Why High performance team?
A team can accomplish much more than the sum of its individual members, yet frequently groups of people are seen to achieve lesser than what would have been accomplished by the individual members. Teams, whose members are aligned with a purpose, feel a challenge in their task. They have a strong sense of camaraderie, feel responsibility for the outcome and experience growth as a team and in their personal lives. This will tend to sustain motivation over the long haul.
Eight Principles of Good Practice for All Experiential Learning Activities
Regardless of the experiential learning activity, both the experience and the learning are fundamental. In the learning process and in the relationship between the learner and any facilitator(s) of learning, there is a mutual responsibility. All teams are empowered to achieve the principles which follow, yet at the same time, the facilitator(s) of learning is/are expected to take the lead in ensuring both the quality of the learning experience and of the work produced, and in supporting the learner to use the principles, which underlie the pedagogy of experiential learning.
- Intention
- Preparedness and Planning
- Authenticity
- Reflection
- Orientation and Training
- Monitoring and Continuous Improvement
- Assessment and Evaluation
- Acknowledgment
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
- Team Building
- Trust / Bonding
- Effective Communication
- Managerial skills
- Leadership
- Personality Development
Group initiatives, involving real and imaginary ground-based obstacles, present physical, mental and emotional challenges that invite a group to explore team work strategies and demonstrate for themselves the importance of planning, cooperation and communication.
The success of the group in meeting the challenges of an initiative sequence will depend not only upon individual strengths but also upon creativity, tenacity, strategic planning, shared risk taking, the allocation of resources and the ability to create a climate in which individuals are able to trust each other and in which each member’s contribution are recognized and valued. Whatever the focus of a program, nearly every group comes away from the experience with a renewed sense of community and common purpose.
