Pharma Voice

Creating high performing teams

Srinivasan Iyer

Organisations increasingly rely on teams to get work done. From the boardroom to the shop floor and the market place, it’s all about the cohesiveness of teams and their alignment towards fulfilling corporate objectives. Yet most teams work at defeating purposes and team members aren’t happy working together. This is largely owing to autocratic leadership styles, tendency to conform to ‘group thinking’, diffusion of responsibility, absence of sense of belongingness and lack of ownership of team goals.

Teams can overcome these factors through structured challenges. Out-bound training (OBT) is the most effective mode for imparting experiential learning. Kurt Lewin first propounded this approach in 1946. According to him, the three key tenets of the experiential approach to team learning are conversation space, role leadership and team development.

We may forget what we are told or what we read. However, we remember what we do. And learning happens best when it’s fun. Outbound programmes focus on experiential learning. This can best be described as a continuous cycle of experiencing first-hand, learning from reviewing the experience and finally connecting it to situations in personal and professional life. All the above helps organisations to bring about planned changes in behaviour.

Unlike classroom training sessions, outbound training is facilitated in a scenic natural environment. The very environment brings out the latent potential in people, helps them shed inhibitions and fosters out-of-the-box thinking. Add to this ambience, the right dose of mild and adventurous challenges and you have the perfect setting to form a well-knit team. These camps test the teamwork among the participants through challenging activities. During their endeavour to cope with unforeseen experiences, the latent personality of the team members comes to the fore. Some members make an effort to forge bonds with fellow participants and soon the group becomes a team.

The first phase of an OBT is the ‘need analysis’. The objective of the camp needs to be clearly mapped. In the absence of a well-defined theme, an OBT session ends up as a picnic. This could defeat the very purpose of the camp. The most common themes for OBT are breaking the silos, building bonds across all levels and inculcating leadership and reinforcing the core values of the organisation. With this purpose, the duration of the camp, the venues and the participant profiles need to be drawn.

Pfizer is one organisation which believes that only teamwork can deliver results. It also uses OBT to impart coaching on ‘cross-cultural sensitivity and teambuilding’. Apart from Pfizer employees, international consultants working who managing its various projects and the vendors of professional technical services also participate in these programmes. These workshops aim at strengthening co-operative work behaviour and work co-ordination as well as optimising individual qualities. It also focuses on understanding and appreciating of each other’s cultures and working styles.

In the second phase of programme development, the activities and events are chalked out, the itinerary is drawn and there is an agreed sign-off on the deliverables. The ‘delivery’ phase includes administering the activities, facilitation by the trainer, sharing of experiences by the participants and connecting the experiential learning to work situations by the trainer. ‘Spider’s Web’ and ‘Obstacle Race’ are a few team-building games that test the mettle of the teams in creating and implementing the strategy and working together. Leadership games like ‘Marbleo’ and ‘Blindfolded Square’ reveal the leadership qualities and areas for improvement in leaders. Adventure activities like rappelling, overhead crawling, jummaring, and commando bridge are all about risk-taking, courage, planning and teamwork.

The ‘delivery’ phase is critical since seemingly innocuous adventure sports can lead to minor injuries or even major accidents. The outbound activity specialists need to be duly certified for conducting adventure activities. They also need to be well versed in administering first aid. The gadgets have to be state-of-the art and stringent safety measures need to be adhered to.

What differentiates a good OBT camp from other similar programmes are the briefing and the debriefing. Unless the facilitators are trained psychologists who are experts in probing and drawing linkages from their observation of the team to work environment and desired behaviours, the camp wouldn’t be successful.

Most behaviours start sub-consciously and then evolve into patterns. Every behaviour pattern gives us certain outcomes. However, not all behaviour patterns are positive, we may also be stuck with negative behaviour patterns. An in-depth self introspection of our attitudes, behaviours and the impact it has on our workmates, family and friends is the key to behaviour modification.

When Lupin needed to groom its star performers, the ‘high potential high performers’ were put through a mix of psychometric assessments, intensive training on competencies and structured mild outbound challenges. The idea was to create star performers who are also good team players and leaders. Teambuilding is not only for new teams. Team members who work with each other on a daily basis also have differences on issues. Moreover, their interaction is limited to getting work done from each other. Novartis India and Novartis Healthcare take the entire team out regularly for de-stressing and bonding with each other.

Most companies that stop with the ‘delivery’ phase end up with a ‘wow’ experience. But I strongly feel, based on my 16 years of coaching experience, that this phase should be supported by the critical ‘follow-up’ phase. The feedback of the participants needs to be assessed to measure the learning from the camp. A proper impact analysis also needs to be conducted after the camp and further reinforcements in terms of training, on-the-job coaching and mentoring need to be structured to gain the best returns from an OBT camp.

(The author is the CEO of MPower Business Facilitators Limited, a company that partners with leading Indian organisations in the areas of consulting and coaching. He can be contacted at srini@mpowerexcellence.com)