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Natural Teams

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A typical "CorporateTheatre" workshop does not use any notes, formal presentations, projectors, or handouts. Participants take back what they experience. Once experienced, like cycling, swimming or driving, it becomes a part of the experiencer. One may not swim again. That is a personal decision. But ten years later, when you hit the water, you know you have not forgotten swimming. In numerous programmes and workshops throughout my own corporate career, I have got bundles of handouts which I never looked at afterwards. Worse, I realised that I was paying less attention to the process, thinking that I could always go through the handouts later. As a facilitator, I therefore took the decision that I would do my best to create a platform for directly experiencing the learning rather than talking or hearing about it.

All the same, often, during the course of the workshops, as concepts are explored and redefined, participants have expressed the desire to get some kind of handout that could capture some of the very exciting insights that were experienced and shared, for future reference, as well as for circulation among Team members. I will be using this forum to share those insights and how they were experienced and defined. As these insights contain the distilled wisdom of thousands of participants with considerable experience and expertise, readers may find them relevant and useful.

While going through these concepts and definitions, kindly keep in mind that they have come out of experiencing and not from a conscious, deliberate attempt to create a new concept or definition. What is more, these have been powerfully and consistently reinforced over hundreds of workshops, with participants from various backgrounds that represent almost every segment of industry or hierarchy.

To start with, let me share the definition of a "Team":

Team: A Team is a group of people who have the following essential attributes:

Once these three pillars are created, you have a 'Natural Team'. A Natural Team is a very powerful entity. They will find the competencies, create the resources, manage time, enjoy change and challenge, and communicate powerfully irrespective of voice, accent, or vocabulary, simply because no natural Team wants to be second to another Team. The basic programming of a Natural Team is to win, to be first.

The ultimate challenge of Leadership is to create natural Teams. Once you do so, you don't have to make people perform. People WANT TO PERFORM. Still better, a Leader who creates a natural Team becomes an Enabler of Leadership - where the Team becomes the Leader. Individuals take on situational leadership, irrespective of designation or seniority, depending on who has the greatest clarity, creativity, and energy in a given task at a given time, and the designated Leader enables and empowers this process.

(I am only giving the concise definitions here. In case any reader asks for greater clarity, I would be happy to elaborate .)

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