The Song Team - Team Building Blog

I’ve watched in horror AND amazement both with the mid-west flooding earlier this summer, and the terrible flooding left in Irene’s aftermath…groups of volunteers, inmates, government workers etc..working together as teams to build walls of earth filled sandbags recently. Can you imagine, the sense of urgency and mission these people worked with? This was team building at it’s most impressive, even if it’s purpose was something other than fostering good working relationships between people of many different backgrounds.

Protecting towns, homes, businesses was such a calling, that the levels of productivity and efficiency these many people were able to display must make us wonder…how can team building help us tap into that with our organizations or companies on a daily basis? What can install that sense of understanding, empathy, common goals and turn it into a deliberate, cohesive and collaborative effort towards a goal? Does it have to be a tragedy in order that it should pull us all together?

In Indianapolis to collaborate on a songwriting and team building session with the Board of Directors for Outrun The Sun, Inc. This is a non-profit with a really worthy message, which you should check out. www.outrunthesun.org. Staying here at the fabulous Marriott Complex in the heart of downtown…which includes a Courtyard, Fairfield Inn, Springhill Suites, and the high end JW Marriott, I see signs of team work and collaboration all around me. Marriott has obviously planned and executed the building of a compound here which fully maxmizes it’s name, profile and resources all in one footprint across from two lovely museums and surrounded by some great green-spaces. The City Planners of Indianapolis on all levels, must have come together…put politics and individual interests aside years ago when they entirely re-invented downtown Indy. It is now among the most walkable, visually pleasing, well-planned out downtown cores for a city of this size that I have seen in years. I live in Nashville, and believe me…my hometown has a lot of catching up to do. All of the small little pocket parks, fountains, wide walk ways, museums, well thought out restaurant and retail frontage designed without encroaching too much on the actual make up of the environment and archictecture..all of this create an experience which is equally pleasing for locals and tourists alike. Hello…right next to the football stadium of the Indianapolis Colts, is a beautiful world class ball park for the city’s AAA minor league baseball team. Nashville has been clamoring for years to have their own AAA club move down town to provide an affordable, family friendly community hub and activity that catored more to locals than to tourists. The city has been talking about this since I moved to town in the late 90’s. But politics or special interests always seem to get in the way. The Sounds downtown would be a great addition to the city for locals. Anyway, off to lunch…but keep in mind..ONLY when working as a team, can we achieve the biggest, longest vision goals which we aspire to.

It occurs to me as I watch all that is going on with America’s two favorite sports these days, that there are two distinctive parts to building a healthy, happy and successful team. Generally speaking, assembling what is deemed to be the best team available “on paper,” is section or part #1. The second half of this equation would be the nurturing, training, engagement and retention of those very important “parts” that we tried so hard to obtain in the first place. This is an area where many organizations need a assist in. In professional sports right now, Major League Baseball is right up against its annual trade deadline. This is the time of year when those teams still in the “hunt” for a pennant or spot in the playoffs often make trades of long-term prospects for more established, bigger name players who fill a specific, short term need for the team in question. Some people call this “renting a player” as often the players sign one year deals and will be re-dealt elsewhere in the off-season.

Meanwhile, over in the National Football League, after a 4 month strike by players/lockout by the owners of this tremendously successful sport, the two sides have come together just in time to save the season. A few days ago the Players Association came to an agreement with the league’s team owners on all kinds of monetary compensation and benefits issues. That’s great news for the fans especially. Now, over the next week or 10 days teams will sign players, cut players, and trade players in a bonanza which usually takes places over several months. This roller-coaster, “speed-dating” type of process is all in a furious effort to QUICKLY assemble the best parts possible for each team to make a run at THIS year’s championship. It’s all about win-now, right? Well, if we dig deeper we see that the teams in this league, and for that matter in Baseball that have the most consistent levels of success are nearly always able to look long term AND short-term when addressing their talent needs. In baseball year after year teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals and a few others stay at or near the top of their game. The same can be said for the Steelers, Patriots and Colts of The National Football League. They foster young talent and do their best to hold onto their own best players, BEFORE they try to bring in any outside talent to supplement the pieces already in place. Otherwise, they might sign 3-4 great new players, but lose the same number off of their already existing, and strong rosters. That’s not progress! Rather, that is standing in place.

Think about this. We often see apartment complexes offering all types of incentives to lure new tenants, yet rarely are those same incentives offered to retain tenants. So many organizations these days are budget challenged, and sadly one of the first things many choose to cut back on is ongoing development, training, employee engagement, team-building etc. These are such important areas of focus. As the economy slowly recovers, and more jobs become available, organizations that don’t properly engage their employees, and find ways to maximize their talents will lose some of their best assets to other job opportunities. Remember, team building is a double pronged action. Sign and retain. We retain by making sure our employees know they are appreciated, and giving them every opportunity to succeed both as individuals and as part of the team!

So, while we can’t truly live our lives in exactly the same fashion as the Amish, we CAN all aspire to work with our family, business colleagues and those in the community at large in the same efficient, resourceful, empathetic ways which are a hallmark of the Amish way of life. This is what makes the example of their barn-raising so compelling I believe. It’s an ideal.

We can also look at a wolf-pack and the way a pack’s “organizational sociology” works to make it a successful team out there in nature. One of the things we talk a great deal about in my workshops is how we can amplify our teammates strengths. In a wolf-pack, this is common practice. Next time…stay tuned.

So I’m wondering how many of you remember how great a movie Witness is? You know, the movie with a much younger Harrison Ford, who as a cop from Philly gets caught up in some corrupt chaos which sends the crooked police chief and his “team” out to get Harrison…who finds himself hiding among the Amish and then falling in love with the one and only Kelly McGillis? I’m sure some will disagree, but I guess it’s one of my old favorites. In particular, I always get the warm fuzzies when thinking about the sense of community and team that the Amish show, both in the movie and in real life. When I talk about writing a song for the purpose of team building, this is really what I’m talking about. Check out the video below for a refresher on the barn raising scene.

Could your office team raise a barn, without modern tools and machines in say a…week? A month? Maybe this is not a fair question as the Amish we always think of doing these activities are already skilled in these trades once they get to a certain spot in their lives. Okay, so to be more fair and make this more to scale. Do you think that in 2 days, without modern machinery, you and your office team could build a 10-14 tool shed in say….my back yard? 🙂 Think of the sense of rhythm we must acquire, the empathy we must have for one another, the knowledge of who does what the best in any given team situation, and then how are we able to amplify each others strengths? Next time you wonder if your team is working well…efficiently…contentedly, ask yourself if they could “raise a barn..” together. Whatever that barn may truly be.