Valley Crossing Exercise - Team Work

The valley crossing exercise was performed in order to demonstrate the importance of team work. Team work involves many facets someone of them being communication, coordination, interdependency, trust, support, contribution from members and cohesion between members.

Valley Crossing

The activity involved 3 persons crossing a valley with the support of the rod. The distance between two ends of the cliff was more than 1 step but less than 2 steps. The activity was to be performed in such a way, that at any instance of time during the crossing of valley, not more than 1 member was at risk, i.e. if one person was at risk during the act of valley crossing, the other two members would take up that person’s weight. In this way the interdependency between the members was tightly coupled which is one of the most facets of team work.

It is also to be noted that when one of the persons is at risk, that person has to trust the other two persons to ensure that the objective is achieved. In this way, during the entire exercise, all the persons are at equal risk and need confidence and trust between the members to achieve the objective.

Three wise men Crossing the valley  - Detailed task process

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Steps
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky
3	Full Risky
4	Half Risky	Half Risky
5		Full Risky
6		Half Risky	Half Risky
7			Full Risky
8			Half Risky
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

A. Safe - Both the legs of the person have full support
B. Half Risky – One leg in the air and the other leg has support
C. Full risky - Both the legs are in the air without any support
D. Half risky – One leg is in the air and the other leg has support
E. Safe - Both the legs have full support

The above table can also be depicted as

 

Lessons Learnt

Responsibility

When a team is assigned a work or has to achieve an objective, each member of the team should be responsible enough to complete their portion of the task. If even one member of the team is not responsible to complete their portion, then the entire objective is at a risk and can lead to harsh consequences.

After all “Boondh Boondh se sagar banta ha”

Communication

During the process of performing a task, there needs to be effective communication between the group members for two main reasons.

The first reason can be to know the status of the work performed so that the percentage task completion of the task can be gauzed. The second reason can be related to the clarity of the task between the members. If even one member interprets the task incorrectly, the whole objective of the group is put at stake.

Confidence and Trust

The organization cannot be successful if there is no element of trust in it. As in the case of valley exercise, persons can take the risk to cross the valley only since they trust the other two. Similarly for the organization to be successful, managers and workers have to follow the Theory X which tells the people or managers have trust on the other people or employees for the job to be completed effectively.

Innovation

When the team memebers have gelled , then innovation is something that comes on its own. A good team always has a good number of people who come up with innovative ideas all the time.

To conclude :

“There are three types of workers: those who get things done, those who watch things get done, and those who wonder how so much got done.”
The third type of workers are team workers.