, building trust by not just taking on a random activity by playing games or simply listening to hot air to get motivated, but through the use of profiling tools and sharing that information amongst senior management team is hugely beneficial. We have experienced this in our training programs.

Team Cube Activity

Differentiating management from staff is very much dependent upon learning outcomes, organizational size and operational needs of the organization to name just a few. For instance not all organizations can shut the work place down for one day and get the entire staff together for the team building session. Likewise, when strategy is discussed, the needs are usually for the senior team members to be together as oppose to the entire staff. However, there are benefits to have both the senior management team and the entire staff to be together. As organizations grow, the tendency for senior managers to not know their entire staff well enough becomes apparent and team building activities involving the entire staff will allow managers to interact firsthand with their staff who handle operational issues on the ground. There isn’t one matrix that will suffice, but having a different permutation of staff with line managers, senior managers only for strategy planning and senior managers with the entire staff are some approaches that we consider and suggest to our clients when we develop our training programs.

Ebnu Etheris, Ma(IDT), B.Ed&Trn and D.(HRD)

Lead Facilitator, TeamworkBound

As teams grapple with strategies, one key need is for individuals to create mental models that will cast aside misconceptions and strategies used and abused before. Hence, the need to change the mental models of team member’s view of the challenges ahead. We undertake this with activities that will astound individuals when the solution is achieved. Its like a “aha” experience that gets the teams down in all fours, yes literally working out how new solutions can be worked on to increase their market share in a competitive environment.

Mental model

The influence of our own mental models also dictate the way we behave in office or at home. For the endurance athlete, his mental model is centred on putting  in hard work to achieve the athlete’s high. He trains day and night religiously. He ensures, training sessions are not missed and he knows the mileage for his runs, rides and swims  must happen to compete and finish a race as tough as an Ironman. In retrospect, compare that with a Gambler who gets his high in a game of chance played out in a Casino. What constitutes a gambler’s mental model? The lucky charm he carries with him, the prayers he offers selectively, or the trepidation of losing his entire lifesavings, only to salvage it 10 times more in a throw of dice with his last throw.  Statistically, that rarely happens. Sink in the right mental model and it helps you to do things right.

Here are some examples of  how companies changed their mental models to remain competitive. Xerox, for instance transformed from a company that specialized in photography paper to one that is synonymous with Copy machines. Polaroid is a classic example of one company that did not change and they have died a natural death. Lets look within your Team members, how their mental models are shaped;

• Influence of others – your school, teachers, the books you read, and even mass culture, (national propaganda, through papers and news shapes you too)
• Personal experience – how we cope with challenges in life will affect our subsequent approaches to challenges that will come our way
• Rewards and incentives – your mental models are also shaped by the rewards you receive for holding on to them
• Reflections – reflecting on your actions, education and experiences will have a consequence impact on your mental models
• Critical incidents – not just experience, but an incident that has a profound impact on your views of the world, will change your mental models too ( I realized a half baked Colonel is capable of nothing less then being a cheat, plagiarizing on an assignment)

In a team building program, where strategy mapping is also weaved in, it helps when the facilitator is able to articulate and show the mental models that are holding them back. Its a plus if he is also a visual graphics facilitator.

The use of activities can help to drive these points across. We run one activity that has a statistical average of just 10% success when teams attempt them. It transcends logical thinking, and the solution usually blows them away, leaving our training sessions with a commitment to reach in deep, to break down barriers. We have achieved that with companies that we have worked with and we continue to create the same impact with clients who choose to work with us.

Reference

Wind, Yoram (Jerry), and Colin Crook, with Robert Gunther, Making better sense: How your mental model defines your world. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Financial Times Press, 2010.

They got the right folks, because over 6 years, our approach is centered in developing curriculum that infuses the business challenges of the organizations that we work for. From CBI & Lummus, Panasonic, Exxon Mobil, our staple clients of MNCs has grown from strength to strength. This includes returning clients who still want us to work for them. Below is one question that Mabel Tan, from Human Resources Magazine, posed, when she contacted me for my views.

