My company, Nobscot Corporation, has always been great place to work. From years of HR management and recruiting experience, CEO Beth N. Carvin knows how to hire the best. But even the best of the best can improve and grow, right? That was Beth’s goal when she began planning the 2013 annual leadership strategic meeting, with the fitting theme of “Reach for the Stars.” Nobscot is headquartered in Hawaii, and most of our workforce, including the majority of the senior leaders, are located throughout the U.S. and Canada.
While Beth has established wonderful working relationships with everyone, she realized we didn’t share the same interactions with each other, which made day-to-day communications a challenge. Our annual weeklong meeting in Hawaii was the perfect opportunity to begin to move from spoke-and-hub management to a web of team interactions. The results of the meeting were both surprising and exhilarating. Here’s the story about our transformation.
Our Challenges
While we have excellent processes in place regarding communications—we have a weekly leadership team call, utilize a private discussion board for a number of topics, use an IM program, and communicate via e-mail daily—managing a remote team can be challenging. Communication is such complex issue—remote teams miss out on the “water cooler” small talk that helps with bonding; we can’t see non-verbal clues, etc. In fact, research shows that telecommuting employees want and need more frequent dialogue than onsite employees. Beth also was concerned that working in silos was holding us back; she believed we could improve our own individual working relationships with one another.
But how to go about it? This was going to require innovative training sessions that Beth didn’t have at her fingertips. With the high cost of getting everyone to Hawaii, there wasn’t a whole lot of extra room in the budget, so finding materials that were both effective and affordable was critical. She also didn’t have much extra time to prepare, so ease of use was paramount. The final requirement was that the training had to be both smart and fun.
Finding a Solution
She decided to search for a training program that would help us improve communication, build a stronger team bond, and enhance the overall team dynamics. With a little searching and networking, Beth found Glasstap, a training material resource out of the UK.
At the next weekly team leader meeting, Beth administered the free Glasstap sample exercise, “Witches of Glum.” It consisted of her reading a short, fairy-tale-like story to us, and then we answered questions about it. We thought it was going to test our listening skills. Unbeknownst to us, it also tested our assumptions. For example, Beth read the phrase, “Groga, an ugly, disfigured witch, lived on the other side of the lake in a dark, damp cave.” When we were asked to agree or disagree with the phrase, “Groga, was a wicked witch who lived in a cave on the other side of the lake,” we all agreed.
This team of high-level professionals, who excelled in customer service, sales, and communication, all assumed that Groga was “wicked” based on her appearance. Operations Manager Raquel Frazier noted, “It was shocking to learn how we make assumptions about others based on a few words and short, incomplete descriptions! Knowing we would be quizzed on the details, we all turned up our ears, took detailed notes, and still fell into the bias and assumption trap.”
The exercise was an eye-opener for all, and Beth decided to purchase the annual Glasstap subscription and use the training program at the upcoming strategy meeting.
The Meeting
Glasstap is set up as an “all you can eat” type of unlimited training subscription, in which we can use as many training modules and exercises as we want. Each exercise comes with trainers’ notes that spell out everything you need and what do to in a simple way. Beth’s greatest challenge was choosing which activities to use, as they were all interesting and fun.
On the first day, we did the Glasstap exercise, “The Department Game.” In this timed exercise, we were all given cards with colored symbols on them, such as a red square, as well as a folded-up note that gave us each individual instructions about which symbols (and how many) we needed to win. Some people needed five items, while others only needed three. We could only “negotiate” with the people sitting to our left and right, and the exercise consisted of us going around the circle taking turns trading symbol cards. If you refused to negotiate with the person, they would be skipped in the next round. Some of us were nice and negotiated with others even if we didn’t benefit from the trade. Some of us refused all negotiations.
At the end of the set time, we all lost. We then learned that we could’ve asked everyone what they needed (instead of keeping it secret) and found a way to get each piece to the right person in which case, everyone would have won. Beth says, “Though it may have seemed that it was unfair and rigged, it made its point and it was a theme that played out beautifully for the rest of the week. Everyone did go from ‘me’ to ‘we’ from that point forward.”
One of the next exercises we did was “Happy Holiday,” which teaches about asking questions. We all took turns playing the roles of travel agent and traveler. The travel agent has to decide which trip to assign based on asking questions, and it teaches the differences between open-ended and closed questions and listening. Both of our top Sales directors loved the exercise.
“Even as a veteran salesperson, this type of training is invaluable,” said Laura DiFlorio. “It is always a good idea to get back to the basics and make sure you are not skipping important steps in our sales process. This activity also gave me so much great insight into my team and how they deal with these scenarios. It was fun to watch the non-salespeople do this activity and do it so well.”
Dan Nolan added, “I liked it because it emphasized the importance of not only asking the right questions but also actively listening to the person’s reply in order to better understand their needs, which is what we do every day in both sales and service.”
We also did the “Sheep Trials” exercise, consisting of us playing the roles of sheep and shepherd and basically making fools of ourselves in front of Hawaiian beach park patrons. Our shepherds guided the sheep around hula-hoops using whistles (with pre-determined whistle blows that couldn’t be changed!).
Client Services Manager Brian Murton said, “I think the Sheep Trials was the best way to visually see the importance of clear communication. And also, how frustrating it is when we don’t change course when something isn’t working—once the signals were decided and they couldn’t be changed, it seemed like people got stuck doing the same thing even though it wasn’t getting the desired results.”
By the end of the week, we were a different team. We laughed and cried together, and each one of us felt grateful to be together and proud to call each other “teammate.” We left Hawaii feeling recharged and motivated to keep our bond strong.
To learn more about the Glasstap training subscription, visit www.glasstap.com. Annual unlimited-access subscriptions start at U.S.$750.
Kerrie Main is Communications manager at Nobscot Corporation (www.nobscot.com), a provider of online HR tools and associated services designed to generate actionable information that can assist companies in combating turnover, improving hiring practices, and recovering from downsizing. She can be reached at kerrie.main@nobscot.com.
