September 29th 2008, this day will be remembered in the history which introduced the practical side of what double dip in the economy actually can look like. Days in the month October sent cold shivers to many a employees losing their jobs. Overall pessimism, office gossips, organization restructuring, business slowdown, stalling projects and amidst all these it was a team of mine who had to deliver a commitment that was written down on paper to the customer. We as a small team were doing really good at the business front, aviation being a long cycle business we were on the delivery of orders that were bagged way back in 2005 and were sitting on pretty good order pipeline.
The challenge I faced was not only in my team but on the entire supply chain floor both in India and other parts of the globe when met on a call, after the initial hello instead of discussing the agenda folks spent time talking about the market crash and state of the economy and post the meetings there used to be corridor talks to know what will happen to the jobs, how secure are we, what will be the hike, appraisal etc… I questioned myself on where we will head to in this grapevine … it’s time to take action and get the folks in the team back to business and drive success. The question that bothered me is how… ? ? ? day in and day out every television channel … newspaper… blog and everything that we are exposed to talks negative and the entire business sentiment is down…
Every weekend I spend time at a local NGO that offers counseling services free of cost for students and that when an idea struck me… very next thing I picked up my cell and dialed in a long distance call to my manager sitting out at Cincinati, Ohio and discussed in length about the plan… looks like we got the ball rolling and here is what we did.. .we came up with a team building game and named it “APPRECIATE”
Even before you read about the game, spend some time reading the below passage…
A speaker was speaking about the power of positive thinking, appreciating and the power of words.
One of the audience raised his hand and said, "It's not because I say good fortune, good fortune, good fortune that will make me feel better. Nor will saying bad luck, bad luck, bad luck, make me feel worse. They're only words and, by them, have no power."
The speaker replied. "Shut up, you fool; you don't understand a thing about this."
The member of the audience was stunned, his face became red and he was about to reply, "You, son of a..." The speaker raised his hand.
"Please excuse me. I didn't mean to upset you. Please accept my most sincere apologies." The member of the audience calmed down. Some people in the hall murmured; others shuffled their feet. The speaker resumed. "There's the reply to the question you asked me. A few words made you very angry. The other words calmed you down." "Now do you understand the power of words?"
Based on the above passage was our Team building game,
The Game:
This team building event is a game that focuses on ways team members motivate each other by expressing appreciation. The first phase of the game is to collect as many unique phrases that can be used in daily conversation to express appreciation. The following phrases are examples:
1. Very good…
2. I am happy working with you
3. Awesome… you are amazing
4. Great going… we will surely achieve the success …
The Teams:
The event includes 11 teams led by each of the Business leaders within the organization
The Rules:
- Each Business leader will share additional information about the game with his/her team during their team meetings & will encourage active team participation.
- Each team will log into the tool & start filling out as many unique phrases of appreciation as possible.
- The tool will be closed to make entries after 15 days.
- The survey may be accessed multiple times, but teams must enter their "sub-business" when starting the survey in order to get credit for their input.
- The results will be presented in the staff meeting along with learning experiences.
The Result
Teams actively participated; we had the winning team who were able to fill in as many as 673 unique phrases of appreciation.
My intention was not the result, but in these 30 days of the market crash and recovery phase filled with negative influences of the media… my team and business leaders were busy in finding phrases of appreciation, team morale was positive because of the thought vibration they carried… overall I was able to accomplish what I had set for…
Now I have a database of close to 700 phrases to which I prefix my name and read it out at days when I am low, so do my friends and few business leaders who did participate in this game still stick to this database. I received an email from a business leader who has moved out to another organization, he wrote back to me and told… in today’s turbulent market, he still uses this database and has found a few more phrases to which he prefixes his name and reads them out loud both in first person and second person language …
Words are powerful… using an affirmation in the right way … again and again… and again… turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy
I suggest my readers to make their own positive affirmations and keep repeating them, while you repeat them also visualize them in your mind’s eye as thou they have already happened… you will see miracles flowing your way.
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