Team Building

This week Project CHANGE 2010 went to the Smith Center in Rockville to do various team building exercises, which of course were related back to our respective work environments. 

The key element in all of the exercises that we did seemed to be communication. Which is not surprising I guess, given that it is key in any type of relationship with any amount of people, but the most difficult to conquer.

We started out with easy games. We got into a big circle, ( all 29 or 30 of us) held hands and at various points in the circle the Smith Center leader put hoola hoops over two people's hands. She told us, without letting go of our hands (breaking the circuit) to transfer all of the hoola hoops throughout the circle. Each hoola hoop had a different direction that it had to go in though so at various points in the game the hoops had to cross over each other. And that took some communication but we figured it out pretty quickly. 

The games continued throughout the morning each one a little more complicated and requiring a little bit more communication skills and patience with each other.

Our last exercise was on a big wooden board built to tip back and forth like a low see-saw. We were told that we had to all get on the board while constantly keeping it balanced. This was hard. We started out agreeing that we had to keep weight on the ends to get people on at first. But when more and more people got on the board it got harder to communicate and figure out what to do when there weren't enough people to keep weight on the end. 

This was the point where I realized how important clear and detailed communication is. No one could see everyone or hear everything that was going on and we all ended up doing different things or not reacting when we needed to. 

I am probably the only person who really loves learning things in the form of a game. Although I consider myself a people person and I think I work pretty well with other people things like this are always useful as a way to remind yourself exactly how important it is to constantly communicate and how easy it is for confusion and miscommunication to happen.