Team Building Retreat
Tags: Team Building, Travelogue, Activities And Events, Retreats, Mountainous

Team Building Retreat

Taking a horse to the pond is easy, but making it drink water is a challenge!

‘Taking a horse to the pond is easy, but making it drink water is a challenge!’ — goes an old adage in English. The challenge of ‘making the horse drink water’ was what was looming large on the horizon for XXXXXX!

The year 2009 marked the beginning of a new era for XXXXXXX! ‘Three Ones’ policy of the Government of India for ‘Halting and reversing the spread of HIV’, the face of XXX for the XXXXX, has added multiple dimensions to the HIV Prevention programs, challenging XXXXXXX and its resource pool to shed its ‘Frog in the well’ attitude that the Phase I was, and adapt to the new vistas that opened out — a change in the thinking and mindset was the need of the hour!

With this in mind, XXXXXX Management came up with the idea of team-building exercises to rejuvenate the team and to ‘open up their minds’ to the emerging challenges, in short — to make the proverbial horse drink water!

Retreat

What better place to rejuvenate and recharge than the snowclad mountains, frozen lakes, Nathula Pass, and the Yaks that Gangtok, the mountainous region of Sikkim offered!

The 5-day retreat cum team-building exercises to Gangtok took off with a precursor of a conference call with Mr. XXXXXXX.

Gangtok, the capital city of Sikkim is an urbanized town with the vibrant Sikkimese culture showing prominently in every nook and corner of the city and in every household… but with very little greenery to offer, Gangtok more than compensated for the concrete jungle that it appeared to be by having the juxtaposed snowclad mountains and Tsomgo Lake, the perpetually frozen lake with yaks lazying around in the vicinity and the Nathula Pass — the Indo China Border on the horizon! Truly rejuvenating!!

The crux of the Retreat was the Team Building exercise that came out of the ‘Magic hat’ that the HR Team from XXXXXXXX turned out to be!

Photo Scavenging

The warmup exercise, ‘Photo Scavenging’ truly helped to warm up the proceedings for the day; the physical part of the exercise was the warming part, huffing and puffing up the hilly roads to capture the Sikkimese culture in the camera and to create an interesting story, hinting at equating it to the project XXXXXXXX. The exercise was interspersed with a mix of comical things like putting on the reverse gear (Role reversal) or trying your hand at uniformity (like-mindedness and teamwork) and so on, which could help to generate ideas to relate to the Project!

The teams came up with interesting names for themselves integrating the Sikkimese parlance — ‘Moafai’ meaning self-propelled, the embodiment of XXXXXXX, ‘Rumtek’ — the largest Buddhist Monastery in Sikkim and ‘Khukra’!!

Warmed up and recharged, the teams became ready for the day, rearing to go!

Team Building

The team exercises started with splitting the larger team into 5 smaller functional teams, viz. program, M & E, Clinics, Technical Support (CB, Advocacy and Communications), and Transition. The teams were asked to work out on the following themes and make a group presentation to the larger gathering:

1. What we did right and what we could have done better in Phase I

2. Changing roles in Phase II — ‘Buckets’ of work under different thematic areas

3. Way forward — new challenges and opportunities

4. Transition to the government

… and added some critical elements that can be explored:

· Skills and capacities and attitudinal change that the team requires to come to terms with the changing roles in Phase II

· Time management and prioritization

· Functional barriers

The teams generated ‘Buckets’ of work, albeit half full, in the time allotted, which was much less than what was needed!

This was followed by a short exposition on S.M.A.R.T. goals by XXXXXXX and the teams were asked to work out at least one goal as a part of this exercise.

1. Specific — Goals should specify what they want to achieve.

2. Measurable — You should be able to measure whether your goals

3. Achievable — Are the goals you set, achievable and attainable?

4. Realistic — Can you realistically achieve the goals with the resources you have?

5. Time — When do you want to achieve the set goals?

Different members presented a semblance of goals that needed to be further improved! These were the efforts that tried to work out solutions to make the horse drink water!