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Bringing Association Teams Together - One Game At a Time!

Written by: Peggy Grall

Article Overview: In this article published in the Canadian Society of Association Executives Association Magazine details tips and techniques for getting teams to work together more efficiently.

Bringing Association Teams Together - One Game At a Time!

The pursuit of high performance teams has become the Holy Grail for associations today. Never in our history
has the need for teams to work efficiently together been more necessary. John Doerr, the Silicon Valley venture
capitalist who backed Lotus, Compaq and Netscape said, “In the world today there’s plenty of technology, plenty
of entrepreneurs, plenty of money, plenty of venture capital. What’s in short supply are great teams.” He’s right.
Teams come in all forms including: Executive Leadership Teams, Project-specific Teams, Management Teams,
Governance Teams (Boards), New Product/Redesign Teams and ad-hoc, project-specific teams. The same
challenge faces the leadership of every team: How do I take this group of people and make them into a team – a
real team?
Whatever the type of team, the core ingredient for success remains the same; making this group of people into a
cohesive unit that can quickly build a foundation of trust that capitalizes on the skill sets of the team members
and captures the synergy of the group. High performing teams need a supportive environment, the necessary
skills, clarity of roles, adequate time to process, rewards, opportunities to interact with each other and a
passionate goal worth the pursuit. So, how do you bestow all of that? Read on!
The way to bring a team together fast is to involve them in intense interactions with each other. When used
artfully, team games can be a powerful antidote to boredom and can help teams to:
· Get to the point: they are powerful teaching tools for driving home a specific idea, process or goal
· Boost morale: games provide a sharp contrast to conventional training techniques and can inject an
element of competition and fun into team dynamics
· Build trust: involving teams in experiential simulations challenges their natural caution about relying on
other team members and breaks down the silos that exist in organizations and within teams themselves
· Be flexible and innovate: within the moves of a well-crafted game, a team will come face-to-face with
their sacred cows, the status quo, those pesky barriers that prevent teams from finding new solutions to
old problems, and creating novel approaches to new challenges
· Sanction positive team behaviors: when cooperation and creativity are demonstrated, and when people
stretch to actively engage with other team members, the leader or facilitator can highlight and reward
these behaviors, ushering in a new set of standards for the team.
People learn at a higher level through the use of team games. They learn by inventing information from their
own resources, discovering information and solutions from someone else, acquiring information by
eavesdropping on other team members, or sparking off of another team member’s idea.
Why do games work so well? Look at kids. Case in point—my 3-year-old grandson. When he comes to visit he’s
not in the door five minutes before he wants Nana to “play me”. That’s his way of asking me to leave whatever
else I’m doing, focus on him and play. We play Legos, cars, trains and sports. We laugh, we tease, we compete
and we learn. We learn new ways to make a toy work for us, about the limits of our intelligence and ability to
make an activity work, but most of all we learn about each other. He’s learned how to get my attention, my help,
what things I think are funny and what are in the “ta- ta” category. I’ve learned how quickly he can grasp a
concept and the best way to introduce new ideas to him. I’ve also learned where his limits are, and what he acts
like when he’s frustrated with a task versus just tired and needing a break. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew all that
about people on our team? We can know—and the vehicle to gaining this information is play.
We are a species that learns while we play. Research has long told us that learning is best done when
accompanied by an emotional experience. Think about the most memorable training, workshop, presentation or
off-site you’ve attended. What do you remember? There is a saying among professional speakers, “They will
forget what you said, they will even forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
How did you feel? Now, what was the point of that speech, day or event? I bet you remember. We remember
that which is reinforced with a strong emotional experience. That emotional component can be the thrill of
competition, the frustration of the height of the learning curve, the challenge of the seemingly impossible, the
satisfaction of a task completed or the sincere, unsolicited appreciation of team members. Whether you
experience the “thrill of victory or the agony of defeat” in a team game, the end result is the same–you won’t
forget what happened.
Team games are especially effective at testing and refining the Emotional Quotient of team members. In his
article entitled, “Group Versus Individual Performance: Are N+1 Heads Better Than One”, which appeared in
the Psychological Bulletin, G.W. Hill conducted research on the effectiveness of teams and reported that, “
Results from hundreds of groups showed that 97% of the time the group scores were higher than those of the
best individuals. This same effect has been found over and over again, even for extremely short-lived groups,
groups that were formed solely for the purpose of an experiment. When teams of strangers listened to a narrative
about the ups and downs of someone’s career, the more people on the team, the better their collective memory
was. Three people did better than two, four better than three and so on.”
Games are a great way to put people’s emotional skills on the line. When team members are engaged in an
activity that demands that they relinquish dominance and share resources, insights and power to accomplish the
