Solving the Puzzles of Teamwork

By David Blum

Are you puzzled by team development?  You're not alone.   Getting people from group formation to high performance team is an enigma, a riddle -- choose your metaphor.   And that's what this book is for: to unlock the puzzle of teamwork, to make it easy and unstandable.  In this book, you'll find 20 chapters or "clues" to unlocking the team puzzle, with sections on leadership, roles, communication and motivation.   By the end, you'll be tje Sherlock Holmes of your organization, fully "clued in" on the team development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Blum
• Release date: Mar 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524265922

Book preview

Solving the puzzles of

TEAMWORK

20 Clues for Cracking

the Teamwork Puzzle

FREE EBOOK—15 of Dr. Clue’s

Favorite Icebreaker Activities.

Liven up your next meeting with these original icebreakers & accelerate your team’s process of

getting to KNOW, LIKE AND TRUST each other:

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http://eepurl.com/bTpKlr

Solving the Puzzles of Teamwork

The articles in this ebook were all published in the Dr. Clue teambuilding newsletter.  To subscribe to our biweekly newsletter, click here:   http://drclue.com/newsletter/  In it you’ll get all our new articles hot off the presses, plus goodies like teambuilding ice breakers, puzzles, and the latest news about what’s going on at Dr. Clue Central.

Thanks for reading!

© 2006-16, Dr. Clue

Contents

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Overview ........................................................................................................................ 3

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Chapter 1 – Teamwork

Bump-Set-Teamwork Or, "Everything I Know About Business Teams

I Learned on the Volleyball Court" .................................................................................. 5

By Dave Blum

TV’s Survivor: Out-Sneak, Out-Greed, Out-Team? ...................................................... 11

By Dave Blum

Eight Lessons for Solving the Crossword of Teamwork ............................................... 15

By Dave Blum

Healthy Competition—an Oxymoron? ........................................................................ 19

By David Blum

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Chapter 2 – Roles and Relationships

Why Teambuilding? Why Now? .................................................................................. 24

By David Blum

Rockin’ Teams Know How to Role With It .................................................................. 28

By David Blum

Incredible Teambuilding .............................................................................................. 31

By Dave Blum

To Sir, with Trust .......................................................................................................... 34

By Dave Blum

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Chapter 3 – Communication

The 2004 Red Sox: A Case for Team Optimism ........................................................... 38

By Dave Blum

Communication—Refracted through a Lens ................................................................. 42

By Ian Blei

The Special Needs of Virtual Teams ............................................................................ 44

By Jennifer van Stelle

T/F or not T/F? That is the Team Question ............................................................ 50

By Dave Blum

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Chapter 4 – Motivation and Leadership

Team Motivation ........................................................................................................... 53

By Pete Grazier

Can People Really Be Motivated?................................................................................. 59

By Dave Blum

Coaching—Appreciating and Motivating Others ........................................................... 63

By Mike Robbins

Jazzing Up Your Leadership Style ............................................................................... 65

By Dave Blum and Tim Armacost

Multiparadigmatic Creative Teams ............................................................................... 67

By Adam Shames

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Chapter 5 – Choosing Teambuilding

What is a Teambuilding Program? ............................................................................... 70

By David Blum

Teambuilding and Corporate Performance—Does It Pay to Play? .............................. 72

By Jennifer van Stelle

Seven Steps for Choosing the Right Teambuilding Company ...................................... 76

By David Blum

Overview

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What’s Inside?

The articles you’re about to read were written by Dave Blum and others (Tim Armacost, Ian Blei, Pete Grazier, Mike Robbins, Adam Shames, and Jennifer van Stelle) who contributed their work to the Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter.  The pieces in the first three chapters cover the basics of teamwork, including identifying team members’ roles, understanding their relationships and the way they interact, and discussing communication issues that often arise in a team context.  The two final chapters include items on team motivation and leadership as well as articles to help you assess whether and how to choose a teambuilding program.

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Who’s Dr. Clue?

As skilled as we are at working on our own, individually, most of us are woefully deficient when it comes to working together with others on a team.  Our highly competitive school system simply doesn’t teach the key skills of cooperation and collaboration so vital to today’s business environment.  As a result, we see silos, a scarcity mentality, and enormous lost productivity.  Clearly, shifting this mindset and creating true high-performance teams is a mighty puzzling matter... and that’s where we come in.  At Dr. Clue, we have completely re-invented the treasure hunt model for organizations looking to shift into high-performance mode—retaining all the excitement and the playfulness of a treasure hunt, to be sure, but transforming the activity into a sophisticated and challenging business simulation game.

