Team Development Experience

Team Development Experience

Michelle Pressley

CMGT/530

February 15, 2012

Team building covers a vast range of activities engineered to improve team performance. Team building can be accomplished from a wide range of exercises, and can scope from simple cohesive exercises to more elaborate exercises. Some team building activities even run several days as a retreat style exercise. Team building is a very important component in any environment its purpose is to specialize in revealing the best within a team to certify self development, positive communication, leadership skills, and the ability to work closely as a team to resolve issues. This paper will discuss the author's experience when working with a team.

One time stands out in when working with a team. The reason this experience stands out more so than any of the others, is because the project that was put before the team was chaotic and the ultimate goal was never accomplished, but the whole ordeal was really fun. This team project was part of a team building activity that the corporate office put together for the annual Quality Technician's meeting. The project was to divide individuals into four teams of four people. Each team was given instructions that one of the members of each team will act as a robot and the team had to develop a language to talk to the robot so that the robot could get from point a to b before the other team, the language for controlling the robot was the use of numbers one through ten. The instructions for the robot were to be written down and the robot could read the instructions when told the commands by the team members. Each team thought this was a very simple task.

Each team went off in private to develop their set of instructions for their robot. The team I was working with came up with a set of simple instructions, once agreed upon the instructions were practiced by the team with the person who was to be the robot, and went pretty well, very simple. The basic commands were the number one meant turn left, the number 2 meant turn right, the number three meant backup, and so forth. After about ten minutes or so each team was ready for the activity. But before the activity started, all of the robots for each team were told to go into a separate room from the other team members for a briefing from the corporate management team. After about 1 minute the robots rejoined their teams and the activity started. It was like our robot was not listening to use, every command we wrote down the robot was not responding to our commands, and it seems as though everybody was having the same problem. The team was like, what is going on? The robot is not doing anything from the instructions. The team finally noticed that all of the commands