“A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle.”
Speaking freely can free you as a team.
I was conducting a team building workshop and part way through a gentleman asked me a blunt question – how is this exercise going to help with team building? I could see that the rest of his team were a bit taken aback by his bluntness. For me, I appreciated this question because it was clearly important for him to connect the dots in his mind. We were conducting a “no agenda, no manual” team building exercise with the head of each department of a multinational company. Each team member was allowed to speak openly, even negatively about what occurred inter-departmentally. Of course, initially everyone was a bit defensive but after a few hours, I watched them laugh and express completely openly. It was then that the gentleman said, “I can appreciate the value of the exercise but how is this related to team building?”
Here is what I explained to him.
I said that in a football team at a professional level, one player can pull up his teammate saying, with bulging veins and maybe even a raised voice, “I was completely open, you should have passed to me, come on!” Being able to take this kind of uninhibited feedback is less welcomed in the workplace. For the sake of being professional, politically correct and polite, often we are not saying what needs to be said and we are not getting a complete picture of what others feel about us.
He could see what I meant. See, the truth is, when our colleagues challenge us, we gain new insights about our behavior, our attitudes and how we are being perceived. With the right environment, a team can grow tremendously by speaking freely and that is what took place on the day with the multinational organization. Each and every member built an immunity towards handling negative criticism and because of this, each one can handle anything a client or colleague throws at them. The focus turns back to the results that we are all after and away from being overly concerned with how your words will be dissected and interpreted.
The gentleman who posed the question to me then surprised me with this. He said, “You know what, I have been so focused on my team, the 25 or so people that work in my department. But you are right, team building is a lot about connecting with the people in other departments.”
He is absolutely right, true team building is aligning inter-departmentally and being able to welcome feedback of any kind, not just the positive.
This brave gentleman speaking freely to me about the relevance of this exercise, subsequently freed the entire room to challenge me with questions and in the process freed us all.