 Teamwork Bound Featured

1. From your experience, what are some of the most common mistakes organizations are making in planning teambuilding activities for senior executives?

For senior executives, the team that comes before you is a robust and an experienced group of corporate performers. In their midst quite easily, you will have managers and directors who will hold at least 2 degrees and may even be experts in their respective field. Given such a composition, one key mistake organizations make is choosing team building activities centred on the activity sake per say as oppose to the facilitator who will be guiding the discussions centred on their learning experience. There is a need to strike a balance and HRD Managers need to ensure that the facilitator they engage holds sound qualifications and have the experience of having worked in the corporate sector in a managerial capacity and carries the educational gravitas that is as good or equal to their senior managers.

Sometimes, the corporate and business goals becomes fuzzy as the activity takes centre stage failing to address business issues in the team building activities as an agenda item. With an experienced curriculum developer it is possible to make the learning experience fun and weave the business needs and challenges into the team building activities. Team building activities are an opportune platform to address the business goals and we have achieved that with the Team building activities that we have organized. From production issues, departmental KPIs and brainstorming to find solutions are opportunities for Team building activities to drive organizational goals. You can read the rest in the article I have reproduced below.

The featured article that was published in the Human Resources Magazine, July issue, is reproduced here with their permission, article_hr_0002.

Citation

Mabel Tan, (2012, July 1). Outwit, outplay, outlast, Human Resources (24-28).

Patrick Lencioni’s 5 dysfunctions in a Team

The model aptly shows, when trust becomes a deficit it becomes the cornerstone that will breed a dysfunctional team. Usually when team members are not genuinely open to one another this behavior will manifest itself. Failure to trust team members also leads on to fear of conflict cascading upwards to a team that functions for name sake only.  Patrick Lencioni in his book also advocates the use of a robust profiling system within a team building framework to get teams to gel as one. We use Belbin as one of the tools to achieve this in the strategy planning workshops, team building workshops and Belbin Team roles workshops that we have conducted in Singapore.

The use of the Belbin profiling tool is non threatening as it measures the preferred behavioral response of the individual within the work place. The report will show the preferred scoring for all 9 Belbin team roles roles at various scoring percentile. Accreditation aside what helps in the deliverance of the Belbin program is the use of experiential activities, and case studies that we have developed from scratch, localized to meet the nuances of the culture inherent in Asia.

We have used Belbin Team roles for senior executives specifically Managers and Directors from CBI and Lummus and Senior civil servants working for the civil service in Singapore. The deliverance of our programs includes getting the learners to understand the report and scaffolding the understanding of the instrument with the results. The activities that we have designed will provide for small group discussions and experiencing the impact of having a varied diverse balanced team tasked to solve problems that are aligned with their business goals. The pictures below will showcase the goals of one such department in the workshop that we conducted.

Visual goal statement

Building trust is a critical facet of getting teams to perform. Building trust through the use of Belbin is one signature program that we conduct in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Hence do get in touch with us on e-mail or call us + 65 63152587, if you would like to find out more about our Belbin training programs in Singapore or Asia. You can also find out more about our Belbin Program on this link.

Reference

Patrick Lencioni (2002), The five dysfunctions in a Team, Jossey Bass

Plant

Plants are creative, unorthodox and a generator of ideas. If an innovative solution to a problem is needed, a Plant is a good person to ask. A good plant will be bright and free-thinking. Plants can tend to ignore incidentals and refrain from getting bogged down in detail.

Resource Investigator
The Resource Investigator gives a team a rush of enthusiasm at the start of the project by vigorously pursuing contacts and opportunities. He or she is focused outside the team, and has a finger firmly on the pulse of the outside world. Where a Plant creates new ideas, a Resource Investigator will quite happily steal them from other companies or people.

