Morias Events & Teambuilders Pte Ltd (Singapore)

ARTICLE

What Is Team Building Really?

"Oh, no. Are we really going to talk about that stuff...I have real work to do!"
Have you ever heard someone say this when you even mention team building?

Maybe so. But something has certainly ignited the business world’s appreciation for this concept that has been around
so long. Even with this interest we seem to get it wrong a lot, so we thought it might be interesting to once again look at
organizational team building in light of today’s realities.

Give me a "T" !
We think most people associate team building with the trivial, rah rah aspects of teams in competition. Our models,
unfortunately, seem to be drawn from the sports world. I think about this as we struggle to understand the concept,
then realize we have all been programmed to think this way.

For example, our early childhood experiences were dominated by school and play. In school, we were in a structured
world whose reward system favored individual accomplishment. When a teacher asked a question, it was the person
whose hand went up first who usually responded. You certainly didn’t see two or three students clustering to develop
the best answer. When we took tests, we knew we were competing against the other students for the best scores.

When recess time came, we moved our activities out onto the playground where we frequently chose up teams to play
ball or some other activity. On these teams we learned that we had to cooperate with others to succeed.

And so we moved through our school system learning that the way to succeed in the classroom (or "the real world")
was to do it ourselves in an ongoing competition against others. On the playground, the system favored teaming.

A few years ago, in response to an inquiry about why they were implementing team concepts, we stated that "In the
business world when people get together and work on a project, it’s called `teamwork.’ In schools, the way we’re
teaching today, it’s called ‘cheating’."

So it is our strong belief that many of the problems we see in workplace teams are directly related to our early
programming that teaming is for play and not really meant for real work. Workers, including senior managers,
subconsciously write it off as some exercise to make everyone feel good. And so we struggle.

Business World Reinforces Competition
When we move from school to the world of work we enter another system. Historically this has also been a system in
stark contrast to teaming and working together. Concepts such as performance evaluations, merit raises, forced
rankings, reward processes (especially promotions), aggressive supplier policies, and combative union relations
have tended to reinforce, once again, competition and individual accomplishment.

When we ask people to "work together" and simultaneously place them in a competitive system, the resulting psychic
dissonance creates inaction rather than action. If these same people are then assigned to a new work team and told
to operate as a team, there will be little energy to move forward. The contradiction between what is being asked of
them and the real operating behavior of the organization creates a certain apathy, and ultimately eroding, of the team
process.

And so we continue to struggle with team concepts and again wonder why.

So What is Team Building?
Much of the problem of making teams successful in the workplace stems from our past perceptions of what teams
are, and a complete ignorance of the powerful principles that underlay them.

Teams are really just a formal way to actualize collaboration. Collaboration is at the heart of successful decision
making, but somehow this fact alludes us.

Teaming isn’t something we do because it creates harmonious work groups, or is neat to do. It is a way to formalize
the power of collaboration among individuals. It is a way to blend the talents, skills, and inherent creativity of diverse
people. It is a way to use this collaboration so that the work group leverages its skills, time, and resources for their own
benefit and that of the organization.

Let’s look at the word "collaboration" for a moment. At its core is co-labor, or working together toward some meaningful
end. It is people combining their collective knowledge so that the sum total of the collaboration is greater than what
could have been achieved individually.

One who understands the power of collaboration seldom makes a unilateral decision willingly. This person knows
instinctively that any decision they make will be improved in some way by the thoughts of another.

To test this, simply think of some decision you need to make, then ask someone for their thoughts. If you want to really
expand the possibilities, get several people together and ask them to discuss the issue. Then take notes. When you
are alone, look at your notes and see how many new facts and ideas have been added.

Our awakening to this came years ago when we were asked to lead some new problem solving groups in a company.
These groups were given some of the most difficult problems the organization faced. They were problems whose
solutions had alluded both management and the hired experts for several years.

We assembled these teams, comprised of "ordinary" people from the workforce, and began to dissect the issues and
brainstorm solutions. Solutions always emerged. A phrase we came to use a lot to describe these solutions was
"brilliant simplicity." we were always surprised, at least at first, by how people with diverse knowledge, talents, and
skills were able to combine these qualities to arrive at a place that was greater than any of them could have individually.

Although we were observing this phenomenon almost daily our my work, it took almost four years before our own
decision making process became more naturally collaborative. As we have looked back on our own transition we have
gained a greater awareness and appreciation of the difficulty of changing ourselves, let alone others. Our prior
conditioning prepared us for a world of individual accomplishment and competition, and so we never acquired
collaborative skills. It took a series of significant emotional events (i.e., collaborative workplace breakthroughs) to have
us seriously reconsider how to contemplate, explore, and make decisions differently. All of this relates to our
acceptance or rejection of team building.

So what is team building? Team building is a process of awareness building. It’s helping people to understand that
they are greater collectively than individually. It is an understanding that all of our decisions will be better when some
degree of collaboration is applied. It is bringing people to a place where there is an honest appreciation of each other’
s essence...where they come from...where they’ve been. Because in this appreciation is the driver for collaboration.

It is our strong belief that once this appreciation is realized, there will be little need for team building courses. People
will seek out others willingly, knowing instinctively that what they get will be valuable. Perhaps if more senior executives
understood this, we would see more collaborative, or team, behavior at the top.

Some will say this is an overly simplistic discussion of team building, that there is much more to the subject. There is.
There are so many factors that affect our ability to work closely together, many of which have been discussed in these
pages.

But shifting our perceptions of others may be the greatest inducement to building real teamwork. "If I truly value your
knowledge, skills, and abilities, I will seek out your opinion. If I don’t, I won’t."

But first we will have to overcome our prior training and conditioning, move out of our ego states, and allow ourselves
to be vulnerable. Asking for help and advice in the Singapore culture is seen more as a sign of weakness than a
collaborative skill. When we can shift this paradigm, we will see a more natural and authentic use of collaboration and
its primary outlet, teams and teamwork.