Team work and spaghetti towers - 18th May 2010
Teacher and theatre director Rachel Vowles ran an excellent session with Devon and Cornwall training groups. Rachel does lots of work in the South West including sessions run by Duchy College and this particular afternoon covered exercises on working together, listening, learning and dealing with confrontation.
So how do you react when given the task of building a tall spaghetti tower or the simple task, or so it seemed, of lowering a stick balanced on everyone’s fingers? Why do some people pull back in a group and why do some delve straight in? The group discussed these questions and related them back to the way their teams work on farm.
What
should you do to create a good listening environment for staff, so they feel you
understand and care about solving their issues and problems and what can you do
to help staff resolve their own motivation issues?
Helen
Thoday acted,
unnervingly accurately, as a disillusioned employee who felt they were not
wanted in the team group and members took it in turns to try and resolve the
problems seen often on farm.
Both
groups felt the afternoon was a vital session. Although it was a break from pig
production we all know that, without good motivated staff, a unit will never run
efficiently.