Teamwork, Team Games - Group Initiative Tasks 1

Peter Drucker quoted once " The Leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I". And that's not because they have trained themselves to say "I". They don't think "I". They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. "

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (1909-2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self described "social ecologist". His Books and scholarly popular articles explored how humans are organised across the business, government and non-profit sectors of society. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century including privatisation and decentralisation; the rise of Japan to an economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with it's necessity of lifelong learnings.

So it is with S-Teem Training and Coaching. The company is empowered to aide persons, either management or staff, to understand the "team concepts" of which can produce fruitful activities of efficiency and brand realisation.

In past blogs, we have explored basic team games to aide the person to understand the "helpful" concepts. It is only when you place all of these bases together, that you can then empower the team to function to complete a required task. The courses supplied via S-Teem enables the group to take a journey together through all of the four main stages of team bonding . These are Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. I have outlined two major games below that can be described as group initiative tasks.

TP Shuffle

This is an exercise which incorporates the previous factors of which we have explored, personal space, communication, supporting of teammates, and group initiative thinking.

What happens is that the Leader explains that the team is perched high above a boiling pit of lava (Radioactive Dinosaur Snot comes into play yet again...). The initiative is to get the team to swap it's order of standing on the perch. At this point, "the Perch" can be just a plank of wood capable of supporting the team placed on a few bricks - or a Tent Pole placed on stumps as in the photo.

The itiiative task is for the whole team to swap their positioning on the perch and they must complete the task by not touching the ground.

Personal space becomes an issue, and thus it is advisable that this initative task be undertaken once the team members are familiar with one another.

The solution for this task is basic in it's explanation. Team members move from one end to the other of the task area. Team members aide each other by "supporting" the passing person by hanging on to their body or clothes as they pass. Other team members support the aiding team member by hanging on to them. Thus forms a chain link.

If you think about it, support for colleagues forms a concrete basis for an organisation to operate. Once colleagues discover the fact of trustworthiness amongst their workmates network, the organisation/group runs to an optimal level and thus the "performing" stage kicks into action.

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Prouty's Landing

Another of the Group Initiative tasks, Prouty's Landing also demonstrates the power of support between colleagues forming the stabilisation brick for teamwork amonst the individuals of the organisation/group.

The Leader explains that the group , to get off an exploding island need to get to the highest point for a helicopter extraction. In this case, the extraction point can be just a crate lid or platform. You also need a "swing" to be able to transfer group members from the eroding safe zone to the extraction point. The swing should be made of at least a 24mm rope attached to a bombproof pivot point. Generally that pivot point would be a sizeable branch of a tree, or a beam of a building.



The team is then to transfer all of their members safely across to the platform via the rope swing, avoiding the radioactive dinosaur snot, in a timeframe determined by the leader.

The team has to work out that to have the 10-12 people to land and stay on the platform, they are to each give everybody in the group support by hanging on to the bodies whereevr possible to stabilise the area and not "fall off" . The rule is that no one is allowed to touch the ground around the platform, or otherwise the team starts the task from the beginning.

The Leader ensures that the team has "qualified" to complete the task by remaining as a group all as one on the platform by an amount of time.

Feedback is definately required by the group to partake as it is up to them to realise the gravity of group communication, personal space, trust, and working together all builds to ensure their understanding.

The leader also ensures that all of the team participates and above all that everyone has fun.



Whilst partaking of team games, also try to ensure that all team member participants remain safe.