The setting is Tiffany’s, an exotic, beautiful gateway family resort 20 minutes’ drive from the heart of Lusaka. Now, Tiffany’s is the stuff made of dreams; it’s got an uncanny ability to take away personal problems even if it’s just for a day. It really is a beautiful place. So when executives from one of the rising insurance companies were looking for a team building venue, Tiffany’s was the undisputed winner. It had to be the place to cap what had been a good year. The company wanted to consolidate on the gains and build an even better team to tackle future challenges.
As it so happens in our knowledge saturated world, one HR executive had stumbled upon the idea of team building and had immediately pitched the idea to the CEO without analysing the technicalities of the concept. The CEO in a happy mood had also just signed it off, and well there they were; in a beautiful place, playing, eating and laughing off the success of the ending year. In this team of about 150 people were two characters, Jane and George.
Jane* was an Associate and an upcoming star in the company ranks, an MBA graduate with great technical skills in business and finance. Jane was unlike any other graduate coming out of university production lines that have lost touch with the modern needs of the business world; while her peers were more academic, Jane was street smart, assertive and very practical. Jane made things happen, something her line manager knew very well and news that was slowly filtering through in all company corridors to friends and enemies alike.
But, Jane at 27 was a millennial, and she was a standard millennial. She took a few drinks to cool off, attended parties on weekends, had an out-of-sorts financial discipline and was very frantic with her career progression. Starting at the bottom as an entry trainee, she had hoped to make manager at three years with the company, but here she was in her fifth year and still an Associate. Although, they were rumours that there was a new year’s present for her from HR, she was slowly feeling lost and drained in a corporate game of politics, snakes and ladders and she always suspected George, her line manager to be one snake among the many snakes surrounding her.
George* was an industry veteran who had been with the company 15 years, with a whopping 25 years industry experience. Technically gifted, with a keen eye for detail, George was rightly heading the underwriting department as manager, a department where detail was everything. George now at 48 could have been more, but he had made the mistake of not updating his skills in his younger days. It wasn’t until he was 40 that he got his first Bachelors and at 45, he got his Masters, better late than never they say. Although he had a decade or so remaining in the tank, he sometimes had a little twinge of regret of what could have been had he been more serious with school in his younger days. But as the years kept piling up, he grew contented with what he had achieved. He had substantially grown his retirement savings, had built a family house, a little farm in the outskirts and of course always believed he had one or two more promotions to go before calling it a day.
George was the old school type; he didn’t drink beer and was highly judgmental of people who drank beer. He also had this funny idea in his head that managerial positions were the preserve of people at least older than 35. With regards to Jane, he liked her grit to make things happen, her skills too were a breath of fresh air. “Most of the departmental successes being celebrated today were definitely as a result of her ingenuity”, he thought to himself. However, her millennial edge and frantic nature which he had observed with time greatly irritated him. “This girl needs to take a chill pill, I took fifteen years to make manager and she thinks she can just walk in the door and into the position just like that”, he thought as he sipped some fruit juice and stared at her with a sneaky smile.
In all this, Jane had taken two glasses of sweet Merlot. She was a very responsible drinker who normally took 3 glasses and called it quits. She was feeling good, although her career progression was not going as planned in her timeline, she comforted herself that it was only a matter of time before the flood gates opened and overwhelmed her. Although she had friends and enemies alike, she always felt more uncomfortable with the superficial relationship she had with George. They were never ever in the kitchen together for more than 2 minutes, couldn’t tie down a 5 minute small talk and their appraisal sessions always had an uncomfortable edge but professional nevertheless. As she felt his sneaky stare and smile on her, she couldn’t help but think he was judging and spying on her, trying to find out everything wrong with her outside of work. She immediately became uncomfortable, “the douche bag”,she murkily murmured to herself. She poured some more wine and vowed that George was going to get it today and two hours later, George got it!
In the blink of an eye, laughter turned into chaos and before Jane could realise it, she was being driven home. But the damage had already been done and Jane had opened a Pandora’s Box in which a lot more people now had guts to have a go at each other. Not even the beauty of Tiffany’s was enough to mend these fractured relationships that were pretending to be having a great time. Fractured relationships that had built over some time and were just simmering ready to erupt like a volcano.
This team building event which had been put together at a huge cost and hired a big name consultant ended in real shame. It is a great example in understanding what team building is and what it is not. It should be noted that this story has been sensationalised to fit into the context of what the writer wants to convey. The names of the two main characters have been changed.
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Team building is the new buzz word in corporate circles. It is an age old idea which is been stumbled upon and quickly implemented without analysing the technicalities of the concept. To some overzealous executives, a day of fun activities, planning and problem solving scenarios is a “magic wand” that is supposed to cure all problems among team members and lead to long term team cohesion.
As illustrated by the aforementioned example, they couldn’t be further from the truth. To get straight to the punch-line, team building is a process rather than an event, much more like a journey than the destination. This means that indispensable teams are built over a period of time, a period which can vary with context and size of the team.
Team building is built over such small things as sharing breakfast in the kitchen, to tying down small talk about sports, fashion and cars to mention but a few.
Furthermore, teams are built by understanding the virtues of each team member and appreciating the weakness and strong points of every team member.
Acceptance is another important quality that should be observed by teams, team members should not be too judgmental based on race, sex and religious affiliations of other team members. The main concern should always be the big picture and that big picture is always the firm’s bottom-line. Being too judgmental is a very toxic element to any team building efforts. Lastly team members should be each other’s brother’s keeper at work and even outside of work. These are just the basics of team building, little things that matter a whole lot.
This is not an endeavour to get in the nitty-gritty details of Teams and Teamwork as I need a whole book for that, However, the basics herein is to inculcate the idea that team building is not a one–time thing.
All the money in the world for a trip to Bali for a team building event will not magically knit a team together finer than an Italian craftsman knitting a classical Italian suit. It’s all superficial if the ongoing process of team building is ignored. The game is always in the little things done overtime. Therefore, the concept is much like a cake, while the team building event is the icing on the cake, the little things done over time is the actual process that goes into making the real thing; the cake.
The conclusion of the matter; the icing always needs a cake but a cake does not always need an icing needless to say, it takes on an “extra mile” dimension with the icing on it. This is not a critic to the concept of team building events, but rather it’s meant to put the concept in the right context so as to maximise its benefits. The concept of team building should always be viewed as a process that should be continuously worked on every day. A team building event on the other hand is just the icing on the cake, a capstone to everything that has been wonderfully and painstakingly built overtime.
“Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team” – John Maxwell
The author of this article is an Economist, Writer and Business Executive. The views expressed herein are solely my views and do not in any way represent the views of my employer, church and any other organization I am affiliated to.
Contact at Katandula.Chitika@fizambia.com
