Written: Sasi KUMAR
Agility
Agility is the ability to move quickly and easily in situations that come towards the business. Under the concept of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA), Agility plays as a prime to act as one of the counterweights in managing a VUCA environment.
To practice agility, four components will need to be addressed.
- Change Management
- Flow Theory
- Result orientation vs Process orientation
- Paradox thinking
In this article, we will be exploring how online teambuilding activities can bring out learning lessons for change management.
Change Management (for leadership roles)
When we usually hear change management, the first model that comes to mind will be the ADKAR model. It stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement.
Awareness – The ability to know that a change is required and to showcase the difference early ahead of time to the people. Awareness also creates opportunities for employees to ask questions and give suggestions.
Desire – At this stage, leaders will find out the ground sentiments towards the change itself. Should there be anyone against it, leaders must also find out what their concerns are and try to address it. Most of the time, the problem is in the fact that people are not able to see the common good for them from the change.
Knowledge – Once you have created buy-in with the people through awareness and desire towards the future, the next step will be to bridge the gap between the current situation and the future. This is the part that requires the employees to go for specialised training and development for them to stay relevant during the change.
Ability – After going for training, one cannot immediately start the change; instead it is necessary to check if they are capable enough in the new skillset that they have acquired.
Reinforcement – When a change happens without a gatekeeper, the change will quickly die off as people tend to fall back to their initial processes. Changing processes can be equivalent to changing habit, as they might be doing the same process for an extended period. Therefore, during this stage, it will be necessary to give positive reinforcement by encouraging and recognising all efforts put in place to affect the smooth transition of the change.
Many activities can be done online for leaders to practice the ADKAR model. Each of the stages in the ADKAR model can be an activity by itself.
Awareness – This, in a nutshell, will be the ability to create awareness in people who will be affected by the change. Communication plays a vital role in this area; having the right communication, taking note of time, pace and tone will affect one’s perspective towards the change. To work on this, organisations can embark on communication-based teambuilding programmes.
An example of communication-based teambuilding will be The Shape Shifter Challenge! that not only shares how the management can communicate better, but it also shows the various responsibilities that each stakeholder has in an organisation. The activity also shows how teams can understand each other, even during complex situations.
Desire – It focuses mainly on the ability to empathise with the employees and to be able to ensure the change will have a common good for everyone to feel like part of it. For online activity, organisations can look into something that deals with silo mentality and how to change that into a clear, big picture perspective. This enables everyone to see the benefit of having a big picture and how it can help the organisation and also the individuals.
The Bind Shape Challenge! will fit into this objective where teams are divided into smaller groups to create a shape. Every team will be working on their shape, but what happens when someone changes role? Will the person feel frustrated? How will the behaviour change when they finally could see the big picture of the entire shape that was coming together? Would that help them to see the common good?
Knowledge – The ability to see what is missing and what needs to be filled. For this stage, organisations will need to be very clear on the gap that is stopping them from achieving their desired future outcome. By understanding each individual and their values, the organisation will be able to know how big of a bridge needs to be build. If organisations are looking for teambuilding to create teachable moments around understanding individual values, some activities can be experienced as well.
An example will be The Shackleton Challenge!, where teams will need to debate and decide what are some of the essential items they would want to bring over to the deserted island. This online activity is not just engaging but thought-provoking as well. Everyone will be required to share their reasons for wanting to bring something along with them. During a change, the same episodes take place where everyone has their item they like to bring over. It shows individual values as each individual will have a profound rooted reason for why they would like to bring a particular item. This is when the ability to show the common good becomes critical here.
Ability – To check on the ability of a team in handling the situation, a critical word will have to be visited – trust. Trust plays a vital role within organisations for everyone to believe that with the knowledge gathered, everyone is ready to move towards the change.
The Masterpiece Challenge! is an online activity that focus on ability. The team’s task will be to create a replica of a particular picture they have seen. Everyone needs to play their part in ensuring that they can recreate it. However, can everyone be trusted to do the job? In an organisation, if there is a lack of trust, it slows down the entire process as people may start doing double work to ensure the previous person’s job was right. This process will be reflected in The Masterpiece Challenge!. Apart from that, the activity also creates an interesting perspective on the benefits of trust, and it shows the visual effects of having trust in a teammate as well.
Reinforcement – The ability to recognise efforts, celebrate small wins whenever possible and also to give positive encouragements in the efforts taken to move towards change. To do this, leaders must have a deep understanding with the people and be able to see things from the employee’s perspective. There are times where an employee might be struggling with a new task. Leaders will either reprimand them or find out what is the exact issue and to create solutions that will eventually create a win-win situation.
The Zoom Challenge! is an activity that gets participants to share their point of view and perspective. Whose perspective is right? Who should listen to who first? When participants starts to understand the reality of the activity, there will be a moment where everyone will stop trying to share their perspective. In turn, participants will try to find out their team members’ perspectives instead. This is when the activity will take a turn of events and start to progress towards success, similar to the real world.
Conclusion
In conclusion, teambuilding activities are just like various tools used to do a particular job. Just like before the pandemic and how everyone was meeting each other physically to have their teambuilding sessions. One can do it online too as it is merely just another tool that can bring out the learning lessons. The critical component will be how does that particular activity has the ability to bring out some of the desired outcomes the organisation would love to achieve through an online teambuilding programme.
For enquiries on online teambuilding programmes, feel free to email us at info@FOCUSAdventure.com!