goal, they alter their strategy and adopt tactics that produce results and win the cooperation of their teammates.
This is behavior a team leader dreams about!
Experiential learning is a dynamic sequence of predictable events. The environment, timing, design and props of
a game all contribute to the team’s ability to translate vital learning from the game to the workplace. The
sequence begins with the event or game itself. Games chosen should have a learning objective that matches the
specific needs of the team. Facilitators and team leaders and, I suspect, association executives are familiar with
group process through the work of B.W. Tuckman. He identified four distinct phases that most teams move
through on their way to productivity: forming, storming, norming and performing.
So, what games do teams need that are already solidly in the performing stage? These teams can capitalize on
what trainers call the Mother Games! These are the games that only solid teams dare tackle. They are games that;
challenge the team’s sacred cows, ferret out the small cracks in the armor of team members and challenge the
leader’s functional credibility. For good teams that want to become great, I use simulations and events that have
no conventional solutions or those where success can only be achieved if team members step way outside their
comfort zone. I put them into risky games, physically exhaustive games - games that push the team past polite,
predictable and “team as usual” responses. These high performance teams learn to consistently produce
exceptional results. They assume responsibility for themselves as individuals and the team as a unit. They support
and encourage each other in removing obstacles and achieving extraordinary results. Out beyond the safe harbor
of the normal patterns of a good team lie the elements of a great one. Facilitators and team leaders must take
their team out in the deep end if they want them to make the leap to exceptional.
The second step in the gaming process is facilitating the game. Whether you are the Executive Director in charge
of the team meeting, or the Director of Training whose job it is to plan the next association off-site, strong
facilitators know that there is an art to coaching a successful game. The three cardinal rules of gaming are:
1. Be very familiar with the elements of the game – you will lose credibility if you are unclear in your explanation
of the rules and parameters, awkward in your use of props or clumsy in the debriefing. There are no ‘guinea pig’
teams – be prepared and practiced.
2. Be a coach – not a manager, friend, participant, rule keeper, critic or consultant. Gamers need coaches to
clarify the rules, keep the game moving, attentively observe and call the game at the right moment. Your
contribution to the game should be that of a silent cheerleader – always pulling for the team, but not a part of it.
3. Be brief in the debrief – spend only the amount of time it takes to allow the team to: (1) describe what
happened – looking for wins and failures, (2) share their feelings about the events of the game (remember the
emotional component of learning) (3) identify their own behaviors and choices and the effectiveness of them, (4)
draw applications to their work environment, both as individuals and as a team.
One of my best memories with a team was with an international leadership team from a Fortune 500 company
who spent a few days looking at their role as leaders. These men and women had a background in design
engineering, so I set up a game where they were required to replicate a Lego version of the Star Ship Enterprise.
There were four teams; each had to choose a Captain, a Number I and a Counselor. Only the Captain was
allowed to view the prototype of the Starship and report back to the group what it looked like and how to build
it. I instructed them to use a “just in time” supply model and not to collaborate with the other groups. My
teenage son had built the proto-type in about 20 minutes and I had estimated about an hour to complete the task
– they took two!
When the teams were humming along (about 20 minutes into the game) I called a halt and announced that there
had been a merger. I mixed up the teams, changed the reporting structure, positions and responsibilities of the
team members. Chaos ensued. Finally one team broke away and created what they defiantly referred to as a
stripped down, European model of the prototype. They innovated and got their product to market first.
Members from one of the other teams not only gave up, but also started to confiscate materials from the other
teams so they couldn’t finish either!
What they discovered in the debriefing was that, had they ignored my directive not to collaborate, all of them
would have been successful. As you might imagine, debriefing was fun, fiercely interesting and unearthed a lot of
relevant information for these leaders about how they handle competition, authority, market demands and
intense change.
Executives, managers, team leaders, trainers and facilitators have at their disposal a myriad of ways to help bring
teams together. In my work with senior leadership teams, gaming is the most powerful one I’ve found so far.
Weak games, ineffective debriefing, and no transferable body of learning all water down the effect. Teams need
gaming with teeth! They need leaders and facilitators with the courage to tell it like they see it, to shine a light on
the brilliance and the missteps of the team, challenge firmly held team beliefs, focus efforts and outrageously
celebrate the team’s success. Teams that are given the opportunity to engage in outstanding games, under the
direction of a skilled gamer, can move their performance to the level of champions and beyond. Try it and see!

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Article Tags: adequate time, cohesive unit, core ingredient, goal worth, high performing teams, holy grail, john doerr, leadership teams, management teams, necessary skills, netscape, performance teams, product redesign, redesign teams, silicon valley, silicon valley venture, team dynamics, team games, teams management, venture capitalist



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