Description
An involving and thought-provoking competitive team exercise, which demonstrates the fundamental importance of trust, openness and cooperation, to teams’ potential to optimize results.
Training Materials
- Session Leader’s Guide
- Exercise Master Documents
- Team Tutors’ Briefing Notes
Target Group
All levels of management; preferably, in peer groups.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the Exercise, delegates will:
- Fully acknowledge the importance of trust, openness and cooperation on the positive achievement of team objectives.
- Have, further, developed their skills and knowledge of working, effectively, in teams.
Exercise Rationale
At some time or another, for reasons best known to them, one or more team members seem to be working against the interests and common good, of the whole team. It could be the result of poor relationships between certain members of the team or one or more members having a vested interest in a specific outcome to a team task. Whatever the reason, there is clear evidence that a lack of trust, between team members, has a debilitating effect on a team’s potential to achieve its objectives.
The Exercise creates such a situation. Team Tutors observe and record team behaviour, during the task. Following the task, they interpret this behaviour and conduct ‘feedback’ presentations, in general session. The main causes of mistruct, within teams, are highlighted and group discussion identifies ways of avoiding mistrust or, at least, mitigating its worst effects.
Context and Storyline
The Exercise is set against the background of the Cell ‘Phone Industry, although, with slight modification, any Industry scenario can be adopted to suit the delegate group.
Within the Exercise, two delegate teams represent groups of branch managers, assigned by their respective companies, to address a business problem. A third home-based company has also set up a task team but it is not represented, on the Exercise.
The problem concerns the imminent entry of an overseas company, into the home market. The overseas competitor, ‘Speakeze Communications’, is recognised as an Industry innovator and, together with its aggressive sales techniques, will pose a serious competitive threat in the market-place.
Through ‘bought-in’ market intelligence, it has been established that Speakeze Communications intends to ‘head-hunt’ managers, from the existing home-based companies. This will enable it to establish its retail branch network quickly, manned by experienced and proven managers.
It is also known, again through market intelligence sources, that Speakeze Communications has already drawn up a national plan, which specifies the proposed locations of its branches and the names of the managers that it intends to ‘head-hunt’ from the home-based companies. The task teams’ first priority is to obtain a copy of this plan.
However, there is a complication One of the managers, who has, already, been head-hunted, has been offered and accepted the job as Speakeze Communications’ new National Sales Manager. This person, whose identity has yet to be established, will not take up the new appointment until ‘Speakeze’ goes, fully, operational. Meanwhile, he/she has been appointed as a member of one of the task teams. There is real concern that this person might, covertly, disrupt the endeavours of the task team and stop it acquiring an accurate copy of Speakeze Communications’ national plan.
How will the task teams organise themselves to deal with this potential internal threat?
