![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Following ....
Today... Okay. Where do I start?
Up before the sun. Out of the house before Val was in the shower. In fact, I was on the road by about 6:50am. Had time to stop at Tim's to get coffee. Mmmmm, coffee.
Drove along the way too crowded highway. Even at that time of morning it gets to be stop and go. What is up with that. Got to the university and today too there was nobody to collect my money for parking. I'm not sure what's up with that, but I was late, or so I thought, so I ran for it, hoping against hope that I wouldn't get a ticket for not paying. It's hard to pay though when there's nobody to pay. I mean, who are you supposed to give the money to?
Anyway, I'm not going to go on that rant. Went over to the right parking lot, and found myself waiting with lots of others. Eventually we all got loaded up onto yellow school buses. Yes, that's right. Think way back to grade school folks. And of course, not everyone actually looked at their Launch week packages, so they didn't even notice the waiver forms we needed for today. Which meant that the staff didn't have enough of them. We waited a good hour for someone to take the forms and get them photocopied and then get back to the buses. It was not pretty.
Anyway, the buses headed out to some place which name I can't remember. Elgin Mills and Kennedy, I think. Somewhere in that area. It's a day camp, and there's a primary school there too. A farm. We did team building exercises all day.
So, the bad - I was outside on the grass all day. Yes, my allergies are acting up. Go figure. Oh, and no, I didn't remember the claritin despite being reminded yesterday by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crookandchase. Oops.
Apart from that, it was a good day. My team members are George, Dave, Mike, Priya, Sharon, and Cecelia. Seven of us together, and we named ourselves the Road Crew. Because we like travelling, and we want to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Hey, it seemed to work during the three minutes we had to select a name. We never did get a cheer we liked.
We did some public speaking exercises - which was one of the most boring parts of the day. Though even that was cool. People have the neatest stories to tell, and that's a fact. Except me, I'm pretty boring, all in all. Well, I think so, anyway. Though my Junior Rangers story seemed to go over well. As did my Executive Summary of it. ;)
The cool exercises in my opinion were the Rope walking and the rock climbing.
Yes, you read that right.
The rope walking scenario... there are 5 trees, with rope between them. Imagine the ground beneath is a raging river, and you have to cross, along the rope. there are other ropes strategically placed to help you across the zig zagging rope, but really, you have to balance along the rope and get across. The catch is the whole team must make it across, and there can never be more than 2 people at any one tree. (other than the beginning and end.) Problem solving challenge that is just awesomely fun to do. Really. So, we stood back. We found all the ropes, from afar. We had one person - George - who's in the army and done some rope work before. He had some good ideas, and helped us come up with a plan. We worried about Priya cause she's the shortest one of us, and we planned our walking order to make sure that we should be able to help each other. The first to go was one of the lighter of us, followed by the second. We kept talking to each other, helping each other as we went. The first across was Cecelia and she called back help with what worked, and what didn't. It was really cool to learn. Even George learned something new, because we discovered a trick or two he hadn't thought of.
The key there was communication, encouragement, listening to each other, and building on each other's experiences. We all made it across and not one of us fell even once. We did really well on that exercise.
The one we did worst on was the puzzle. Actually, I think on any exercise where we jumped in without looking at it from different perspectives and assigning tasks, we didn't do so well. The puzzle - huge foam pieces in different shapes. Close your eyes, everyone take a piece and put the pieces together into a rectangle. It was fun, but with a time limit, we failed. Then again, once we got to look at all the pieces and see how they fit together, the next time we tried, I think we put the puzzle together in half the time allotted.
Oh, and the rock climbing was cool. I'd never had a chance to try that before. I only got to climb the one wall, but it was fun. I got to belay, and to be the belay buddy (double check, you know). And then I got to climb. Our wall had an outcropping, and I got to the point where I had to ask for help. I had no idea where to put my feet next. My team (and this was not my regular team, we were split to work with others for this exercise) was awesome and helped me figure out where the rocks that I couldn't see were. So I made it to the top. Yeehaw. Then I had a moment of panic as I realized that now I had to let go and trust the equipment and the belayer to get me down.
EEEEPPPPPPP!
