Team Spirit in Team building
How to connect team members and build a team is one of important things among leaders. ID and HMI have very specific expertise in their own field, it’s important to integrate them beside official projects. Team Building is an excellent activity to gel PDD.
With relaxed atmosphere, we also can express some core values of PDD through the games. This kind of expression is much more efficient than announcing it in an official occasion. Everyone could experience what we want to tell them through games.
Dragon Boat Festival in Team building
It’s our 2nd Team Building. I always hope that we can have some physical activities to connect the team efficiently. Physical activity require everyone involved and rapid response with each team action to be a good team player. Team building was held right before Dragon Boat Festival vacation. We have a meaningful idea that we could do something related to this traditional Taiwanese custom. The famous activity of Dragon Boat Festival is Dragon Boat Race, which emphasize the team work to get the victory. We decided to simulated a dragon boat with office chairs as our 2nd game of Team Building, everyone sat on office chairs in a row and hold the in front of chair back tightly. The game rule is shown as the below picture. The team which violate the rule should get back to the start point. There are 3 rounds: 1. Straight route. 2. Straight route with eye masks. 3. U route.
Team work in Race
Originally, I thought this team work count on each member's effort equally to get the destination’s flag asap. Every team member listen to the Flag Catcher guide to make sync move toward the destination.
But after watching 3 rounds, I observed an interesting thing and started to have different insight of this team work.
At the first, everyone was considering the same strategy that the team should arrange strongest people averagely in a row. We could see each team arrange strongest people at the start and the end to prevent someone left behind. One team (Let’s call it "Team A") co-works in the expectative way as listening to the leader’s (1st one) rhythm to advance together. The other team (Let’s call it "Team B”) re-organize their strategy after their trial round, they sent the strongest person as the 2nd order and so on. Even they didn’t decide which one to take a lead with rhythm, they just did their best to move forward.
We could watch the difference between 2 teams. Team A had great sync with Flag catcher’s rhythms, and they control their direction very well. Unfortunately, they still can’t catch the flag before Team B.
Team B seems out of sync at the beginning and lost control in the blind round (Round 2), because there is no unified rhythm or guide for them to follow. The main force (2nd player) of Team B just try his best to make a big movement, other team members also tried their best to catch up with him. Surprisedly, they worked out with this pattern and no one was left behind. They won all 3 rounds.
Think outside the box of Leadership
Definitely a disciplinary team could make a long way especially in a massive organization, guideline and methodology are necessary for members to follow and work around to achieve targets.
But in some cases, when a team or a company want to get ahead of the game, maybe we should think outside the box to let some passionate or motivated team members lead us to our destination without thinking too much strategies. As everyone is eager to win, every team members will make their effort to keep up with the team no matter what.
I’m glad to see different team works through this Dragon Boat Race game. Each of them is a precious experience for PDD team. If the team confront various conditions in the future, we can have more choices to handle with. The official and serious projects are handle with discipline and procedure; the innovative and creative projects are arranged with open mind to try something new. Every team member can be a leader to take responsibility and try their best.
How do you think? Please leave you comment and let me know your thoughts.
Very clear and nice sketching!