Issue No. 194 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a 12-minute video clip to energize your team—and get them thinking “together we can.” And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
The Cadence of Team Building
Let me net it out for you. Would you invest $7.98 and 12 minutes to enrich the team building culture in your organization? Of course you would.
So here’s the plan. Order the 1934 DVD, King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread. Give your staff team (or department team) the movie synopsis—but just show them the last 12 minutes. In my opinion, it’s the best video clip on team building ever produced.
Named one of the 10 best films of 1934 by the New York Times, King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread depicts the deep depression-era cultural discouragement of the time, but lands on an upbeat solution. No need to waste your time on the entire 73-minute film—often termed as a propaganda piece for the idea of a socialistic community. (Any inferences to today’s economic recession are purely coincidental. Note that I’m not recommending the film’s message, but you can use this closing scene as a powerful team building tool.)
Buyer beware! The black and white DVD is very, very poor quality—but (my opinion) that adds to the gritty framing of a robust dialogue on team building. I’ll screen this 12-minute memorable clip at a board retreat in two weeks. I use it in my Management Buckets workshops and other team building days with clients. It never, never, never fails to evoke a spirited and uplifting discussion about the nature and wonders of a well-functioning team.
I call the clip “The Cadence of Team Building,” because the background rhythms of shovels, picks, axes and sweat rise to a symphonic explosion of unbridled exhilaration and celebration. (You’ll understand my over-the-top rhetoric when you view it. It’s amazing.)
Suggestion: preview it first, of course, and then ask two or three others to prepare discussion questions for use after your team views the clip.
To order this DVD from Amazon, click on this link: King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) (After viewing the DVD): What are the words or pictures about team work that literally jumped off the screen as you viewed this 12-minute clip? Describe a moment when our team’s work reached a climax like that.
2) Not counting here, what’s the best team you ever served on—and what made it special?
Pejorative Labeling - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Operations Bucket, Chapter 17, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to affirm the high and noble calling of management and the spiritual gift of administration.
Olan Hendrix writes that “Leaders must learn to manage, and managers must learn to lead.” Unfortunately, we often use simplistic definitions and differentiations between the two that minimize the God-honoring work of management. The worst statement is, “Managers do things right, while leaders do the right thing.” What CEO would stand in front of her staff and attempt to inspire team members with that management put-down?
In their book, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy, a Fortune 500 company chairman, and Ram Charan, author and consultant, write:
“Lots of business leaders like to think that the top dog is exempt from the details of actually running things. It’s a pleasant way to view leadership: you stand on the mountaintop, thinking strategically and attempting to inspire your people with visions, while managers do the grunt work. This idea creates a lot of aspirations for leadership, naturally. Who wouldn’t want to have all the fun and glory while keeping their hands clean? Conversely, who wants to tell people at a cocktail party, ‘My goal is to be manager,’ in an era when the term has become pejorative? This way of thinking is a fallacy, one that creates immense damage.”
The authors say you get things done with three core processes: 1) selecting other leaders, 2) setting the strategic direction, and 3) conducting operations. They add, “Many people regard execution as detail work that’s beneath the dignity of a business leader. That’s wrong. To the contrary, it’s a leader’s most important job.”
Amen! And for more resources from the Operations Bucket, including Olan Hendrix’s excellent article, “Management That Leads,” visit the Management Buckets website.
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