Okay, I am here, so obviously I managed. It was a very illuminating moment though. Heart rate raised and all. And to think about it and put it in perspective, there really are times when I have to let others do their work and depend on them, and the equipment, to get things done. Guidance is good, but people are hired to do a job. As a manager, I have to let them do it.
Trust them.
And follow up on the status reports, I guess.
There was a lot of moments of introspection. Of sharing thoughts and learning from the activities.
There were also cows, sheep, ducks, geese, horses, and little children roaming around at various times of the day.
We had to come up with a draft of a team contract that we need to hand in next Wednesday.
This is kind of a neat concept, and really I guess something that should be useful. What is the team vision, the purpose of the team? What are our operating procedures. In effect, we're forming a little mini company for the purposes of this class. And we'll get the opportunity to test out how well we've put this together over the next 13 weeks.
Our team seemed to work together really well. We slipped automatically into a shifting leadership pattern, whereby someone starts us off, and then the ideas are built on by the whole team. It's a neat thing to watch, or so I found on the very few situations where I had that opportunity. I sense a small weakness in details in the group, though. We are great at the big picture, but we keep having to adjust our strategy due to small details we missed. That we're quick to realize we missed these has so far enabled us to be successful. And I think that if we have the major direction lined up, the small details will fall into place. Or we can hammer them there.
Still, I think we need to pay attention to clarifying the rules better. We have cottoned on to this though, and are aware of it as a team weakness, so we did get better at it as time went on. It will be something to watch though.
Over all, I think we have a good team. We have a very diverse set of backgrounds and skills that we should be able to draw on to get ourselves propelled forwards. There we go, a nice positive statement, and I truly believe it at this point in time, but I can't help but wonder if I'll still feel this way 14 weeks from now.
I guess we'll see.
It was quite a day, to say the least.
Then back onto the buses and back to York. From there, the bookstore. I think I now have all my text books until January. Yay me? I hope so.
And after that? A hamburger in the courtyard, and home. No ticket on my car, which is good. I'm tired, and just about ready to sleep. So I probably won't be logged on for too long. Go figure. Next class is Saturday, as I might have said. So I have 2 days to absorb and relax a bit. Though I also have a 3 page case study to write up, which has to be emailed to my TA by Tuesday. Yay.
Up before the sun. Out of the house before Val was in the shower. In fact, I was on the road by about 6:50am. Had time to stop at Tim's to get coffee. Mmmmm, coffee.
Drove along the way too crowded highway. Even at that time of morning it gets to be stop and go. What is up with that. Got to the university and today too there was nobody to collect my money for parking. I'm not sure what's up with that, but I was late, or so I thought, so I ran for it, hoping against hope that I wouldn't get a ticket for not paying. It's hard to pay though when there's nobody to pay. I mean, who are you supposed to give the money to?
Anyway, I'm not going to go on that rant. Went over to the right parking lot, and found myself waiting with lots of others. Eventually we all got loaded up onto yellow school buses. Yes, that's right. Think way back to grade school folks. And of course, not everyone actually looked at their Launch week packages, so they didn't even notice the waiver forms we needed for today. Which meant that the staff didn't have enough of them. We waited a good hour for someone to take the forms and get them photocopied and then get back to the buses. It was not pretty.
Anyway, the buses headed out to some place which name I can't remember. Elgin Mills and Kennedy, I think. Somewhere in that area. It's a day camp, and there's a primary school there too. A farm. We did team building exercises all day.
So, the bad - I was outside on the grass all day. Yes, my allergies are acting up. Go figure. Oh, and no, I didn't remember the claritin despite being reminded yesterday by
crookandchase. Oops. Apart from that, it was a good day. My team members are George, Dave, Mike, Priya, Sharon, and Cecelia. Seven of us together, and we named ourselves the Road Crew. Because we like travelling, and we want to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Hey, it seemed to work during the three minutes we had to select a name. We never did get a cheer we liked.
We did some public speaking exercises - which was one of the most boring parts of the day. Though even that was cool. People have the neatest stories to tell, and that's a fact. Except me, I'm pretty boring, all in all. Well, I think so, anyway. Though my Junior Rangers story seemed to go over well. As did my Executive Summary of it. ;)
The cool exercises in my opinion were the Rope walking and the rock climbing.
Yes, you read that right.
