After watching Tom Wujec: Build a tower,
build a team I have to agree with Wujec’s analysis of why kindergarteners
perform better on the Spaghetti Challenge than MBA students. I feel this way
because the kindergarteners don’t seem to have the same mentality going into
the project. They are focused on the goal of building a tower using their
imagination and work well as a team. I know that the MBA students are intelligent
adults, but I feel there is a significant difference in how they approach the
challenge and how the kinds did. As adults the MBA students have been educated
and shaped into what they are told they should be by professors; however
kindergarteners are told to play nice with one another, share, take turns and
use their imagination. For me this is the main difference kindergarteners have
the ability to use their imagination freely and collaborate with one another
building off one another’s thoughts because they have not been educated to
follow a specific way to approach most situations.
MBA, CEO and any other adult struggles with
this because in my opinion they have gone through the education system or their
careers learning how to approach situations the way they are expected to, the “right
way”. For example when put into groups they began orientating themselves then from
there they developed who was who. After the adults had defined member roles
they talked and sketched their plan of action out waiting until the last minute
to finally build it the tower. The final touch adding the marshmallow ended
with the expected “ta da” but soon became an “uh oh”. None of these people
expected their towers to fail and they were faced with a crisis that led to the
failure to build the tower in the allotted time frame. How embarrassing for
these highly intelligent educated adults to be out shined by a bunch of little
kids! This highlighted many flaws in their ability to build a successful team. The
kindergarteners however were excellent team builders because in the beginning
they did not care who was in charge they just went for it. Wujec explains in
the presentation that they developed many prototypes that led to their success.
These kids remained motivated and collaborated so well they remained the most
successful group when researched compared to many other trials of this team-building
project.
Many times MBA programs focus on managing
and not collaborating. MBA programs are very traditional and this is why they
fail, they fail to recognize the benefits of collaborating over assigning
roles. I suspect the kindergarteners were better at this project simply because
they weren’t focused on their orientation in their group, they weren’t
concerned with being recognized, or even worried if they failed because they were
just having fun. Wujec noted that when
adding an executive assistant into the group of CEOs when working on the
project they performed better than when it were just CEOs. This is similar to
the kids they added a different way to approach the situation they were not
trying to be the chief in charge they were just there to help which probably
balanced out the power struggles within. Somehow when kids grow up and become
successful adults the focus goes from achieving goals to achieving personal
success it seems.
I have reflected on myself throughout this entire
Leadership Program and reflecting back has made it apparent that the more
educated I have become the more trained my thinking process became. I have
trained myself to use patterns, habits and past experiences in order to decide
on a situation. I have narrowed my thinking process without even realizing it;
however now that I have identified this inability to critical think back in the
beginning of the Leadership Program I have started to focus on developing my
critical thinking skills. As a kid thinking about anything it was as if the sky
was the limit I had a very vivid imagination and tried everything. Now that I
am an adult I worry about everything. I worry about getting hurt, what others
may think, and when creating something I worry I will fail, do it wrong, or it
wont be the best it could be. This is what happened to the MBA students, they
are much like me; meaning that they have spent most of their life worrying
about being the best and making sure whatever they do is the best it could be
instead of just trying and failing. Kids don’t care about this as much because
they have nothing to lose because they are just doing it because its fun.
If I were asked to facilitate a process intervention
workshop, I would relate the video to process intervention skills in a staff
meeting. My department has just undergone a complete change in management and
the new manager’s style of managing is completely different than the old one.
The new manager does not like confrontation at all so some coworkers of mine
have began to capitalize this and use it to their advantage which has created a
lot of tension. One coworker continues to break the rules and go against what
she is told to do. There have been complaints form other departments about her,
complaints form coworkers and many other issues that need to be confronted;
however she remains the same. I think this has created a wedge and our teamwork
that was once very strong has started to dwindle.
I want to suggest to our manger to call a
staff meeting to try and bring us back together and use this challenge of an
example of how we lack collaboration because I am very positive we would
perform much like the MBA and CEOs. The idea that this may shed some light on a
much bigger underlying issue would hopefully improve our department and bring
our morale back to where it used to be. We used to remind one another “one
team, one dream” but this focus is no longer a priority since the change in
management. Everyone has an agenda and I feel like eventually we are going to
tear each other apart. I am very happy to have watched this video because it
brought to light many assumptions and from these assumptions I have become more
aware of the importance of collaborating as a team. Throughout this program
there has been a lot of focus on team building, team work, team atmospheres and
from this comes diversity, learning, growth, interpersonal skills and exposure
to better ways of operating and becoming successful.
References
Tom Wujec: Build
a tower, build a team | Video on TED.com [Video file]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower.html
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