Here’s a scenario. Team building excursions occur as regularly as the full moon. Yet the organisational firmament is gloomy. Desired goals still seem galaxies away. Old problems fester. The lone ranger still goes it alone. The obstinate mule has not turned into a pliant horse. The team has not aligned its aspirations with the company’s goals.
When this happens, one of two factors or both could be at work. One, wrong team-building exercises. Two, unrealistic expectations from the right ones.
First, the wrong exercises.
Rivalry is a fact of life. It shows up everywhere. At home, as sibling rivalry. Or, between spouses, as the tussle for popularity votes from their children. However, the workplace is where it is acutely felt. Sometimes, the rivalry is healthy. Often, it’s not.
In a family, connectedness exists amidst rivalry. The bonds are strong enough to offset the sense of competition. In a corporate unit, the bonds are tenuous. Team building exercises are a way to strengthen them. The challenge however is to find the right way to do it. Each team has problems all its own. And according to experts, the standard bonding exercises, designed around competitive games, may not always be the right fit.
“When a team is immature, has immense trouble working as a unit, a bonding exercise that promotes competition among team members in any form is a very bad idea. The goal is to create, enhance and promote the spirit of collaboration. At the end of the exercise, team members should stop seeing each other as bitter rivals. Managers may use competition as a goad to productivity. But that is a short-sighted and dangerous approach. Promoting the spirit of collaboration alone can do the company lasting good,” says Radhakrishnan Pillai, director, Chanakya Institute of Public Leadership, Department of Philosophy, University of Mumbai. He is the author of the popular management book Corporate Chanakya .
According to experts, bonding activities should be tailor-made. Social mores need to be taken into consideration. Company needs too. An exercise designed for a team working in the U.S. may be ineffective when applied in India. There are however certain activities that will work anywhere. One of them is bonding over community work. Non-competitive activities built on inoffensive, culture-appropriate humour is another. When all employees come out of a bonding exercise laughing their guts out, it’s good news for the company. The sense of elation will carry to the workstation. And a happy employee is almost always a productive employee.
Sounds simple, right? But the hard truth is, it isn’t. There is more to team building than weekend fun and annual junkets. And much of it is hard work.
Alive to this, some companies make team-building an ongoing process. It is guided by carefully trained managers.
“Team building should be in the DNA of a company. When it isn’t, it becomes an exercise. Fun activities are fine, but they alone will not do,” says Radhakrishnan.
“No learning takes place unless there is reflection on what happens. Outbound programmes are recreational in nature and leave no room for reflection. Learning has to be experiential which is possible only through a continuous process connected to the performance of each individual,” says Prof. Sunney Tharappan, director, College for Leadership and Human Resource Development, Mangalore
Prof. Tharappan further explains, “In a corporate set-up, conceptual clarity is extremely important. One, individuals are not as important as collective goals. Two, people are more important than products. Outbound programmes are based on the presupposition that people cannot learn in classroom conditions or experientially, and therefore undermine their intrinsic worth. Three, team members will have to make sacrifices. Outbound programmes tend to overlook these essentials.”
Most companies have only a small budget for outbound activities. Some others, none. In this scenario, some managers have no choice but to do the right thing. Which is, make team building efforts a part of their regular work.
And, small steps taken continuously go much further than leaps taken occasionally.
Champion teams are not made overnight. In an enabling atmosphere, team members slowly weed out differences and become a cohesive unit.
In this context, it’s impossible not to think of the West Indies cricket team of the 1970s and 1980s, under Clive Lloyd, first as captain and then as manager. For many years, it was a formidable line-up in world cricket. It had enormously talented players. Vivian Richards, Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Jeff Dujon.
The credit for knitting these legendary players into a winning combination goes to Lloyd. These players hailed from different islands and held contrasting worldviews. And inter-island rivalry was intense and had to be dealt with.
In an interview to The Guardian in 2012, Lloyd discussed how the West Indies team was built, ironing out the differences through a continuous effort to connect with every player at a personal level.
