I'm green and gold. I learned that I am green and gold through a team building exercise that was intended to bring insight to "an individual's pathway to self-confidence and esteem". The pathway is part of the "True Colors" system of identifying character. The exercise was meant to be both fun and practical and it was, at least, interesting. The majority of the staff participated in the exercise fully, curious as to what their color/s would be. There were, however, some of the staff who sat in the room, arms crossed and head shaking in sarcastic disregard, who were less than fascinated by the whole attempt. While I wouldn't label the exercise a disaster, it was not altogether successful in building team togetherness and structure. Based on the MSN Careers article, The worst team-building experience you've ever had, others have had much more disastrous team-building experiences.
This comment, regarding a ropes course that rubbed everyone the wrong way (yes, pun intended), from Rebecca Staton-Reinstetin, president of Advantage Leadership Inc sums up the main reason why a team should be well-developed prior to such an exercise: "It was an extreme example of how team-building events are mistaken for the long, hard work of actually building a team with shared goals and responsibilities". Put another way, any team-building exercise must start with a team - and a group of people who happen to work together does not make a team. Where to begin? Start by ensuring team members understand the "big picture" and the reason why their collective work is important to the organization and to each other. Susan M. Heathfield, human resource contributing writer for About.com puts it this way "You need to differentiate this overall sense of teamwork from the task of developing an effective intact team that is formed to accomplish a specific goal. People confuse the two team-building objectives. This is why so many team-building seminars, meetings, retreats and activities are deemed failures by their participants".
One of the best team-building experiences I have had was with a group I undoubtedly consider a team. We had been through forming, storming and norming and were comfortable and efficiently in our performing stage - the goal of any team. The goal of the exercise was to pass a ball between all the participants' hands within a few seconds time. We had sincere fun trying to come up with creative ways we could accomplish this goal. We first tried simply passing the ball to each other - not quick enough. We then tried lining up with our arms outstretched and having someone from the team run past us all while running the ball across the top of our hands - still not quick enough. We then, in a wonderfully symbolic show of a group of people working together, stood huddled in a circle while placing our hands clasped and in a circle and stacked on top of each other. All it took was one team member to drop the ball from the top and - tada - mission accomplished...
