Teams

In case you don't know already, there is no 'i' in team. Last week we went to Norval team building day and realized that this really was the case. In the morning we had a few activities. First we did an Inuit blanket toss where someone goes in the centre of a sheet and then they are flung into the air by everyone else. Anyone who goes into the centre must have full trust/confidence in the group. I'm pretty sure that just about everyone went in the centre, even though some people were really scared at the start.

The next thing we did was an activity where one person puts on a harness and gets attached to many different strings. The goal of the event was to make the person 'hover' around and pick up 'treasure'. This requires excellent communication, because each group has a different string and in order to move the person we had to figure out when each person pulls hard on their string. I think we did it very well because everyone got to each 'treasure' and they did it pretty fluently. Our team worked together and figured out how we would get everyone around and it worked.

The final activity was by far the best. In this one we had to climb a fifteen foot wall with nothing but each other and our bodies to help. Our team collaborated very well and figured out the best way to climb the wall. Our team worked well for about three quarters of the time but then there was an accident. One of our team members went up to climb, but had to come back down. The people at the top of the wall let him go but the people at the bottom weren't ready and he fell down the wall and hit his back. If we would have had better communication we could have caught the person or eased him down.

I think a good team requires a few things. First is communication. Communication is one of the most important things because it is key for each member to know exactly what they are going to do and exactly how it is going to plan out. The next thing is confidence and trust. To succeed you must trust you're group and have confidence that they can do whatever is necessary. If you didn't have trust and confidence the team would never go smooth and not much would be accomplished. The last thing is that teams need to listen to everyone's ideas, collaborate with each other, and include everyone. You can always get better ideas and have a better final product if everyone works together and everyone helps equally. So remember, two heads are better than one, and many heads are better than two.