Founded in 1995, Dr. Clue is the brainchild of San Francisco-native Dave Blum.  Dave holds a B.A. in English from Pomona College in Claremont, California, is on the board of the North American Simulation & Gaming Association (http://www.nasaga.org/), and is the founder and CEO of Dr. Clue (http://www.drclue.com).  After a three-year stint teaching English in Japan, Dave worked in tourism and the non-profit sector before discovering his destiny as a treasure hunt master, team-building trainer, and entrepreneur.  From his initial treasure hunt experiments in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Dave has built his passion for puzzles, wordplay and team development into an international business with over 45 hunt locations worldwide.  In its first ten years, Dr. Clue has performed over 400 teambuilding treasure hunts around the world, for such clients as Coca Cola, IBM, Bank of America, Cisco Systems, Genentech, ExxonMobil, and many others.  Dr. Clue is the world’s largest team building company that specializes in clue-based, business-focused treasure hunts.

OUR GOAL: HELPING YOU SOLVE THE PUZZLES OF TEAMWORK.

Chapter 1 ~ Teamwork

Bump-Set-Teamwork, Or, Everything I Know About Business Teams I Learned on the Volleyball Court By Dave Blum

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Every week for nearly ten years now, I’ve spent my Sunday afternoons playing pick-up volleyball in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.  The group’s official name is the San Francisco International Volleyball Club, but it’s not as organized as all that.  There are no league tournaments to compete in, no trophies awarded at the end of a successful season.  Our interest lies simply in laughing and joking with friends, and playing the game that we all love.

Each week Sunday volleyball is a Homeric epic, a Shakespearean tragedy.  There are laughter and tears; emergent heroes; flaring tempers; and occasionally, some truly superior volleyball.

If ever there was a spot to observe teams and team dynamics in action—in all their glorious successes and ignominious failures—this is the place!

What follows are 10 things I’ve learned about teams and teamwork from my decade of weekly volleyball in the park.

1) Play by the rules.

Every business team has its own culture, its own ground rules.  Likewise for a pick-up volleyball group.  In our Sunday volleyball games, the rules are simple:

1) No kicking the ball (too many people get whacked in the head by would-be World

Cup stars).

2) No net balls (i.e., if a serve hits the net, the serve is invalid and passes to the other team).

3) The second ball is for the setter (meaning that the back row people should always pass the first ball on their side of the net to the setter, the middle person in the front row, so that he/she can set the ball up for the two flanking spikers.)

4) No jungle ball (i.e.,  no shooting the ball over on the first ball).  The goal for each possession should always be three touches: bump (pass to the setter) -set-and-spike.

5) No leaving the court in the middle of a game (once you’re on the court, you stay there

‘til the end).

Although these rules are not posted per se, all new volleyballers to the field are quickly informed of the appropriate protocols.  Failure to comply is met with stern looks and abundant sarcasm.

Work teams operate in the same way.  New team members learn rapidly about the group’s cultural norms, whether it is one person speaks at a time or no laptop-use during meetings.

Q: What are your team’s ground rules? How are they communicated to new team members?  Who enforces them, and in what way?

2) Stay in place/know your space.

Volleyball, when it’s played right, is a game of synchronized movement.  Each team member has only one position at any given time (although these positions rotate during the course of the game).  At all times, however, you need to know not only what your position’s responsibilities are, but also the space you’re expected to cover.  Moving into your neighbor’s area tends to result in high-speed collisions followed by animated

finger-pointing.  A team in rhythm covers the entire court, holds to its positions, communicates like crazy, and flows into the holes where a ball might drop.

Successful office teams possess much the same dynamic.  Team members know both their positions and their responsibilities at any given time.  As responsibilities change, teams flow into the duties not being covered, making sure no tasks fall into the cracks.

Q: How clear is your team about job duties? Does your staff stay in their respective spaces or do they encroach upon other peoples’ responsibilities?  When positions change, how successful are people at picking up the slack and covering the holes?

3) Expect sudden change.

In a perfect world, your opponents would always pop the ball over the net in a soft, lazy arc, where your relaxed and able teammates would be ready for a controlled bump-set- and game-winning spike.  In reality it rarely works out that way.  Those crafty, presumptuous folks on the other side of the net have a tendency to smash the ball away from you toward the furthest corners of your court.  Or worse, they’ll dink the ball ever- so-softly over your blocker’s outstretched arms.  Sudden change is to be expected in volleyball, just as it is in the office. Your team has to be ready to stop on a dime, respond to the volleys that the marketplace throws at it, and pick itself up again before the next shot comes blasting in its direction.

Q: How flexible is your team