C.A. for Episode 3: Group dynamics

Dian was appointed as the Team Leader for Team Equity for the Spritzer task and was open to ideas thrown by team members. Based on the brainstorming session, Team Equity decided that the most suitable strategy for this task was back to nature strategy. To support this strategy, the following activities were planned and executed based on the limited allocated budget:
* Dian’s potted plants and bird chirping background sound effects to create the natural garden ambience to tie in with the theme “Nothing is as green as Spritzer”.
* Masami’s quiz – to add interactivity for the factory visitors; answers can be obtained from the boards that were put up in the factory.
* Masami’s idea for a sketch – as an ice breaker and to elicit smiles from the visitors.
* Jennifer’s bean sprouts analogy – instead of deciding for the visitors, Jennifer left the decision, whether Spritzer natural mineral water is more beneficial compared to RO water, to the visitors as “seeing is believing”. Jennifer was the team’s liaison person with Spritzer.
* C.A.’s coloured stones analogy – explaining the benefits of the minerals contained in Spritzer natural mineral water. Coloured stones belongs to Dian.
* Boon Yew’s idea to arrange the tree trunks in the water bar for the visitors to sit (lots of moving to be done and those tree trunks were not light) to tie in with the theme.
* Ridzuan volunteered to be the tour guide.
I am happy to share that Team Equity had very positive energy as soon as we finished our tasks and were confident of winning this task. However, a couple of hours prior to results announcement, your truly and Ridzuan was shown a video clip of the infomercial done by Team Asset. They were very proud of it and were gloating that they will be winning. In fact, Ridzuan was very concerned because he thought that the infomercial was very presentable. I disagreed with him because in my opinion, the informercial neglected to focus on the winning criteria that is to highlight the benefits of Spritzer’s natural mineral water over RO water.

During the results announcement, the outcome was no surprise to me. I have a confession to make: in line with keeping a positive attitude, I was the team member who kept on saying “safety shot”, episode 2 onwards, to the rest of Team Equity. In ALL of my interviews for all of the episodes that I was in, which was never shown on TV, I mentioned that I was the member who contributed the least because I thought by doing so I would have higher chances to be booted off the show. Sounds crazy eh? Yes, I confess that I am a nut.

Bruce Tuckman proposed the four-stage model known as the Tuckman’s Stages for a group:
* Forming (pretending to get on or get along with others);
* Storming (letting down the politeness barrier and trying to get down to the issues even if tempers flare up );
* Norming (getting used to each other and developing trust and productivity);
* Performing (working in a group to a common goal on a highly efficient and cooperative basis).
The stages may not come in the above sequence; but I would like to believe that Team Equity stormed it out in Episode 1. Watching how Team Asset go through the different stages of group dynamics on TV made me think: ‘is that how the nation’s top executives behaves?’.