snoooooooooooooop Step with the five P's

Last Monday in our team’s class, Katrina and Laura lead an unusual day of rhythm. We followed the idea of “stepping” and had to create a routine using our hands, feet, and mouths. The purpose was well rounded; we were a project, task-based team that was overall self-managed. We had to work together to create this team with very little dictation from either Katrina or Laura. The difficulty was the place; each person was randomly selected to perform a different motion, a few for the mouth, a few for the hands and a few for the feet. The problem was that most of us lacked the ability to perform fully in the area assigned. But overall we pulled together and formulated a plan to be as efficient as possible. Luckily there was hardly any power struggle for so many leaders to have to work together, each of us did well keeping an open mind and using creativity.

One idea on Chapter two of our Managing Teams book discusses using small work groups within each team in order to better balance out the leadership and creativity. It says that if this is done successfully then they can operate with little supervision, which I believe that we accomplished.

Looking at idea of social facilitation, our team had to be considerate of the abilities of each member when choosing the moves and positioning of each person. For example, for those who really lacked hand coordination, it was necessary that we create a steady beat for them to follow, the same idea with the mouth, and those who could beat box separate from others who can not carry a tune. Over it was an interesting and building experience, each week we seem to get to know our own strengths along with the other leaders around us.