Re: From the Beginning and Moving On!

From: Lisa Boggess
Email: lisa.boggess@nl.edu
Date: June 04, 2008

Comments

Hi Keith, It's interesting that you mention adults at work and seeing our jobs as process. I have had many opportunities to be a team building facilitator with both youth and adults. I think one of the most interesting groups I led were adults from the Chicago School of Business and were all first-years in their MBA program.

I led them through many challenging exercises and activities, including some on a low ropes course, where they had to be very mindful of the processes they chose to attempt a goal. The group tried and tried and tried, sometimes never accomplishing the task placed in front of them. They were so goal-focused that they couldn't see the bigger picture. They all wanted to be in charge and they all had their own ideas. Once they were able to focus on what each step should be to accomplish the goal, as opposed to just "failing" or "winning," that is when the growth happened. They became one.

Like the group above, it is very common to see groups start out as individuals who each have their own ideas about how the goal should be accomplished. But, it all comes down to the fact that the goals can't be accomplished (literally) without the rest of the team and the process they have to go through. Each person has to be mindful of the others, or someone might get hurt, or be a part of the team "failing."

Because of the struggles the groups go through, the end result is that they have learned about their strengths and weaknesses and how each person is a part of the puzzle. At the end of the day we are able to debrief and go over people's frustrations and challenges, but then talk about what they learned from those experiences and how they grew.

If a challenge is easy enough to accomplish in one try, the group learns nothing. There is no process. But, even with the groups who don't "finish" the task, the challenge is successful, because the whole purpose of going onto a low ropes course is to go through processes.

As a facilitator who knows how other groups have successfully accomplished the different tasks, it's sometimes hard to stand back and let the group struggle. You just want to jump in and give them some clues or help out a little. But, if you hold off and just wait, eventually (even sometimes quite a while), the group figures something out on their own...and they are so proud that they accomplished the great feat.

It is especially rewarding to see young people struggle through and then be successful. Sometimes there are tears of frustration, people's true personlities emerge, and sometimes people get hurt. But, it's through those processes that they learn that they need to be more aware of how they are affecting those around them and that they all need to care for each other and rely on each other's talents/skills. Even if the end goal wasn't accomplished, we always are able to talk about all the little accomplishments that were made along the way (the process), which means...success...the true end product.

In the end, there is no one right way to complete the tasks in team-building/ropes courses. I've watched groups come up with ways to accomplish a task that I had never seen before, even though I had seen many many different groups go through that same challenge. I never would have thought their new process was possible.

All of this can relate back to how it is when we try to jump in and show a child how he/she should do something differently. We all have our own ways of thinking and processing, and by interrupting someone else's learning process, we deprive them of the new idea or innovation they might have discovered. That is where we get all of our great inventors and scientists!

Lisa (sorry for the long message!)