My reflection blog this week is centered Eco Seagate CEO’s Bill Watkins approach to teambuilding. I had to watch the video’s a couple of times and wondered immediately the cost associated with taking all these employees to this elaborate site to team build, as if there wasn’t anything local the team could have done.  The missing element in the beginning is that this leader took his employees out of their comfort zone to work on his team.  In my blog I will review down a personal journey were I was allowed to do a similar confidence course type with about 250+ cadets and staff.

Background

My first job out of high school was with the Thunderbird Youth Academy out of Pryor, Oklahoma. The cadets were ages 16-18, high school drop outs, and selected to be in the 22 week program. This program is developed to help these kids gain their GED, learn personal living skills, and develop their individual skills to live better within their communities. The environment was very similar to a military basic training. As a drill instructor, I had several roles including building teamwork, cohesion, and confidence. At the same time I had to instill the same roles within the staff of drill instructors, educational instructors, and administrative staff members. After about half way through the 22 week cycle, we had an opportunities to take the cadets and staff to a team building confidence course. This was something new for the cadets as they were allowed to engage with their leaders. Typically they only build on their skills within their peers. As leaders of the academy, we figured this would be easy and fun, considering this is the first class to filter through the academy and this should be a great return on our investment.

Obstacle course

The obstacle course was combined with a rope adventure and various stations that included obstacles that would allow you to walk anywhere from a foot to 10 feet about the ground. The key was to work with your internal confidence and help others through their fears. The one exercise that I think was the most inspirational was where each person had their eyes blind folded, and you had to hold onto a rope in a single line.  A leader who has no blindfold would take you on a nature walk and but you could not talk. You could only use your senses of touch, smells, and hearing and with the person behind you. This was more of a challenge than one would think. For example, if the first person came across a branch on their face, they would need to signal to the person behind them that a branch was about to touch their face, and so on. The obstacle team inserted a variable in the middle of the nature walk, but separating the team into two. The good thing is the last cadet in the first separated group, quickly identified that the group was broken up or missing.  When the walk was over and the blind folds were removed, it was unique as the group never left the original staging area. We had walk in a group and the branches were just limbs used by the instructor. I think it caught everyone off guard.

Lessons Learned

The lessons learned for me personally is the art of listening. Too often as leaders we don’t stop and listen to what is around us. We make assumptions based on our own experiences and could add value to our own skill box by learning from those that we engage. I think Bill Watkins held an amazing event for ECO week to build collaboration and teamwork within his team. I think the catch phrase for me is when he identifies that everyone is going to die, and asking if the employees are really doing what they want to do in their life.  Basically if they could never fail, would they take the step of running a company? These statements are pretty bold and optimistic. If I could run a company without failure, that would be prime for me. However, realistic I would find it very boring and something that would get old over time.

Although this company spends a lot of money to create this event each year, the return on this investment has demonstrated how this CEO took his team out of their norm, allowed the members to work on their own weaknesses within the team, and allowed everyone to focus on behavior modification. Watkins knew his team needed help and he had to create an environment where each employee would not rely on their own experience, but force them to be uncomfortable and learn the value of working as a team. The value is that the employees look forward to this event each year.

As with the cadet journey, the cadets were not the only individuals within the environment that had behaviors that could be modified. Although we are leaders of the cadets, we had our own issues within our structure, even as a brand new program. We had to learn and make changes as we went along.

Current Work Assignment

As a Lockheed employee we do not do these types of team building exercises in the common work area. If you are in a program like Mid-Career Development Program (MCDP), we do multiple table top team building activities. These activities are centered on role playing, listening, communicating, and learning how to approach ambiguous leadership, change management and change leadership. Most of our social events include food and alcohol, which breaks the ice for people who have communication issues. I think this is a disadvantage back in the daily grind of work. It is something I would definitely take back to my management to define ways we could increase better team work and behavior modifications. The typical pizza parties and staff meetings do not really enhance improvements like in the Seagate examples. I will offer that Culture of Accountability (COA) is increasing our need to work better as a team with a teamwork framed approach. I do think that the money cost to do these type of events are not available to us at Lockheed which makes it more of a challenge to engage in this type of creative activities. I think conflict management is something that is a norm at my company, but I also think we are very good at managing it.