Growth (GUI)

Contributed by Grace Tan on Workplace in 2019

GROWTH

Overview

Decided to explore an old-school activity with buddy Jian Rong Maurice Lee (NYC) this week. The pax were given a special project of planting green beans and had to be responsible to take care of it throughout their expeditions and to bring the beans back to RAC safely.

Objective

We wanted to centre the entire week’s course on the word “GROWTH”. Since the programme involved the pax going to GUI to do farming, we thought it will be a good way to follow through with the experience by giving the pax something tangible that they can eventually relate to.

Learning Points (Debrief)

1. Like the beans on Day 1, they (pax) were all ordinary individuals with untapped potential.

2. Over the days, roots grew and the beans started germinating. This was possible with the due care given by ensuring they had the necessary essentials for growth.

3. The process of germination represents the growth of themselves as a person. The roots signified the new friendships forged that allowed them to find the sense of belonging with the group. The young leaves were symbolic of the maturity that took place as they went through the various expeditions, resulting in the growth of a new plant from just a seed.

Application

1. How will you Ensure that the change that started continues? Otherwise, like the plant, it will just wither and die.

2. What are the factors that will help contribute to you continuing to thrive and be able to bring change to yourself and those around you?

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‘Body Parts’ debrief

Still linking to the theme of “GROWTH”, we used the ‘body parts’ debriefing tool to wrap up on Thurs night. The common words that came up were “support” and “initiative”, to which we shared they were key ingredients to making teamwork work.

The next morning we tried a new game of modified Volleyball that became an unintended extension of this debrief. The game was played in this manner:

1. In pairs, the pax had to share either a towel or t-shirt to be used to catch the implement (ball).

2. Similar to the game of Volleyball, they had to first make 3 touches (passes) within their own team then pass over to the opposing team.

3. Point is won if opponent did not catch the ball with the towel/shirt.

4. Modifications to the actual rules included allowing pax to catch the ball after 1-bounce.

5. The implements were changed over time - big bouncy ball, floorball, ping-pong ball.

Initially the pax struggled even though they started with the bigger ball. There was visible frustration and there wasn’t much initiative amongst the pax to make things work. Maurice and myself began to panic a little. We decided to give them abit more time and changed to a smaller ball. We also reminded them of the ‘body parts’ debrief and what they shared about showing support and exercising initiative to help.

Subsequently, they managed to catch the ball and were more successful in passing it around. Silence was broken with their laughters eventually when they saw one another shuffling around and making gymnastic moves to retrieve the ball. A few laughed at their own slip-ups but were fast to recover and go about working tgt to get the passes going.

We increased the challenge by throwing them 2 ping-pong balls to keep in play. Eventually, we swop one of the ping-pong balls with the first ball they played with and it was a world of a difference now.

We realised this impromptu arrangement has much potential to be used to drive home the msg of working as a team with different individuals who have different talents. And that’s when growth can take place; with our strengths being used to enrich others, whilst our weaknesses can be further sharpened to become a strength one day.