About Trust, the Dinner Party, a Team buliding
Around 7.30, after the Isha prayer, I was ready for the Team Dinner. I told my wife that I will be back in an hour or so. When I was about to leave, my 5 year old daughter called me and asked where I’m? I said I’m attending the regular – Tuesday Classes on Quran and Hadith and will be leaving Mangef in another five minutes, Salaam – I tried to keep the phone down. She refused to accept and asked me in contention”Are you joking”? No, I said in affirmative! She refused and questioned me like a lawyer in a court of ‘justice’. Now, I began to decipher, she seems to be building a loss of faith in her mind. So I explained, I just got out of the Quran classes and walking along with one of my colleagues on the road and would be leaving Mangef in another 5 minutes. Immediately after the explanation “what would you bring? She asked”. Oh! I had sigh of relief that I could regain her trust. Infact that moment of truth was the most critical lesson for me on trust today. You can’t build trust by deviating even a single word away from truth – whether you are interacting with your daughter, colleague, boss or anybody in the functional ecosystem you live in. Obviously, trust is the last thing that I want loose in this life, especially with my children, friends and colleagues. If you lose trust, nothing can take that back except your life! And Trust, as you know is one of the most important ingredients in a person’s life and therefore, all the more important in a Team.
Well, as per the plan I called up Asad 3 minutes before reaching the agreed place to be picked up by Noor. But we were late by 5 minutes and I was really feeling frustrated and was thinking whether I would become the reason for being late, thought for a while on how to pass the buck onto someone’s head? But then the thought of trust nagged me from behind and firmed up my mind to tender an apology in the event we were late. But, a sigh of relief of meted us at GCC102, we found that we were the first to reach the commonly agreed place. Dr Saab told us that he has been waiting here for the last 15 minutes, a fine Gentleman and a punctual aadmi by all means. He spoke aggressively about his character, discipline & punctuality, in north-west accented Hindi. By the way, the initial stage of any team formation is to share the personal stories and get to know each other well.
In few minutes, Noor arrived and we boarded the cruise with the hope of reaching SHIIK – hotel and Resorts in the next 30 minutes. Along the journey, we discussed the changes and challenges ahead of us; the org-changes, the Presidential race, the stock price and so on. To me, it was a Team in the making. As BuckMan said, “Teams initially go through a Forming stage in which members are positive and polite. Some members are anxious, as they haven’t yet worked out exactly what work the team will involve. Others are simply excited about the task ahead.” I couldn’t focus on anything but the Leadership, who initiated Team Dinner, the first step in the formation of a Team. What we call “Team Forming”. Like the Dinner yesterday, this stage is usually fairly short, and may only last for a single meeting at which people are introduced to one-another, eat, dine and sleep peacefully. So, as a TL we appreciate the Leadership shown by TL on his new team formation dinner meeting. But at this stage, as an outsider observing things from a completely different lens, I believe that the team certainly requires going through next three formative stages. The Forming > Storming > Norming > Perfuming cycle of team building. On a different note, this would assume that we will have three more dinner or lunch parties attached along. As someone said, let’s hope for the best (Dinner at Hilton) and prepare for the worst (Pepsi on your Desk)! Thank you for your time!
Will be continued - the next dinner…Insha Allah!
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