Staff Development for Profit (Case Study #2)

Team Building for Fun and Profit

I had been brought on board to help a client organization with a few organizational challenges. After a few months of work, the client mentioned that he had read about a ropes course "team building thing" that had sounded like fun. His organization had decided on a company that had been doing "great work" in this team building field for many years. He was excited.

I congratulated him on his foresight for staff development and asked him how he intended to have his people apply the learning from the ropes course once they were back to their specific environments and businesses. He paused and said he didn't know.

He said he hadn't thought about the experience beyond "bringing his team together" for that day. After some further discussion, and because I had had some experience in team building, he asked and we agreed to have me attend the ropes course day with him and his staff. His goal and mine was this: Observe his team during the team building event so that after the fact we could ensure that the concepts and lessons learned on that outdoor day would be generalized back at the office.

After our one, very fun day of climbing up and jumping off poles, the group and I met. We debriefed what had happened that powerful day. We discussed how to apply the lessons directly to the organizational challenges of communication, overcoming our preconceptions, leading and being led, etc. After that team-building event, my client and I co-facilitated their staff meetings twice a month for the next two months. In these meetings, we discussed the feelings of fear, success, communication, camaraderie, etc. that had come up for the staff, both at the ropes course and in similar forms during each two-week period preceding our staff meetings.

These staff meetings proved to be invaluable for the people in this company, because over time and through carefully guided practice, their ropes course learnings became part of their everyday work experience. Guided practice was one of the most essential but missing pieces from the ropes course staff development/team-building training. It became clear that only through frequent use and timely feedback would the new skills apply in their work. It was through guided practice that these bright team members took their "B" games to "A" games. During practice on the job, they safely made mistakes, got immediate positive and respectful feedback and encouragement, made adjustments, and then reapplied the lessons. Practicing how to manage their feelings of fear or apprehensiveness, while still moving forward and being supported by their team, became one of the many powerful learnings recognized by all. Over time, the skills they had initially learned at the one-day ropes course became integral parts of their new work culture.

My client reported to me that, in his previous experiences with staff development, much of the learning was never registered into his or his employees' long-term memory. I shared with him that many famous management gurus also believed what my client was postulating: unless we are made consciously aware of our learning, then the learning's value will rapidly dissipate. We need to say, "This is what I just learned. This is how it applies to my work situation or environment." Further, it is only through practicing a new skill with others on a consistent basis that we will remember and grow. Practicing generalizes new skills over time. Building the capacity of a team is ensured by following these three steps:

1. People need to learn a new skill.
2. They need to practice the new skill within their environment.
3. They have mastered the skill so that they can teach and re-teach it to others.

It is this process that habituates the knowledge and takes the learning to the next level.

These are the foundations of creating a groundbreaking growth within a business, as described by the renowned author, Peter Senge, who developed a highly successful process in his book, The Fifth Discipline. Senge showed how creating a "learning organization" will successfully grow and increase the effectiveness of a business.

One-day team building or ropes course events are great for introducing concepts and helping people see a glimpse of what could be. However, as we all know, old habits die hard and once back at work, limited time and the old familiar ways will inadvertently sabotage even the most energetic and motivated staff development effort. Unless individuals and organizations quickly and consistently recognize, reward, act upon, and practice new skills within the daily culture and work environment, they will be lost.

My client thought aloud about the last team-building event his staff had attended. Had his team or the many others who had taken the training been surveyed on the short- and long-term impact of those experiences, they would likely have reported that its impact quickly faded. In all his years in his field, he could not recall any other staff development experiences that had yielded different results. Instead he recalled experiences that proposed lofty learning, but once back at work, their offerings quickly seemed fluffy, not real, relevant, or worse. These experiences turned out to be expensive wastes of time that just put his team behind another day.

He reported he was pleased that the missing feature in team building and staff development seemed to be in the area communication after the fact. Even a so-so team building experience could be turned into a profound learning component for a team if a few well-timed, post-event meetings were built in periodically after the event. He was relieved to have finally found the missing links in staff development planning: communication in the form of reflection, interaction and application of new skills in the familiar environment, and guided practice with feedback. These pieces together had made the difference between a highly positive and very cost-effective ROI, versus what would have just been a fun but fiercely expensive playday off.