The RAMS Unite
One sunny afternoon, on the cardinal coordinates which dictates our future, four strangers met to embark on a journey of self discovery and exploration. The first to arrive was Miguel Bustamante Perez, a junior transfer student who had just started getting to know his surroundings. Then came Reem Kuwaifi, a freshman student who has lived in the metropolitan Richmond area all her life. Soon after, Alex Dattatreyan, another freshman that is searching for his purpose in life, arrived. Finally, still waking up from his siesta, Sam West, a freshman as well, arrived to meet his partners in crime. These four together would be known as the RAMS.
The RAMS decided to enter the source of knowledge itself, the library, to foment and create bonds strong enough to carry them all the way to their destination. From the pool of knowledge available to them, they decided to use five team building activities that seemed useful. These were: fears in a hat, capitalism, charades, Pictionary, and who-are-you.
Fears In a Hat
Fear of spiders
- The usual rationale to this fear is that spiders are, by nature, scary. Their legs, body, eyes, webs, and nature are all cited as being the scariest, but are never fully explained as to why they are frightening. The beginning of this fear tends to stem from childhood experiences, such as having a spider jump into your arm. However, adults can also gain this fear from their own experiences.
Fear of the future:
- This fear is usually present in most people, if not on the surface, hidden within their conscience. Everyone is scared of the future because it is unknown to us-- and what is unknown is frightening. We are all in difficult career paths, surrounded by other's that are smarter, more studious, more persistent, and overall better than us. How, then, can we be not afraid of our future, when the people who we will have to compete for our jobs are living right next to us?
Fear of stepping on a crab on the beach:
- Although this fear is very specific it is an example of an overarching general fear. That is, fear of loss-of-control. It is not necessarily the action of losing control of something, but,rather, the fact that we do not already have control over certain things. In this case, one cannot control where these crabs are hiding under the sand. This fear stems from human society, as they have constantly gained control over many aspects of their lives. Therefore, not having control over something can cause anxiety, stress, and fear.
Fear of cockroaches:
- This fear is very similar to that of spiders, the only difference being the subject causing the fear. Also, cockroaches are usually linked to trash, sewers, and disease, which can augment the fear.
Fear of falling of an escalator while its going down:
- Escalators are a fairly new invention, relative to human existence. There are many people who haven’t used or learned about them yet, such as those living in third world countries. So, this fear can be understandable for those people. However, for us, this turned out to be a bit silly. Yet, all these other fears can be regarded as silly by people who do not suffer these fears. So, the fear of falling off an escalator while its going down is a great example of how fears can be irrational and senseless, yet still affect many people.
Fear of public speaking:
- This is a very common fear. It can be said that almost everyone, at some point in their lives have experienced this frightening event. It is hard to pinpoint the nature of this fear. Why are we scared to speak in public? Is it that we do not want the attention? Or, are we afraid of being judged? Is it to avoid embarrassment? Or maybe it is an evolutionary reaction in that we do not want to make ourselves vulnerable to others? Whatever the reason, once we overcome this fear, by stepping on the stage, it becomes much easier to do it again.
Once we finished verbalizing the concepts of each fear, we had a small discussion about them. All the fears presented here are fairly relatable. It might not be that all of us share these fears, but we all have similar fears. Sam is afraid of spiders, up to a point of being considered a phobia. Reem has a fear of flying, also to a point of being a phobia. Although these are not the same fear, the physical and psychological reactions to these are the same. In that way, they can understand each other and their fears. Miguel is also afraid of spiders but not to such an extent. His fear comes from a childhood experience that has impacted him through his life. Alex seemed to have some very particular fears but they were not too out of place. The group agreed that the fear of public speaking is something we all experienced. However, this fear was also one that could be overcome. Once you put yourself out there--doing a speech, presentation, or whatever else-- the fear retreats back into your mind. Once you are done, you breath a sigh of relief and are no longer scared. However, this fear is very dependent on the actions of the audience. If the audience gives constructive criticism and encouragement, one is less likely to be afraid to speak publicly again. If the audience is the opposite, your fear of public speaking will most likely increase. Lastly, it seems that all of us are scared of things that we do not have complete and direct control over. We cannot control where spiders,cockroaches, or crabs go. We cannot control how other people judge us. We ultimately cannot control our future.
Capitalism
by Alex
In capitalism, the entire deck of 52 cards is evenly distributed among the players. There is a minimum of four players required and a maximum of six players to play capitalism. After the first round, each player is assigned a role based on performance. The player that wins (the one who runs out of cards first) is the president; then comes the vice president, middle man 1 and 2, trash and bum. The president then trades two of his worst cards for the bum’s best cards (president gets to choose what he wants) and the vice president gets to do the same but with only one card and with the player labeled “Trash”. To play, the first game starts with the card 3 of clubs (or the president, once a president is determined). The next player must play a card that is either 3 or higher. If he plays a 3 on top of a 3, the next player in line is skipped. The point of the game is to get rid of all of your cards before the other players, so you can dominate the “market” and keep winning the game over and over.
