THE CHANGE AGENT
Shweta is the marketing department manager of J&K enterprises. She has noticed that her staff seems to be pulling in separate directions and some members have trouble cooperating with others. She feels team building will help her department function in a more positive and productive way.
Shweta interviews several OD consultants to find the change agent she thinks will be right for what she needs. Shweta decides on Kartik, an organization development consultant that best answered the question, "How will this change agent build a group into a team?"
Kartik meets with Shweta to discuss the problems. Kartik and Shweta discuss the problem as Shweta sees it. They discuss specific questions to ask and data that will be collected from interviews with team members.
Kartik interviews Shweta's staff and immediately a number of issues surface that appear counterproductive to effective functioning. Lack of communication is identified as the most serious problem, and many of the other major issues are a direct result of the communication breakdown.
Kartik reports the general findings back to Shweta without mentioning any names. After discussing the problem and possible ways to solve it, they decided on the two-day team building retreat. The goal of the retreat is to get the group to work through the issues that are causing the biggest problems.
Kartik’s idea about how to approach the retreat is:
We will adopt THE GROUP MOTIVATION EXERCISE model. It is quite like looking at the positives of self & others and not look at the negatives at all. The purpose is to build on the positives and do not discuss negatives as they already have issues against each other.
Let them write the name of their ideal colleague stating the qualities because of which they admire him/her. Then they should write their own qualities on a second sheet of paper. Lastly they should