The below article has been contributed by Andy Pan, Director of Training at Right Impact Training, Singapore.
Continue reading “Why Positive Reinforcement Works In Improving Performance?”
Author: naren@hybreed.co
People familiar with Patrick Lencioni’s “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” will be delighted to realise that he has turned the formula upside down to reveal more insights into the concept of efficient leadership for CEOs. This book starts with “Result” as the first temptation of a CEO and ends with “Trust” as the last one!
Continue reading “Book Review : The Five Temptations Of A CEO”
Program
Reckitt Benckiser | Intern Engagement
Background
Reckitt Benckiser Group plc (RB) is a British multinational consumer goods company headquartered in Slough, England. It is a producer of health, hygiene, and home products. The company was formed by the merger of British company Reckitt & Colman plc and Dutch company Benckiser NV.
RB’s brands include the antiseptic brand Dettol, the analgesic Disprin, the sore throat medicine Strepsils, the hair removal brand Veet and a bunch of other popular brands like Durex, Colin, Cherry Blossom, to name a few.
To keep pace with the market growth, RB regularly hires from the best campuses across the country. The current intervention was planned as a part of an engagement program for the 32 interns coming from various campuses like IIMs, IIT, XLRI, MDI etc.. They are going through a six weeks internship program at RB, post which they would return to their respective campuses.
Objective
Internship is a way for both the candidates and the organization to understand each other better. It can be challenging for candidates because for most of them, it is a first-time experience in a corporate environment.
A good internship program would not only make this journey from campus to corporate smooth but would also equip them to know and learn the critical competencies needed to succeed in the corporate world. The ability to communicate well and present impactfully, was clearly identified as one such competency.
Our objective was to hence engage with these interns and enable them to communicate & present their work virtually (due to lockdown) to a diverse group of people in the organization, in an impactful manner.
Solution
After much internal discussions and brainstorming on what would be the best way to deliver the results for this group, two key insights emerged:
1) In a varied group like this, different individuals would be at different levels of skill and understanding.
2) It was not enough if the participants were comfortable with the nuances of communication and presentation. They needed to be equally
comfortable with the technology platform too.
In terms of the actual delivery of the workshops, what we were clear was that to make the workshop experience engaging, the 4 steps of the Experiential methodology needed to be followed: Act – Engage – Share – Reflect.
ACT
ENGAGE
SHARE
REFLECT
Also in line with the core philosophy of our Digital-U workshops, the workshops had to have the human touch, follow a holistic approach, and have actionable insights for the participants. Hence along with designing the workshop flow, we also designed customized workbooks for the participants, so that all learning could be captured and revisited.
HUMAN TOUCH
HOLISTIC APPROACH
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
Hence, for the objective to be met, we decided to split the whole engagement into two parts. The first part was to take the interns through: ● The fundamental pillars (the 3D’s) of Design, Delivery and Drive for creating impact through their presentations. ● The nuances of understanding and becoming familiar with the virtual platform (MS Teams) on which the whole presentation was to be done. The second part of the intervention was in terms of actual delivery and practice. The proof of the pudding after all, is in the eating. Hence the objective here was to get them to present back, basis all the inputs they picked up in the earlier session, and receive critical feed-forward on how they could improve their presentations for the desired impact. Working with their HR team, the intervention was hence planned as a series of two Virtual Workshops spaced by a week to each other.
Execution
Phase 1: On the day of the workshop, all the 32 interns logged on to the MS-Teams platform. Unlike most learning sessions, we always like to start our sessions with a quick introduction followed by some fun energizers. After all, there can be no learning, if there is no engagement upfront. Once everyone was energized and engaged, we delved deep into the topic with trusted design frameworks, activities, videos and the platform walk-through. Unlike the generic webinars, these virtual workshops melded the ‘virtual’ with the ‘experiential’ to ensure that participants had a very interactive experience, indeed. The workshop concluded by giving participants the following task: “Work on your presentations basis everything that you have learnt and come back with the final product, for us, in the next Virtual Workshop.”
Phase 2: There was huge excitement and nervous energy as the interns came back to present their work in the second virtual workshop. Since there were 32 interns, the group was split into 3 smaller cohorts, so that each person could get the personalized attention that they deserved from a Senior Facilitator. Truth be told, each presentation spoke of the thought and hard work which had gone into designing them. Each presentation was followed by a detailed feed-forward, that put the spotlight on the small nuances and improvements that could further enhance their presentations. It was during these discussions that the theories learnt earlier, came to life for the participants. Besides that, listening to the feed forward for each presenter helped participants gather various impactful presentation tips and best practices. Truly, we learn best by doing! Furthermore, sharing our thoughts with each other and reflecting on them reinforces the lessons and ensures long-term retention. This is the power of experiential learning!
Impact
This is what
Ms. Saranya Mukherjee, Lead-Early Careers Development, Campus and Employer Branding from RB had to say:
“We were very happy with how well organized the whole training was despite the unusual virtual setting. The FocusU team was very approachable and helpful in sharing all necessary resources. The training was well designed and combined theoretical learning with hands-on practical practice.”
