Leadership Workshop - My Experience and takeaways

My Experience
I had a wonderful experience during the two days workshop on ‘Leading Performance’ conducted at Pegasus near Dodballapur which is 60kms away from Bangalore. Earlier I had attended similar section in MindTree west campus. The impact of this session was far better compared to the earlier session. The reason been we spent most our time on outbound exercise with a dedicated team. The classroom sessions started immediately after that and hence it created a huge impact, the classroom theory and the learning’s can be easily mapped to the events occurred during the exercise. The key points can easily be grasped upon

It was refreshing to meet new minds from Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, West campus and East campus. Each one is versatile and it was observable through their communications/actions/behavior/culture, one guy prefers to eat kesari bath with chutney :)

Pegasus is well known for team building programs, it’s a huge campus which is unique of its own. Its customer ranged from IT industry to BCCI. Yes our Indian cricket team had been there just before the 2007 world cup; however India got eliminated during the initial stage, that's a different story and we need a separate blog to analyze that.

The food was excellent, felt like being at home. Flipside is I did not sleep for one day since our colleagues were having SOUND sleep. Seven people sleeping in a small tent can be avoided. It might sound stupid but I did not sleep since three of our colleagues were snoring left, right and center. Also we were short of one mosquito mesh. I had to share mine with the guy sleeping next to me. Either of us could able to sleep, at one point of time all the mosquitoes were inside the mesh rather being outside. Despite this the other guy couldn’t control his sleep and he went to sleep. He was so close to me, and he snored direct to my ears. I listened to music and watched a movie from my I-Pod, but still I didn’t get sleep. My IPOD doesn’t have the snoring resist technology, people were snoring with DTS effect and it easily penetrated through the IPOD audio. The next morning I was completely tried when the day started.

The day starts early at Pegasus, no matter when you go to sleep the bells rings at 6:00 AM and the programs starts at 7:00 AM and ends at 9:00 PM. However I got refreshed when I saw the energy of my team members during the outbound exercises so I did not mind that night out.

Taking bath is optional and changing the clothes too is optional. I unnecessarily carried more dress. Couple of tracks and T-shirts should suffice. Only 30% of the crowd looked sparkling in the morning. Rest all including me was with the same track and the T-shirt. People thought they can take bath during the break and that break came to me only on the next day morning. These things doesn’t matter, end of the day we enjoyed and learnt new things.

The faculty members Kalyan, Sylvia, Anindya from MindTree and CK from Pegasus are admirable. None of them used PPT and they made the sessions more interactive. They allowed us to participate, interact and share our experience and they highlighted the important points missed by us. Uma, from C2 took care of us very well throughout the program; the two boxes of snacks kept in the bus were worth mentioning


My Learning’s and Takeaway’s
Team’s vision is more important, rather than individual’s vision.
This I felt when we did the team bounding exercise on ‘To construct a tent with blind-folded’. The game goes like this; all the team members will be blind-folded and the team leader who is not blind-folded has to give commands to the team to construct a tent. Six of us were blind folded and we were instructed by our lead to march towards the ground, open the bag, identify the rods, materials and then construct the tent.
Our leader gave us good instructions and I was doing a good job. I felt more satisfied that I did all the things quicker and faster as instructed by my lead at that instance. The time was over and when I opened my eyes it was unfortunate to see that we didn’t construct the tent as required and the Job is still half left. Even though I did my job well and I thought that my team has done well but our vision as a team was not accomplished. To outside world we failed miserably. We as a team have not constructed the tent. This often happens at our project; each individual is happy and bonded with their assigned work or module. They did a good job as an individual but their real success will only shine when the teams succeeds and every member is often remembered of the team’s visions. We need to go beyond our boundary to support each other and help each other so that the team wins. The game is blind folded but the rule doesn’t say to shut your mouths. None of us in the team asked our leader on how well we are performing as a team. Everyone thought as an individual they were doing their best, even the leader thought that she had done a good job on giving smart instructions. Everyone was carried away without thinking about our end result, the vision to create a tent. This can be mapped to the continuous feedback process. No one asked for feedback nor did the Leader give them the continuous feedback. It happened in the end i.e., for example only during the appraisal time

Leader should stand up at the right time and should take complete control and demonstrate from his/her actions

This I felt when we played the ‘Tower of Hanoi’ game. This is the highlight of the program for me. It started around 5:00 PM and we conclude it around 9:00 PM. Google ‘Tower of Hanoi’ or refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi to understand the game and the rules. The highlight of the game is that everyone should contribute (around 30 of us), the entire game needs to be played with discipline. None of us should talk during execution and this is one of the rules. If one commits any mistake it has to be repeated from the beginning. The main feature of the game is to find the right algorithm, only 50% of the people were trying to work out the algorithm, rest of us took it easy and waited for someone to crack and explain us the rules. There are other aspects apart from the algorithm; each team needs to identify bridge maker, fetchers, runners, holders and one instructor. It took around 1 hour for us to get the algorithm. When we started the game, we failed miserably. Two instances we failed since some one or the other kept talking. One instances we failed since some of us did not understand the clear role and responsibilities. We never had a practice; we directly entered the battle field and try to learn the things. No proper preparations, plan and cooperation among the team. But when we kept failing everyone was annoyed and finally we had a quick team meeting, the meeting got heated up and went in all wrong directions…
Leader should stand up at the right time and should take complete control and demonstrate from his actions…and yes this was demonstrated by Ramesh, who proactively accepted the challenge and took over the role of being a ‘Leader’ his actions and plan demonstrated that he had a good leadership qualities. He observed all our problems and he never left any stones unturned. He clearly stated the plan and communicated the plan by means of defining the roles and responsibilities for each individual in that 30+ gang. His desire to reach the goal was clearly visible from his actions. The Leader took close to 1 hour to plan this. He had patience and belief that it can be archived. We even had a practice run and that gave us lot of confidence and we all were set for the action.

