One of the voluntary initiatives that I have taken at the Boys & Girls Clubs was planning and implementing a Team Day. As the last person who joined the team, I quickly started learning about everyone, and I realized that my workmates don't know each other and all of them have been hired at different times. I proposed a Team Day to the Executive Director, and he rejected my proposal because it was not on his priority list and I have not caught his attention with my work so he would not listen to me. In other words, I did not have enough power. Fast-forward sometime later, I have proved myself through doing my job, going above and beyond and solving a few Club problems. That made the Executive Director notice that I have gained some power and created alliances within the organization, so I decided it's time to propose it again and push harder this time. After I finished my powerpoint presentation, he nodded, and he said that I was right and that we needed to have a Team Day because the tension has been rising the in the office. I asked him for his objectives and took his permission to add my own. After drafting an agenda, creating the training sessions and planning the materials I requested one of the Board Members that I have previously acquainted to facilitate this Team Day. Fortunately, It was a successful event, and it brought much insight to my workmates. It also helped them get to know and understand each other more to boost their performance productivity hopefully. If I had to rate the event, I would say 8.5/10.
The reason I give it the Team Day 8.5/10 success rate is because I don't think I have done enough research about our team needs. I only considered the needs of the people whom I was close to and provided me insight, so there were things I have missed in my agenda and objectives. However, I think the Team Day did touch on some things that my teammates are reluctant to talk about at work. One of the things was our team different lifestyles. An activity that I have planned was "Mountains & Valleys" where each team member had to travel back in time and pinpoint the high points (mountains) and low points (valleys), conclude a value for each pinpointed experience, list them and share everything with the group. That activity humanized many team members that had more reserved personalities. It also brought people together by observing the shared values that they have in common from their life experiences. In other words, it made them realize that they are the same.
One of my favorite outputs of our team days was not only sharing our personal values, but getting the chance to reflect on organizational values and have the ability to create our own values that could contribute to our organizational culture. We got the chance to pool values and funnel them towards common themes and definitions, then come up with six organizational values that are relatable to every single team member. These values will remain a part of our culture and we plan to hold each other accountable to them.
