Objective: Learn about
importance of teamwork and its constituting elements with the help of a valley
crossing exercise.
The valley crossing exercise was performed in order to
demonstrate the importance of team work. Team work involves many facets some of
them being communication, coordination, interdependence, trust, support,
contribution from members and cohesion between members.
The exercise: Valley
Crossing
The activity involved 3 persons crossing a valley with the
support of the rod. The distance between two ends of the cliff was more than 1
step but less than 2 steps. The activity was to be performed in such a way,
that at any instance of time during the crossing of valley, not more than 1
member was at risk, i.e. if one person was at risk during the act of valley
crossing, the other two members would take up that person’s weight. In this way
the Inter-Dependency between the members was tightly
coupled which is one of the most facets of team work.
It is also to be
noted that when one of the persons is at risk, that person has to Trust the other two
persons to ensure that the objective is achieved. In this way, during the
entire exercise, all the persons are at equal risk and need confidence and
trust between the members to achieve the objective.
Three wise
men Crossing the valley - Detailed task process
Earlier we learnt about de-skilling (breaking an element into
small small processes and thus precluding the need for expertise) and its far
reaching impact. in the same manner, if we apply the process of de-skilling to
this problem we can break it into 9 steps. The pictorial representation of the
process flow is as follows:
based on the step
per step situation, we can draw following inferences:
Persons
|
First Person
|
Second Person
|
Third person
|
Steps
|
|||
1
|
Safe
|
Safe
|
Safe
|
2
|
Half Risky
|
||
3
|
Full Risky
|
||
4
|
Half Risky
|
Half Risky
|
|
5
|
Full Risky
|
||
6
|
Half Risky
|
Half Risky
|
|
7
|
Full Risky
|
||
8
|
Half Risky
|
||
9
|
Safe
|
Safe
|
Safe
|
·
Safe - Both the legs of the person have full support
·
Half Risky – One leg in the air and the
other leg has support
·
Full risky - Both the legs are in the air
without any support
·
Half risky – One leg is in the air and the
other leg has support
·
Safe - Both the legs have full support
Lessons Learnt
Responsibility
When a team is assigned a work or has to achieve an objective,
each member of the team should be responsible enough to complete their portion
of the task. If even one member of the team is not responsible to complete
their portion, then the entire objective is at a risk and can lead to harsh
consequences.
Communication
During the process of performing a task, there needs to be
effective communication between the group members for two main reasons.
The first reason
can be to know the status of the work performed so that the percentage task
completion of the task can be gauged The second reason can be
related to the clarity of the task between the members. If even one member
interprets the task incorrectly, the whole objective of the group is put at
stake.
Confidence and
Trust
The organization cannot be successful if there is no element of
trust in it. As in the case of valley exercise, persons can take the risk to
cross the valley only since they trust the other two. Similarly for the
organization to be successful, managers and workers have to follow the Theory X
which tells the people or managers have trust on the other people or employees
for the job to be completed effectively.
Innovation
When the team members have gelled, then innovation is
something that comes on its own. A good team always has a good number of people
who come up with innovative ideas all the time.
Clear goals
The goals were clear, defined and each member in the team fully
understood the gravity of the problem.
after all, as it is
said:
One
man alone can be pretty dumb
sometimes, but for real bonafide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat
teamwork
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