It took of well and we can see the desire and hunger shown by each and every individual, all wanted to succeed to cross each level and to complete successfully. The first 10 minutes went really well, but there was a small mistake committed by the Instructor, he skipped one level and gave us the wrong movement command. This collapsed and we misplaced the rings in the wrong position. Team was bit disappointed since it was one individual who did the mistake and due to this each and everyone has to repeat from beginning.

The instructor proved that he is a human by means of committing such mistake. We understood that and the team supported him. This brought more fire to us and anxious to the team to see the success. The quality of a person is defined on how well he recovers from his mistakes. The instructor learned his mistake and he quickly rectified by means of using a marker pen to strike of the movements being executed and completed so that he never misses or jumps the movement flow. With that approach and with that fire in the team we could able to finish the entire game in less than 20 minutes. When the referee blowed the whistle we could see the joy and celebrations from each one of us, all of us got animated. It’s OK to fail so that we come back strongly – victory is sweeter when you fight for it as a team
We celebrated as though our Indian athlete overtook Usain Bolt to win the 100 meters Olympic gold medal :)

Define understandable roles and responsibilities, prepare well and have fun

I understood this better when we played ‘Construct a complicated bookshelf’ event
The game is to construct a bookshelf from scratch by using the 18 wooden slaps provided. The team which constructs in less duration is declared as winner. We were shown a demo, and the Pegasus staffs (three of them) completed the bookshelf in less than 27 seconds. We were a seven member team and we named our team as ‘The Carpenters’. We were given 1 hour time for us to plan, prepare and practice.
From the demo we understood that there were 5 blocks and these 5 blocks can be constructed independently and then on needs to be integrated in one order. The Leader allocated each of us to concentrate on a particular block; it’s the individual’s responsibilities to understand the triads involved to construct that 1 block. The leader will then guide us the order in which we need to integrate. The block which I need to construct should come in the second order, and it involves 4 wooden slaps. This I understood very well and I concentrated to understand the size of the wooden slaps, the hook of the slaps and the distance of each hooks in the slaps. Remember all slaps will look identical, it all depends upon the distance between each hooks and no of hooks each slap has. Once I have identified that, my job is done and I am ready with my module. We took about 30 minutes for all of us to construct each block. After that we integrated all and we took 1 min and 45 seconds to finish our first attempt. But it was a failure, the position of one slap was wrong. That became handy to us since we understood that one piece is the trump card and it needs to be taken care. We went back to our respective blocks and practiced again and after 10 minutes we integrated again and this time it was success and the time clocked was 40 seconds. We were happy that we completed and it gave confidence to us. All understood their part very well. At that instance we were left with 15 minutes for the event to start. We used that to the full maximum and kept on practicing, we would able to bring down to 24 seconds. That’s our best clocking and then we went on to the stage for the event. We prepared well and we trusted each other and we had the confidence to perform less than 24 seconds. Above all we wanted to have fun and give our best.

Each team will be given 3 attempts and the average score on the 3 attempts will declare as the winners. We clocked 35, 26 and 24 seconds respectively and our average score tied up with other team, but we were stated winners since we had consistency in our timings.

This happened because we prepared very well and we understand each individual’s role and responsibilities very well. This can be easily mapped to our work, most often we don’t prepare well, preparations in terms of identifying accurate test data, right test cases and exact test scenarios during the test preparation phase. At times we identify them only during the test execution phase and due to this we lose the quality time there.



Takeaways from Customer management
Don’t hesitate to ask help from customer
This tip got highlighted when we played the ‘Tower of Hanoi’. We spent more than 1 hour trying to crack the algorithm, we even googled? from the mobile to crack the algorithm. The Pegasus team acted as a customer and they were ready to give the algorithm for us, but we hesitated and even we did not had an idea to seek the help from them. All we need is to play the game and see to completion, the rule doesn’t say that we should not get the algorithm from Pegasus. In the end we got the algorithm from Pegasus, otherwise I don’t know how long we would had spent in cracking that algorithm. This is true with us too, we hesitate to seek help from customer, we need to involve the customer too, and in this case the customer was willing.

Face the conflict and act on it with calm mind
Conflict can occur with everyone be it with customer, with manager, with peers and with team members. Anticipate the outcome of the conflict and act on it with a calm mind. Reacting without a time gap can create wrong results. This was demonstrated during the customer conference call imitate session.

Other important takeaways
· Don’t have a fixed plan or strategy, keep re-visiting according to the situation and utilize the resources well. Don’t under utilize or over utilize. This was from the ‘Kill the bug’ event

· Some of the tips highlighted from the ‘One Minute Manager’ book. I liked
‘Look at the team members face and observe their behavior when they are at work’

The above story is all about ‘My experience’ and my learning’s and takeaways. The next blog will be about what I implemented from the takeaways and how it earned me the results