After a very competitive round of games, we stopped playing. One common theme we found was that the president, once established, generally wins many more times. The reason being he/she can trade his or her worst cards to the bum, increasing his or her chance to win. In this case, with only four players, the two cards did not make as much of a difference since each person had so many cards, but it was enough that the president won more than anyone else (at least, that is what is supposed to happen). Sam, for instance, was the first to become president, then lost it the next game. This signifies how quickly one can lose their position. What we gathered from this, aside from learning how each other work under pressure and competition, was that in the end, Reem was always the bum. This is an allegory to how hard it is to rise to the top of society. In our free market system, it is very hard to rise to the top. In other words, it’s hard to go from low-middle class to upper class. The upper class always take and take, and give little (the excess). Ironically, the president, as seen in capitalism, relies on the bum. The president relies on taking the two best cards the bum has to give, and he relies on handing out his bad cards. This represents the mutual relationship between the best and the worst of any society or group. In regards to our own benefit from playing capitalism, I think it kind of helped us realize how we react in this scenario where we all want to win. We could gauge each others’ reactions and it helped to build our communication on a different, deeper level. Rather than just talking about what we gained from it, we could see it. Everyone wants to win. In this game, we could see just how competitive each of our teammates got, and how we responded to that pressure to win. Everyone responded well, especially Reem, who took the fall each game. Everyone got a better sense of how we work as a group and individually.
Charades
by Miguel
This game is very simple to play. The group makes a list of object, or ideas and puts them in a hat, one idea per piece of paper. If the group is divided into teams, each team exchanges their lists. So, each team would be making their opponents a list. Then, one person draws from the list and acts out the idea or object in the paper. The other person in the team guesses what his/her teammate is doing. The complete list for this instance of charades was: internet, Tarzan, ram, donkey from Shrek, Whitney Houston, jellyfish, backpack, and eyebrow threading. Reem and Alex were one group, and Sam and Miguel the other.
After playing this game, the group felt somewhat more comfortable around each other. The reason being that some of the items listed were comical to act out. For example, Sam had to act out swinging from a vine, beating his chest like a gorilla, and screaming wildly to imitate Tarzan. Some of the listed things were somewhat complex to act out. Alex had to pretend to type in a computer, symbolize bits of data, and act out these things traveling through cables for Reem to guess internet. The most impacting observation from this activity was how incredibly inefficient it was to communicate without language. The person guessing would go through about ten to twenty guesses before getting it right. Sometimes, it wasn't even possible to guess the item. This activity clearly exemplifies how a team can become disjointed and separated from a goal if there is lack of direct communication. Also, this activity taught the group that, sometimes, you have to do things you do not want to do for the improvement of the group.
Pictionary
by Sam
Very similar to charades, Pictionary involves using drawings rather than actions to convey a meaning to a teammate. We split into two teams and each team thought of four phrases or objects, which we wrote down on cards. We then swapped cards and the other team had to use those phrases or objects. The rules were as follows; (1) the person drawing may not talk at all, (2) the drawer may not draw exactly what the phrase of object was, (3) No words could be used in the drawing, and (4) the teammate had one and a half minutes to try to guess the object or phrase.
What we took away from Pictionary was that it is much harder to communicate to each other without using our words. It is vital that we keep open lines of communication while working on this project together or we might not be able to function well together. While this task wasn't as difficult as charades, it still became frustrating when you had a clear idea in your mind and were not able to convey it to the other person.
Who are you
by Reem
The way you play this game is you write the name of a famous person dead or alive and tape it to a persons back. The person can not know what is written on the paper and the other people playing must provide hints so the person can guess what is written on the paper. We learned that communication is key, and that some of us are more up to date on pop culture than others. I was always under the impression that everyone knew the same things I knew, but when it came to Miguel he was not very up to date on the pop culture, it was harder for him to guess the person written on the paper, because he had never heard of him. This made the game a lot more interesting for the rest of us. We learned to work together as a team while having a good time.
The End of the Beginning
As the fun and games came to an end, the group decided to have a more serious discussion on our future as a team. Now that we all got an idea of our strength and weaknesses, and became more comfortable with each other, it was time to decide each person’s role in the team. A very helpful method to do this is the Belbin’s Team Role Theory. This theory divides a group’s individuals as having nine possible roles, which are placed in three categories. The action oriented roles are: shaper, implementer, and complete-finisher. The people oriented roles are: coordinator, team worker, and resource investigator. Lastly, the thought oriented roles are: plant, monitor-evaluator, and specialist. After some discussion with the group, it was decided that Reem fits the role of a monitor-evaluator because she weights every decision for their pros and cons. Alex is most likely a shaper because he was constantly stimulating the group with his novel ideas and solutions to challenges we faced. Also, as part of being a shaper, Alex stated that he is somewhat argumentative and defensive, which might be an issue for the team. Miguel appears to be a implementer since he gathered the group together and constantly made sure everyone was working. His flaw may come in that he is inflexible when faced with an unknown challenge. Lastly, Sam seems to be a monitor-evaluator since he can look at the project almost as someone from outside the group and try to see the best solution possible for a problem. Though this trait can be useful, sometimes he can come off as stubborn or inflexible when he decides on a course of action.
Seeing that we only have three out of the nine possible roles, the group decided to explore other roles which we could fill. Sam saw himself as a possible specialist in the he could focus completely on any one section of the project and constantly work on that. Miguel feels that he could also fill the role of a complete finisher since has also been pushing the group to complete the work before the deadline. Alex could also fit into the role of a monitor since is critical of his and the groups work. Reem could also fit the role of a team worker since she had made sure everyone was working together and made sure the group attended the meetings. With these three new roles covered, the team would be missing just three roles. The missing roles are coordinator, resource investigator, and plant. These missing roles will weaken the group in the areas of creativity and cohesion. Everyone will have to strive to cover these roles together by going out of their comfort zone and providing the group with creativity, outside resources, and leadership. With this in mind, the RAMS embark into the project determined to do their best.
Team Building Exercises Links
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