I find Bill Watkins' EcoSeagate concept intriguing. The purpose of outdoor labs is to promote teamwork, team development, and communication. While I would tend to say that the EcoSeagate trip encompasses theses attributes, I don't know that it specifically addresses the organization's needs. Especially considering the staggering $2 million dollar price tag that comes along with it! I can understand the concern on behalf of the stockholders for this event based on the fact that there is no quantitative evidence to support the expense. Brown (2011) notes that "all the labs, despite the setting or the nature of the exercise, have participants involved in activities that require teamwork and allow opportunities to work on leadership and team development. After an exercise, and normally in the evening, the team spends time with a practitioner critiquing, debriefing, and discussing the exercise and the day's events, with an emphasis upon what they learned." (p.274). I'm not sure if this was the case with the EcoSeagate trips. Did they have an OD practitioner to help evaluate their team performances? My feeling is that they did not. To me it seems like this outdoor lab was more of a getaway for employees. An opportunity to travel to New Zealand and test one's self. It was noted that the participants (200 in total) were selected from a pool of applicants in excess of 2000. The events highlighted in the videos seemed to be more physically demanding than mentally. Hiking, biking, and kayaking were some of the events the teams competed in. In order to participate you would really need to prepare your body for the physical demands. I could see participants training for this event like it was an Ironman competition. I think that this team oriented event is highly dependent on individual effort not conducive to team development. Brown (2011) states that "Team development is an educational process of continually reviewing and evaluating team function in order to identify and establish new and more effective ways of operating. Team development is an ongoing experience that occurs simultaneously with the work itself." (p. 271). If I work as an engineer and I am paired on a team with someone that works in marketing, an office manager, and an accountant, I do not see how helping one another climb a mountain is going to translate into team building within my respective group?
In my organization I have yet to experience an outdoor lab with my group. We have spoken in the past about possibly participating in some type of outdoor activity but I don't honestly know the level of physicality my team members are willing to endure. I am actually the only male on a team of seven. Would they be willing to go rock climbing, tight rope walking, or hiking? Possibly. I do feel fortunate though to have these women as my team members. We all genuinely share common goals and values, enjoy working together, and take pride in our work. I feel like we work really well together and would even go as far as to say we are a high-performance team. There is one concern that I do have that we learned about this week and that concern is groupthink. Brown (2011) notes "Groupthink often occurs when the members of the group avoid making harsh judgements of ideas put forward by their leaders or colleagues. In their behavior and thinking, they adopt a soft line of criticism. The members are friendly to one another and seek complete concurrence on every important issue." (p. 268). I am afraid this is a true of my group. I cannot recall a meeting we have had where we have had opposing or conflicting views in completing our tasks. I will be making a concerted effort to see we can possibly avoid this moving forward. At our last meeting the team decided that we needed to meet independently of our Director (she holds team meetings every two weeks). We feel it is important for us to discuss openly and freely ideas we may not feel comfortable sharing with her in an "official" meeting. I plan to take the opportunity to identify some of the characteristics of groupthink and their effects from our text.
I do believe that organizations need to employ some type of team building activities to promote development. Outdoor labs seem like a great opportunity for organizations to capitalize on in an effort to promote team cohesiveness and leadership training. Does this type of training need to come at price tag of $2 million? Not if I were running the company, no. I don't think you need to send 200 employees half way around the world in order for them to learn to be better team members. I do however feel that if an organization performed say a bi-annual local retreat to re-energize, reward, and re-invigorate its members, then that would be a more economical and logistically feasible alternative. Here are a few ways I found that an organization can build successful teams
http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2012/10/01/6-ways-successful-teams-are-built-to-last/
I think my organization could benefit from a similar activity but not on the same scale as Seagate. I would welcome the chance to get to better know my team mates on a personal level outside of the office. I have had this opportunity with a few but not all members of my team. Hopefully in the near future we can change that.
Brown, D. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organization Development. (8th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment