Team Learning = Team Building

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Team building is a concept that has been around for a long time. No matter how team structures in organizations have been put together, there has always been a focus on how to improve the relationships between, and the productivity of, those who are ‘forced’ to work together. Most of us have choices about who/whom we want to spend our time with, and how much time we want to spend with them, outside of the work environment. Within a work setting, however, we may not have people and time options as we have to spend a set amount of time together with workplace colleagues who have been chosen for us. Given how much time is spent together each and every day with others in the workplace, it is no wonder that organizations continue to focus on how to nurture effective teams through on-going training programs that develop group learning processes.

An interesting article from 2001 outlines the positive impact of group learning on the long-term effects of team building.

Click here to read the article on group learning and team building.

While dated, the article reinforces concepts of team training and group development that are still relevant in today’s organizational learning culture. Many companies continue to offer team retreats where colleagues can challenge each other (and themselves) through various physical activities – such as Tree-top Trekking and Rock-wall Climbing. These adventure-based sessions are used to build trust and team accountability, which should translate back into the work environment in a productive way.

In addition to these physical or traditional team building efforts, the opportunities to apply learning that develops team problem solving and brainstorming skills are on the rise. For example, creative team building options come with access to events such as ‘Escape Rooms’ where participants must work together using ‘mental capacities’ such as ‘brainpower’ and ‘logic’.

Click here to read about ‘Escape Rooms’ as a team learning program.

No matter what or how the opportunities are provided into the future, what has not changed is the understanding that good teams come from forming good relationships, sharing good learning, and experiencing good times together.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Thinking of the team you work with most recently, which type of team learning session would be more challenging for the group – ‘Tree-top Trekking’ or ‘Escape Room’? Explain your rationale.
  2. What are the cost-benefits, based on the investment of both time and money for adventure based learning, in the development of team-based organization culture and productivity?
  3. How does informal team-building impact work-place productivity? Do you agree that it is beneficial? Explain your rationale.

Learning to Unlearn

 

Business Man with Ball and Chain
Source: Vibe Images/Shutterstock

Nothing kills a moment of corporate creativity more than this phrase:  “That’s not the way we do things around here.” Once it is issued, it ensures that the status quo, no matter how bad that may be, will remain untouched and, most importantly, unchanged. It is a phrase that is usually uttered by those working within a specific power-brokering segment of an organization.

How is this a power play?

When one part of an organization refuses to move, it ensures that the rest of the organization remains anchored in the past, is resistant to change, and presents no opportunity for creativity or new learning.

How can true learning organizations respond to this type of resistance?

They need to unlearn and let go of that which is holding them back.

According to Vijay Govindarajan, the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and a Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, organizations must divest themselves of old ideas and methodologies even though these may be the very things that made the organization great in the first place. In order to move forward, Govindarajan states that organizations must let go of what has been learned in the past.

Click Here to Read the Article

From a Human Resources perspective, Govindarajan’s concept can create great organizational learning opportunities if the Human Resources function has a leadership role.  Human Resources must lead with powerful impact, in order to push the change agenda both forward and throughout the entire organization.

Click Here to Read the Article

Not only must the Human Resources professional be able to provide incentives that pull people forward into change, we must also be vigilant in stopping what is sometimes a cultural and entrenched longing for both the past and not so recent past by helping people to let go of that huge anchor which is represented by the status quo.  We can do well to observe the past, but we must leave it behind and let it go in order to move forward and learn what is new and uncomfortable and create a future that does not yet exist.

To do this, the Human Resources professional needs to be brave.

The brave Human Resources professional will be the leader who will help to break the chain of the status quo, discard the anchor to the past, and set forward, freely, into an uncharted future full of greatness and new learning.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What is the difference between ‘unlearning’ and forgetting in the context of employee training and development?
  2. Do you agree with Vijay Govindarajan’s perspective that creativity comes by having to unlearn what was learned in the past? Why or why not?
  3. What do you perceive as the biggest barriers to bringing new learning, creativity, and fresh ideas into an organization from a Human Resources perspective?
  4. Have you worked with someone who was resistant to learning something new? What was that experience like for you? How did it influence your own work and learning experiences?

Sleep time. Dream time.

Her message is simple and powerful – Get some sleep.

Click Here to Watch a Video

After viewing this clip, you may be thinking, “What has this got to do with HR professionals and strategic planning?”  The answer lies in the power of giving organizations time for dreaming.  Especially when those organizations invest in the creative processes of shaping their own mission and vision.  Strategic planning should not be the production of a management checklist.  Rather, it should arise from the power of creative thinking.

When are our thoughts the most creative?  When we are given time to rest and to dream.

As Ms. Huffington states, we are in a society that seems to value the sleep-deprived state of one-upmanship.  Organizations, reflective of this society, seem to be caught up in the busy-ness of the business.  How much time is spent resting instead of doing, in order to allow for big picture thinking, planning and looking out for the future?  There seems to be far too much emphasis on a frenetic goal oriented checklist that narrows our work-life focus into the minutia and drains us of organizational life.  Getting ‘stuff’ done becomes critical so that we can prove our busy-ness worth in comparison to each other.

What gets lost in all of this frantic detail driven activity?  The ability to see and create mission, vision, and values, which come from, and enable, big picture clarity.

Organizations are living creations, made up of valuable human energy that ebbs and flows in natural rhythms.  All living things need to rest so that they can be re-filled and re-charged in order to meet new challenges in positive ways.   At the very least, let’s give ourselves a break and start building in some ‘organizational dream time’ on that checklist.

Maybe, we should sleep on it first.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How much time in your workday is devoted to thinking and not doing?
  2. When you are tired, how would you rate your ability to be creative?
  3. When are you most creative and productive within your workday?
  4. What is the value in being sleep deprived?