Do we need team building training?

TEAM BUILDING SEMINAR

The Title deserves a brief introduction, an over view.  There was a debate on why such programs should be conducted in organizations.

My friend, a professor of Organization Behavior (OB) at a premier Management Institution, opines that all the success mantras that are taught to us since childhood, make it difficult for us to actually work effectively as teams.  We are brought us in a highly competitive environment where our best friend is school is made to be our competitor. A child comes home and happily announces that he’s scored 85% in a test and parents respond with an obvious (so it seems) question, “How much has Rahul Got?” 

Another aspect which programs us to be individual performers rather than good team player is that all our reward/recognition systems and schemes. So best friends in school were competitors and now your peers are competition as even today, baring a few exceptions, reward and recognition are based on Individual performances. In spite of all this anti-team conditioning you are expected to work in an organization, work in teams and cooperate and collaborate with each other; as one Team – one organization. 

Now what is an organization? Simply put, it is different organs work together as one system, becomes an organization.  Yet each organ believes that he or she is an individual who is competing with the other organs.  So there is certainly a huge gap between what we know and what we do and the opportunity is look at how we could plug those gaps. 

Let’s look at how one can create an environment where you can get more support and cooperation from people who work with you and live with you. 

See when we talk about team, I’m not limiting the conversation to an organization alone; I’m also looking at family as a team.  We very or most often bring our domestic problem and unrest to our work and work issues to our homes.  So it is all part of one community that we live and not in isolation.  So let’s look at our orientation towards working and living with people.

(Excerpts from a Team Building Seminar )

Your Boss is a team member too!

Your Boss is a team member too!

In many Team building programs I have to remind people at the end of the program….

That your boss is also a team member and all that we learn about Human Behavior in training programs applies to him/her too! And the beauty is that if this post is read by your reporting bosses, it would be true for them too. Get the point?  Whether you think they deserve to be treated as such or you don’t  Your Boss is a team member too!

Look, when we talk about teams and team members, we seem to be programmed to think of only our equals…. peers etc. but never the bosses or the super bosses.  In fact these bosses are such an integral part of your team, that without their inclusion all this knowledge and insights will be of no use to you because none of it will be applied where it matters the most! 

So what you learn about Human Behavior applies equally to the boss and super bosses. 

Let us understand this… let me repeat it once more… if your bosses were to be doing a leadership or team building course, they would find it as relevant as you do.  That’s the beauty.  Even if many of these ‘bosses’ behave like bosses and not like a team member.  So we seem to have some prejudices against ‘bosses’ which we will try and clear in my subsequent post .

We will have to learn to question this assumption that we seem to be having about an ‘ideal’ team behaviour which seems to be an unsaid prerequisite for anyone to be called a ‘team member’.  Such a ‘significant’ unquestioned belief is surely causing frequent failures in our relationships!

Bossiness and Bossy (Bully) Behaviour should be treated as one and hence be dealt with as such.  There are many people in a team, even peers or subordinates, who will demonstrate different kinds of behaviour in a team environment.

With the same openness that we have for our peers or subordinates we need to develop an orientation to accept this ‘bossy’ behaviour from your bosses and include them as different personality profiles in the team. 

(Excerpts from a Team Building Seminar )