With another round of layoffs recently (and covertly) ‘announced’ at a few prominent Chicago A/E firms this month, and with 2009’s NEOCON festivities dialed down like never before, I empathize with the professionals that have held onto their positions—their morale; career development; and level of belonging and purpose at their firm. Among other things, I suspect they are feeling the sense of loss that we all feel when surviving a downsize.
As a result of this news, I have been thinking about esprit de corps and team building, which is not just isolated to the internal team. It can also be applied to your overall project teams, extending to client, consultants, and contractors.
I bookmarked this article a couple of months ago that may be worth a read:
Harvard Business Publishing – Team Building
The article’s premise is that team building is not a luxury; rather, it’s a necessity, especially in tough times. Further, while a team building exercise can certainly be ‘fun’ and off-topic from work issues, those so-called ‘fun’ exercises can sometimes come across as contrived. It’s a fine balance to ensure that the ‘fun’ activity is legitimate and welcomed by participants. As an alternative, the article proposes conducting team-building exercises that actually exercise the mind, and may have some relevancy to real-life projects/environment.
For the AEC community, here’s an idea to build upon this article:
What if? Discussion Group. Perhaps you come up with a brainteaser, or a project scenario what if? Choose something that is not necessarily quantifiable. In other words, something that will require discussion, debate, collaboration…rather than something that could be researched and determined by referring to Sweet’s catalog, LEED reference documents, or some other technical source.
As a communicator, I believe facilitating a what if? team building discussion group would serve two key purposes: 1. Strengthen team rapport and respect by sharing and building upon one another’s ideas; 2. Acknowledge relevant concepts to use in a practical work application.
So, what if:
…. your public client has tipped you off that funding will be available for a new wing within the next year? What strategies will you take to secure that work?
…your client contact is stressed out because he/she might lose their job, and so they are not being as responsive as you’d like to stay on schedule?
…you, as a team member, are having an ethical issue with one of your subconsultants that was requested/picked by the client?
…and so forth. The what if’s are endless, and often, the senior professionals in the firm can dig into their own memory banks to recall challenging situations from their past that would serve as perfect what if’s for this discussion group.
Stay tuned for Part II, where I’ll propose additional idea(s) on how to team-build in these tough times. In the meantime, send me an email if you have methods you’d like to share.
