I don’t know about you, but for me opposites really do attract. My wife and I have different skill sets, different strengths and different weaknesses. I don’t think I could live with someone who has the same type of compulsions as I do. I can hardly live with myself, so living with another me would not be fun! Of course the differences between my wife and myself sometimes lead to conflict or discord. Luckily, that gives us ample opportunities to do some tuning of our relationship when the discord gets to be too much. The conflict, tuning, discord and constant change is all great for me (and hopefully for my wife!), because it helps our relationship to stay vibrant. Conflict seeks resolution and resolution is fun.
Fun team building enables difference and engagement to thrive
As an extension of my personal preferences, it’s always made sense to me to seek people with opposite traits and skill sets when I’m putting together my team for business. But I discovered while at a convention last week, that many business owners are so attracted to like minded people that they often hire without first analyzing the current make up of their team and they don’t always recognize the need to strive for diversity of attitude and skills. When I facilitate our fun team building activities, there’s also lot of purpose and serious work that takes place. The fun, the creative team building and engagement are the vehicles that drive our participants toward a meaningful goal. Writing a song with a group highlights individual preferences and skill sets. The creatively facile people run into conflict with the analytical types who often want to debate potential lyric choices and slow down the group songwriting process. This push-pull process amplifies group dynamics and enables us to discuss and draw conclusions about what’s working for a team and what’s not working. Having to brainstorm lots of ideas and distill them into a succinct musical statement about a groups mission and identity within a given time period allows participants to experience how different preferences and skills join together to create a powerful result.
The power of a team focused on a common goal
We always have fun team building, using music as a vehicle to help groups tell stories and find their commonality. Along the way, we amplify the discord and difference that occurs during group work but most importantly – we see how the discord leads to fine tuning of the group process. The experience reinforces that the power of a team focused on a common goal is something to celebrate.