Surprising Pitfalls of Teamwork Training

With a background in the Indian army, this Babson MBA student thought working in teams would be a breeze. He was in for a shock

by Vivek Bhatnagar

Vivek Bhatnagar
Babson
MBA Class of 2008

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Imagine yourself with a group of a dozen or so classmates being asked to undertake a series of physical maneuvers requiring planning, precise orchestration, and some dexterity with geometric forms. Imagine the clock ticking. Imagine everyone on your team to be as motivated as you, if not more…each a leader in his own right, each eager to "help" the team accomplish its assigned task. Imagine 10 voices speaking at the same time. Imagine you trying to make sense of it, wondering whether to speak, SHOUT, listen, or simply switch off. Imagine the chaos!

And, by the way, imagine each one of you being blindfolded all the while. Welcome to the team process day at Babson.

Coming from an armed forces background, I thought working in teams would be a cakewalk. The Indian army is composed of officers and soldiers from diverse backgrounds with different languages, upbringings, and even gods of worship. But while we had diversity, one thing that kept us bound together was our common nationality. Switch to Babson, and the team dynamics here was altogether different.

It's one thing being a team member of an army unit/sub-unit, and it's a completely different experience when you have people from different nationalities (our current class has almost 50% international composition)…all of them highly motivated—each highly accomplished. All I can say is—it's not as easy as I would have liked it to be. And boy, did I have occasions when I had to use up all my reserves of army adaptability training! But, lest I be misunderstood, it has been fun all the while. Nothing is more satisfying than the taste of success while undertaking something that is considered quite challenging otherwise.

Insight and Confusion

But hey, before I digress, let me go back to our team process day. Continuing with what now appears to be somewhat of a tradition, I will share a particularly insightful interaction that we had within our team about this day. But before that, a brief explanation is warranted to put things in context.

One of the many team assignments—of what you may now already be beginning to realize was one hell of an eventful day—required us to position our team members in a particularly complex end-position from a given beginning configuration. Confused? Let me explain. Each of the members of the team was assigned an initial place to stand. Now following certain predefined rules, the members had to move—one at a time—in a manner so as to reach another predefined ending configuration, much like a series of moves of chessboard pieces.

This required a lot of thinking and trial-and-error sort of experimentation since there was only one particular way it was possible to get to the solution. Also, the rules required that once the solution was found, only one person—a chosen "leader"—was allowed to talk, to give out the instructions that told others exactly what to do. All others had to follow the given instructions to the letter. Additionally, each member of the team was also required to be aware of the solution. To make things worse, this solution was quite complicated, as we discovered and, therefore, not easily teachable. Finally, every member of the team was to be prepared to take on the "leader's" role, if asked. The team's success depended upon the ability of the entire team to implement the solution.

Time's Wasting

As it turned out, although someone else arrived at the solution, I found myself to be the person who had the onerous privilege of instructing others, a job I readily accepted. The intensity and decibel level of my voice reflected the energy levels I usually bring—from sheer habit of my past army life—to any such physically challenging activity.