Program
IT Consulting | Virtual Team Building
Objective
Due to the high demand of Digitalization, the team had been working very hard during the 6 weeks of confinement. It was indeed tough to maintain a balance between the highly demanding work, and the family for most employees. Despite that, the team had been able to deliver good results and had been very committed.
Hence the head of the department has been very keen to offer them a small break out of the daily routine work.
Background
Our client is one of the premier organizations in the IT Consulting space. They regroup people with years of experience in the things they do best, “Deliver the Goods.” The company helps their clients sustain and extend their IT strategies and objectives whilst effectively mitigating the IT risks which may arise.
The key services offered by the company include: IT Strategy & Governance, Project Management, System Integration, Big Data Analytics, IT Assurance and Cyber Security.The company has worked on projects in Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
Solution
After internal brainstorming and discussions with the client, the engagement finalized was:
Actual Execution:
PHASE 1 : BOMS Challenge – for the smaller team
How it works?
Think of it like the Ironman fitness challenge. The buzzer goes off and the action starts! A series of challenges – one after the other, that engage different aspects – Body, Mind & Sole. In case you are wondering why this is called the BOMS Challenge, the previous sentence would give you a hint. A funny, crazy acronym that just stuck with all our participants and us!
BOMS (Body, Mind and Sole) is an activity with a combination of physical, mental and running challenges. The buzz for the activity was generated as the session started – with a few fun energizers! This got the participants primed up, in a competitive mode and ready to go, the minute the stop clock started.
Teams working in smaller groups had 15 minutes to crack an assortment of challenges – involving finding different items from the house, solving riddles, and also doing some “crazy” things! The challenge was done in two rounds – and it was nice to see teams coming back with resonating war cries that built up the energy!
Before they could realize it, 45 minutes had zipped by! Finally, the scores were unveiled and the winning team was announced. The team came out of the whole experience totally energized!
Impact:
The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive – sample a few:
Thanks FocusU for an engaging and fun session. I never imagined we can do a mini team building in a virtual environment. It’s a great booster, especially when we are all working remotely. It’s an excellent way to connect to our team members and know them better. Thanks again to your team and you. Keep up the good work.
Head of department
Thank you to you and the team for such a lovely time we had virtually. Never thought it will be so fun and that we will have so much of laughter. Hope we can do this activity with my whole team. I’ll speak to the management team tomorrow. Cheers.
HR Executive
PHASE 2 : #Donotrushchallenge – for the larger team engagement
Thanks to the impact of the Phase 1 session, done for a team of 12 participants, the Head of Department decided to go in for the engagement for the whole department of 60 participants.
This time though, the activity chosen was #Dontrushchallenge as this was trendy and had gone viral on social media. It was also felt that this activity would allow the team members to experience something different & new while challenging them to get out of their comfort zones. The key messaging to be landed was also that even at such times, where there was social distancing, they could all still be virtually connected through a fun activity and experience!
The entire session was kicked off with a few virtual energizers to get everyone into the right spirit for a challenge like this. Once everyone was sufficiently charged up, our Facilitators explained the ground rules and parameters for the #Donotrushchallenge – and then moved the participants into different break-out rooms!
The challenge was simple: Each and every participant had to shoot a video of 15 sec – with some conditions and parameters of course. Participants together brainstormed different ideas and recorded their video clips on smartphones. Use of props, help from family members was encouraged while shooting of the videos. The whole process of putting ideas into action, creating videos was thoroughly absorbing for all participants.
For example, one of the teams that had “Keeping Fit” as a theme, came up with a storyline of eating chocolates in one clip, and doing exercises in another. Each group had a unique storyline illustrated uniquely too!
Like in the teaser session that was run earlier, time just flew by. Finally came the wow moment for all the teams: Showcasing of all the final videos live and having team members to vote for them!! The excitement at this stage was palpable.
The activity was brought to a close by a meaningful debrief at the end of the session, where several themes related to good teamwork cropped up. Here were a few:
• Ownership: Every team had to come up with their own video. However, the quality of the video depended on the extent of ownership taken by each and every team member.
• Resilience: In uncertain times, the success of a team depends on how resilient they are. And a team’s resilience depends on how effectively they can tap onto each other’s strength, ask for help and support each other.
• Situational leadership: Natural leaders emerged during the course of the activity. We used the observations to debrief around the importance of situational leadership at the workplace. Leadership is not through the title we hold, but rather through the actions we take. Anyone can take up leadership through their actions at the workplace.
Impact:
Like in Phase 1, even after Phase 2, we received a lot of positive feedback from the participants that gave us the sense that the intervention had made an impact on them.
Here are a few we received:
• Thank you. It was a pleasure participating. We did enjoy ourselves
• We had a great time doing the video. Thanks
• Good job team❤️.We might be not the best.. but we did our best.. that is more important! We enjoyed
• Thanks FOCUSU. Much needed fun during the confinement
• We indeed had a great time together. Thank you FocusU team!
• Hi FocusU team ☺️. Today was really a refreshing change and break from the routine life. I fully enjoyed myself. Thanks again ✌
• Keep up the good work! Thanks to the whole FocusU team
Can playing a business simulation help you not only survive, but thrive and come out stronger even during a global pandemic? I absolutely believe It can! In fact, you gain insights naturally as a result of playing simulations. Here are the 3 lessons I learnt from playing business simulations.