Building the Team

I just realized that this has been sitting in my draft for over a month!
This was supposed to be posted back on April 22nd (date of the team building). So here goes

*imagine it's April 23rd*

***

I spent this whole week in the city of Solano in Nueva Vizcaya, visiting our Water Treatment Plant to learn about the operational and the business side of bulk water supply. At the end of the week, I joined the S.Water team's summer company outing - or shall I say, team building activity. Before this, I had an idea of what a team building activity was, even though I had never experienced one before. My last jobs in Nigeria and India had no such thing. In fact, I thought team building was just a Filipino thing because people here are very close to each other (even at work) and their favorite word is "bonding".

At first I wasn't really a fan of the idea - I mean when you come from environments where work is strictly professional and everyone functions independently, then you wouldn't fancy this either. But in the end, I really enjoyed it! The facilitator, Mrs. Kris from Ad Maioram was really, really good! She had power point presentations with related activities. I basically felt like I was in a seminar/ in school... her program was really well-organized.

The team building activity was mainly for the S.Water people - even though I was on one of the teams, I was pretty much there to help our Human Resource assistant and the facilitator and also take photographs. The venue was Villa Diana in Cordon (just an hour's drive from Solano). We had the resort exclusively to ourselves - and when I say resort I mean a huge compound with fields and trees and activity/conference halls, a swimming pool and the rooms. 

30+ of us were divided into four groups and had to give our groups a name related to water sports. So there was Soul Surfers (orange), Mighty Magat Rowers (yellow), Water Ski Riders (green) and Divers (red). It was really interesting to see how each team came up with their own way of wearing the bandanas! The orange girls' head band was really pretty, the yellow team looked like a boy's scout team and my red team's...well, sort of reminded me of the Amish people ..

Before we started, our facilitator showed us some slides relating to what is a team (we broke it down to Together Everyone Achieves More), who are team members and the role/characteristics of a team leader and member.

We went outdoors for our first set of games:

The first one required six people per team, working in pairs. Each pair had to walk side by side with a balloon between their hips, all the way to the chair and back then pass the balloon to the next pair until the first team wins. It wasn't as easy as it looks because you have to coordinate your speed without touching each other. If the balloon falls, you can to start again. 

 The third game looked pretty tough. Two men from each group were in charge of holding the basins, then each member had to walk and step on it. The challenge was not to make large steps (just small, regular steps), and also to lift the basin up each step, instead of sliding it on the ground left and right.

For the last activity, we moved to the field because we needed more space. Everyone got into a large circle, while the facilitator held a ball of straw string. She had to say a word and then anyone just had to say a word related to it (whatever pops up in your head). For example, the first word was team, then someone said together, another said cooperation, another said unity. Each person who said something was to hold the string, until everyone had a string and it became a huge complicated web. 

When everyone had a string to hold on to, the facilitator asked us to come closer and to adjust so that there was no large gap, and then she threw a ball in the middle and we had to make sure the ball wouldn't fall into the hole. She'd tell us "everyone, move one step to the right", or "everyone move two steps back". The only challenge was just to make sure the ball wouldn't fall through and after a couple of moves, it eventually did.

This game was the highlight of my team building experience. Some people had just one end of the string to hold on to, some had more than two (it depended on how many words you contributed). For me, it meant that whether you're on the top of the triangle, or at the bottom, no matter what role you play in the team/company, it is still important. It still holds the whole company together. For the ball not to fall through, it really required every single person to participate, to be careful, to observe and make adjustments because if the ball drops, well, it's the ball of the whole team and you cannot blame any one person at all.

After dinner, everyone gathered around the pool. Some of the people (including the General Manager himself) started a live band.

I didn't join the evening session - went to bed early because I was exhausted and my tummy was finally reacting to a week-long of hotel food. I was at the point of breaking down over some home-cooked khoresht. I woke up really really early the next day, so I decided to walk around and explore the beautiful compound before breakfast.

After breakfast, we had some discussions/recap of the previous day then did a couple more activities. When I heard we were going to make paper planes, my first thought was "seriously?!" It's almost like our facilitator knew that many of us would find it childish, and then she said "it's good to be a kid once in a while" and so we made paper planes (each group had to make identical planes, as thought by our team leader), and then we had to fly our planes from one line and then later count the number of planes that made it past the other line. Each team had two or three planes that crossed the line...except ours! We don't know why. We basically failed, but you know how it goes in a team "we're all in this together".

I don't have photographs of the activity that followed this, but it was extremely funny. Each team had to create a human machine - pick a machine and then each member had to act it out (without making any sounds). The other three teams had to make one guess on what the machine was, and the team that makes the right guess wins. The first two teams were impossible to figure out, and even our team's - we did a shawarma machine. Two people stood on two sides, rotating (one was supposedly chicken shawarma, and the other beef shawarma), while each had someone behind them as if warming the bread on the fire, and another slicing the meat. Then my role was getting the bread, sliced meat and rolling up. No one figured out what our machine was and I laughed so much when other teams guessed our machine was a musical box! because of the humans turning as shawarmas! 

After all that, we got back into the hall, and surprisingly saw one of our Directors. He gave a very inspiring speech...first telling us how the company there in Solano actually started, then shared with us his, or 'the' dreams for this company. It's still a relatively new company, but he stressed on how important it is for every single member to contribute to its success. Getting everyone in Solano (and beyond) connected to our water system is not just in the hands of the networking or customer service employees; it even falls on the hands of the plant operators, the accounts, everyone. And also it's not just for the plant operators to know the water treatment process, but every single member so that we can always explain it to others. It's interesting how he wasn't there all through, but when he came in the end, he connected everything we had learnt, applied the lessons to the actual company/team, and tied it all up. 

It was indeed a very meaningful experience. I don't mean to sound like a student, but what really stood out for me from the presentations was the role of a team player.

Self reflection:  my entire elementary and secondary school life was such that the only group work we ever had to do was in PE class. It wasn't until I came to the Philippines for university that I had my first group work/project. It was very hard for me in the beginning...

when you're used to working independently, you wouldn't easily trust that others on your team are doing the right thing, and most times you would want it your way. And that's what happened back in university - I'd always almost end up volunteering to be team leader because I knew I'd have more control over the project. After university, I went away, back to the world of do-it-yourself, but now that I'm back again in the Philippines - I'm not going to complain, but let me just say - people here can be very unhappy when they don't see you join them or try to "bond" with them. 

It's never really easy, because teams are always made up of people with different background and each with their personal ideas...but when it comes to work, or whatever the team is trying to achieve, everyone has to drop the "personal" and just focus on the vision, mission of the team. Every now and then during the activities, the facilitator made us remember the company's vision, mission and even values. She said we have to familiarize ourselves with it because at the end of the day, that is what the entire team (made up of all of us) needs to achieve. The Bigger Picture. 

This video commercial  really sums it all up perfectly: