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Imagine a team that
operates at peak effectiveness through motivation, shared vision
and individual talent.
How does it get there? How
do you build that shared vision? Just listing out the roles and
responsibilities of the team may be technically accurate, but it can be
very difficult to motivate the team using just that kind of information.
In our experience, people
relate strongly and emotively to metaphor, so we use it in a team building
context to create a powerful, shared understanding of the function of the
team.
What is your team like?
Perhaps it's a jazz band,
with individually talented and creative performers working together to
produce something innovate and unique?
Perhaps it's an orchestra,
with highly skilled performers all working to support each other in
achieving a specific common goal. In this case, who is the conductor, and
who wrote the music?
Perhaps it's a sports
team? Here's a story that we used to create a vision for a small
consultancy team. It hooked naturally into some specific individual
strengths and business practices that they had and so it became very
personal and meaningful to them.
Once, there was a
successful businessman who had a hobby that he was very passionate about.
In his spare time, he loved motor racing. At first, he used to go along to
as many races as he could and watch but as he became more successful, he
could afford to take part. He was a very talented driver and quickly built
himself a reputation as a serious competitor.
One day, he decided he
would take the plunge and dedicate himself to his dream - to build his own
racing team. He set aside some money of his own, gained commitment from
sponsors and started to recruit his team.
At first, the recruitment
didn't go very well. He couldn't afford to pay the same salaries as the
top teams paid, so he was looking for talented but unknown drivers. He
recruited some, but they didn't stay in the team long before they moved
on. Like any manager, he knew that he needed to have a team that worked
well together.
The other problem that he
had was that he was himself a very accomplished driver. When he recruited
a new driver he would try to teach them to drive better. Unfortunately, he
didn't really know how he could drive so well as it was mostly intuitive.
He would get angry with the drivers when they couldn't see for themselves
how he was able to drive. He was on the brink of closing the team down,
believing that the problem was one of recruitment.
He was watching a sports
program on TV one day when he noticed something odd. When the interviewer
was talking to a football manager, the manager kept referring to someone
called a 'coach'. The same thing happened with some other sports too. He
wondered what a coach could do that a manager couldn't.
By chance, he then met
someone who was a team coach, so he invited him down to the race track to
see what would happen.
The coach watched the
drivers practice, and he watched the team manager trying to tell the
drivers how to drive. The drivers lacked confidence in their own talents
and when they asked how the manager knew certain things, he said "it
just feels right", or "you can tell by the way it sounds".
There were three drivers
in the team, so the coach watched each one very carefully, and he also
watched the manager very carefully. The first driver, Adam, was very good
at accelerating. From the starting line, Adam was at least a car's length
in front of anyone else at the first corner. He seemed to have an
intuitive sense of when to change gear to maximise the car's performance.
The second driver, Brian, could brake later than anyone else and so was
much faster into the corners than any of the other drivers. He seemed to
have an intuitive sense of knowing when to brake as he approached a bend.
The third driver, Claire, could take corners faster than any of the other
drivers on the circuit. She seemed to have an intuitive sense of the car's
cornering ability and grip.
The downside of these
talents was that Adam was always the first into the first corner, but the
last out. Brian caught up with Adam at the bend but slowed down too much
and was overtaken. Claire would overtake on the bend but lose her
advantage on the straight.
The coach got the whole
team together and pointed out to them their strengths. The drivers began
to feel much better about this. Each driver, at a certain point on the
track, was by far the fastest driver on the circuit but was let down by
average performance in other areas. The coach began to ask some very
special questions about how the drivers knew what they knew.
It turned out that Adam
was listening for a certain tone from the engine, tyres and gearbox. He
could hear when the car was at peak power output and he could change gear
at the exact moment to take advantage. Consequently, he accelerated much
faster than drivers who only changed gear at the 'red line' by watching
the rev counter. With some help from the coach, he was able to teach the
other drivers what to listen for.
Brian could brake much
later because he was looking somewhere different to the other drivers. The
other drivers were looking at the apex of the bend, whereas Brian was
looking beyond the bend. He was able to judge the distance to the apex
much more accurately, enabling him to brake late but still drive safely.
With some help from the coach, he could easily teach the other drivers
where to look.
Claire could actually feel
the car's sideways motion. She could very accurately feel the movement of
the suspension as the car leaned into the bend and she could feel how the
motion changed as the tyres started to lose grip. She could actually feel
the acceleration at different points in her body. With some help from the
coach, she was able to teach the other drivers how to feel the movement of
the car.
The team went from
strength to strength, not because they were taught something new, but
because they were able to share their talents and exploit them for the
benefit of the whole team. Each driver still had their unique talent, they
just helped each other achieve above average results across the range of
skills needed to be successful. The coach didn't need to be an expert in
driving, only an expert in learning.
What about the manager?
Well, the coach had a special job for him. He had to go to every
newspaper, sports journalist, sponsor, TV station and racing promoter and
tell them that he had a new team. He had to tell them that this was the
best team on the planet and they were going to re-write the motor racing
rules. He had to prove to everyone that he believed in them.
And so the new team was
born.
You can find more Team
Building resources at www.team-build.net
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