Coordinator
A Coordinator often becomes the default chairperson of a team, stepping back to see the big picture. Coordinators are confident, stable and mature and because they recognize abilities in others, they are very good at delegating tasks to the right person for the job. The Coordinator clarifies decisions, helping everyone else focus on their tasks.

Shaper
The shaper is a task-focused leader who abounds in nervous energy, who has a high motivation to achieve and for whom winning is the name of the game. The shaper is committed to achieving ends and will ‘shape’ others into achieving the aims of the team. He or she will challenge, argue or disagree and will display aggression in the pursuit of goal achievement. Two or three shapers in a group, according to Belbin, can lead to conflict, aggravation and in-fighting.

Monitor Evaluator
Monitor Evaluators are fair and logical observers and judges of what is going on. Because they are good at detaching themselves from bias, they are often the ones to see all available options with the greatest clarity. They take everything into account, and by moving slowly and analytically, will almost always come to the right decision.

Teamworker
A Teamworker is the greasy oil between the cogs that keeps the machine that is the team running. They are good listeners and diplomats, talented at smoothing over conflicts and helping parties understand each other without becoming confrontational. The beneficial effect of a Teamworker is often not noticed until they are absent.

Implementer
The Implementer takes what the other roles have suggested or asked, and turns their ideas into positive action. They are efficient and self-disciplined, and can always be relied on to deliver on time. They are motivated by their loyalty to the team or company, which means that they will often take on jobs everyone else avoids or dislikes.

Completer Finisher
The Completer Finisher is a perfectionist and will often go the extra mile to make sure everything is “just right,” and the things he or she delivers can be trusted to have been double-checked and then checked again. The Completer Finisher has a strong inward sense of the need for accuracy, rarely needing any encouragement from others because that individual’s own high standards are what he or she tries to live up to.

Specialist
Specialists are passionate about learning in their own particular field. As a result, they will have the greatest depth of knowledge, and enjoy imparting it to others. They are constantly improving their wisdom. If there is anything they do not know the answer to, they will happily go and find it. Specialists bring a high level of concentration, ability, and skill in their discipline to the team.

The assessment for using Belbin can be done the following ways, specifically, using the online portal, for which we will provide our clients with the password to access.

• Self assessment ( by the individual only)
• Team assessment, by the individual’s mentor, co-worker, supervisor or a former team member.

The assessment culminates with a detailed report that we will provide to you. A comprehensive report that is centred on your behavioural preferences at work, detailing both your strengths, allowable weakness, and your working style. Our training programs are designed in such a way that we will use experiential activities to detail the salient points that are described on the report. We have designed our very own Belbin Team card that we have used successfully with senior officers from both the MNC’s and government agencies in Singapore. Do contact us at +65 63152587, if you would like to engage a Belbin certified facilitator for your organization.

An energizer activity is also known as an icebreaker. Hence in this instance, using an appropriate energizer will help in facilitating your class. It creates energy, activity and focus. In this blog I would like to share with you an energizer activity that will excite all your participants, be it adults or students. It will create movement, laughter, excitement and most importantly it will be fun. I first documented this activity learning the nuances and rules from a group of kids when I worked as an Assistant Lecturer at National Community Leadership Training Institute. That was 20 years ago. Here is a video clip of this activity that we have created for you. View the clip and we will also share with you the simple notes on how you can do the same with your training program and yes, you dun need to feel nervous this time round.

Squirrel -Energizer

Activity : Squirrel

Participants: Indoors and outdoors, from 20 -100

Activity instructions:

- Get all the participants to team up into groups of 3 people to a Team (Forming Triads) …. you will get many groups of 3s

- Get two people in each team to extend their hands outwards and hold each others hands, as you have seen in the clip. This pair is known as the “trees“

- Position the third person between this two and he becomes the “squirrel”. The simple adage, the squirrel found in the trees.

- If you have 2 or 1 person left over and are not able to form this group of 3, it is fine cos they will be the ones shouting out the commands.

- When the command “Hunter” is shouted, the squirrels must move out of their trees move to another tree. As the command is shouted out, the folks who shouted the command will compete for a space amongst the trees, hence you will have a situation where 2 more people are caught without a place to go and they can shout out the command again

- When the command “Fire” is shouted, the “trees” must move out of their spot and move to another squirrel. The “squirrels” must stay where they are when this happens. As the command is shouted out, the folks who shouted the command will compete for a space amongst the squirrels, hence you will have a situation where 2 more people are caught without a place to go and they can shout out the next command and so forth. Comprehende!!

- When the command “Earthquake” is shouted, the “trees” and “squirrels” must move out of their spot. This where you have a complete pandemonium, where a “tree” can become a “squirrel” and vice versa. Hey it is an ice breaker, so go easy on the rules, you need not be strict with it.

There you are, you have both a video clip and instructions to guide you, so do forward it to your friends and share it on facebook if you want to. Contact us if you need any help with this activity and we will guide you too.

I am writing this blog to share with you the simple but immensely impactful lessons that we can adopt as educators, parents and leaders in our chosen field. His lessons to us includes our ethical behaviour and attitude;

“Be more concerned with you character than with your reputation. Character is what you really are. Reputation is what people say you are. Character is more important” John Wooden.

John Wooden’s leadership was character based, his philosophy was centred not on talk and quotes but this man simply lived the values he preached like his father. He spoke about the compass, staying true north and even when a compass is cracked, with solid values it still points true north. It is not about a rank you hold, you can be a Lieutenant  Colonel and by virtue of your actions you are ethically and morally flawed when you take short cuts in life. Character leadership is not dictated by the rank or the designation you hold. We all know that.

For all coaches and educators you may want to train your charges by these simple rules that Coach Wooden lived by. He learnt these rules from his father and he expects the same from himself and his players. Coach Wooden describes his father as one who came close to living these rules;

Dad’s 2 sets of 3s

Coach Wooden’s dad taught him as a child to live his life by the following 2 sets of rules. The first set gave instructions on integrity;

a. Never lie

b. Never cheat 

c. Never Steal

The above rule is the very same rule I teach my kids and I will share how succumbing to short cuts in life can derail you big time. As an adjunct educator I assess individuals from all walks of life at an education centre that teaches modular subjects. On one occasion, I failed a Lieutenant  Colonel for the very act of plagiarism. Imagine this, this individual even had the audacity to stare me down in the assessment room and did everything he could in the book to lodge a complaint against me. He exercised his right for appeal and once again he was failed by a panel of 3 assessors 2 weeks thereafter.  Take a peek at the officers undertaking the 6 months Navy seals BUD/S training program and one critical aspect of officers wanting to make it through the 6 months Seals program is the ability to endure better then the rest of the trainees and moral leadership. The rank on your shoulders do not equate you with respect for any fool can call you “Sir” or “Madam”. The same fool called me “sir” when he sat down to be assessed.

Here is the 2nd set of 3 from Coach Wooden or how to face adversity;

a. Don’t whine

b. Don’t complain

c. Don’t make excuses

I like this one a lot and in my home with 2 kids and one on the way, I will not accept any complains from my children. Likewise even with my practice as an underdog, being treated unfairly sometimes, I see no reason to complain, except to bite my teeth grow a few more white hairs and just push on with what I do best with Teamwork Bound. Coach Wooden was one solid educator who never yelled at his players and in 1934, he wrote down his definition of success…. it is not the straight As you get, it is not the big car you drive, it is not the reputation you weave or the rank you have on your shoulders but rather “Success is the peace of mind that is the direct result of self satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” Dear coaches it does not matter if they don’t podium finish, encourage your kids to go past where they were previously.

You don’t need luck for PSLE, a race or whatever you choose to do, you just need a simple magical pill called “hard work” laced with integrity and 2 sets of 3, my son. It is sold deep down in your gut when the going gets tough.

References;

John Wooden, (2009), Coach Wooden’s Leadership Game Plan for Success, McGraw-Hill Companies

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