The rope walking scenario... there are 5 trees, with rope between them. Imagine the ground beneath is a raging river, and you have to cross, along the rope. there are other ropes strategically placed to help you across the zig zagging rope, but really, you have to balance along the rope and get across. The catch is the whole team must make it across, and there can never be more than 2 people at any one tree. (other than the beginning and end.) Problem solving challenge that is just awesomely fun to do. Really. So, we stood back. We found all the ropes, from afar. We had one person - George - who's in the army and done some rope work before. He had some good ideas, and helped us come up with a plan. We worried about Priya cause she's the shortest one of us, and we planned our walking order to make sure that we should be able to help each other. The first to go was one of the lighter of us, followed by the second. We kept talking to each other, helping each other as we went. The first across was Cecelia and she called back help with what worked, and what didn't. It was really cool to learn. Even George learned something new, because we discovered a trick or two he hadn't thought of.
The key there was communication, encouragement, listening to each other, and building on each other's experiences. We all made it across and not one of us fell even once. We did really well on that exercise.
The one we did worst on was the puzzle. Actually, I think on any exercise where we jumped in without looking at it from different perspectives and assigning tasks, we didn't do so well. The puzzle - huge foam pieces in different shapes. Close your eyes, everyone take a piece and put the pieces together into a rectangle. It was fun, but with a time limit, we failed. Then again, once we got to look at all the pieces and see how they fit together, the next time we tried, I think we put the puzzle together in half the time allotted.
Oh, and the rock climbing was cool. I'd never had a chance to try that before. I only got to climb the one wall, but it was fun. I got to belay, and to be the belay buddy (double check, you know). And then I got to climb. Our wall had an outcropping, and I got to the point where I had to ask for help. I had no idea where to put my feet next. My team (and this was not my regular team, we were split to work with others for this exercise) was awesome and helped me figure out where the rocks that I couldn't see were. So I made it to the top. Yeehaw. Then I had a moment of panic as I realized that now I had to let go and trust the equipment and the belayer to get me down.
EEEEPPPPPPP!
Okay, I am here, so obviously I managed. It was a very illuminating moment though. Heart rate raised and all. And to think about it and put it in perspective, there really are times when I have to let others do their work and depend on them, and the equipment, to get things done. Guidance is good, but people are hired to do a job. As a manager, I have to let them do it.
Trust them.
And follow up on the status reports, I guess.
There was a lot of moments of introspection. Of sharing thoughts and learning from the activities.
There were also cows, sheep, ducks, geese, horses, and little children roaming around at various times of the day.
We had to come up with a draft of a team contract that we need to hand in next Wednesday.
This is kind of a neat concept, and really I guess something that should be useful. What is the team vision, the purpose of the team? What are our operating procedures. In effect, we're forming a little mini company for the purposes of this class. And we'll get the opportunity to test out how well we've put this together over the next 13 weeks.
Our team seemed to work together really well. We slipped automatically into a shifting leadership pattern, whereby someone starts us off, and then the ideas are built on by the whole team. It's a neat thing to watch, or so I found on the very few situations where I had that opportunity. I sense a small weakness in details in the group, though. We are great at the big picture, but we keep having to adjust our strategy due to small details we missed. That we're quick to realize we missed these has so far enabled us to be successful. And I think that if we have the major direction lined up, the small details will fall into place. Or we can hammer them there.
Still, I think we need to pay attention to clarifying the rules better. We have cottoned on to this though, and are aware of it as a team weakness, so we did get better at it as time went on. It will be something to watch though.
Over all, I think we have a good team. We have a very diverse set of backgrounds and skills that we should be able to draw on to get ourselves propelled forwards. There we go, a nice positive statement, and I truly believe it at this point in time, but I can't help but wonder if I'll still feel this way 14 weeks from now.
I guess we'll see.
It was quite a day, to say the least.
Then back onto the buses and back to York. From there, the bookstore. I think I now have all my text books until January. Yay me? I hope so.
And after that? A hamburger in the courtyard, and home. No ticket on my car, which is good. I'm tired, and just about ready to sleep. So I probably won't be logged on for too long. Go figure. Next class is Saturday, as I might have said. So I have 2 days to absorb and relax a bit. Though I also have a 3 page case study to write up, which has to be emailed to my TA by Tuesday. Yay.