Team Building is key to any organization.  It promotes effectiveness, efficiency, and trust within teams.  It is the most effective way to bond every member of the team to achieve the impossible.
On 23-24 October, 2020, Hellen Tech held a Team Building Development Workshop arranged by a professional Team Building Organization.  The Workshop consists of four parts: 1) CS War Games, 2) Inspiration and Coordination through Ball Dancing on Drum, 3) Conquer the Impossible – Overcome “The Wall (HuaYe)”,  4) Team Building via Meal Preparing Exercise.  There are 170 Hellen Team Members joined and successfully demonstrated together as a team can achieve the impossible and reach teams’ goal and objectives together.

The two days of training and development, our 170 teams member (Hellen Family) realized the importance and significance of Teams’ effort and capability.  More importantly each team member walked away with something they value and treasure.  They know they can use and practice in their workplace, i.e. Team Effort and Team Achievement towards the same and one goal .

This Workshop imparted on me significantly.  It completely changed my way of work and thinking.  No matter what I do now, I will do my very best from what I learned from.  This Workshop is not just a game but a culture, a mind-changing exercise that clearly showed each one the importance of having a Team in order to finish a task or to accomplish a goal.

One activity that I can never forget: “The Wall” challenge.  One female colleague from Electronic Research and Development Department and myself are appointed as the Commanding Officers of our team.  Our responsibility is to direct the whole team to climb “The Wall”.  The rules are: When team failed, it is the Officers who will take the penalty which is to perform “Push Up” 20 times on first failure.  This penalty however will double on each subsequent failure.

Due to lack of experience in climbing “The Wall”, we failed twice.  According to the rule, both myself and my female colleague as Commanding Officers, we had to be penalized.  As a man doing 20+40 push-ups it was no easy job, but I managed to complete it.  For our lady Officer, it was not as easy but surprisingly she kept on going and painstakingly finish it just because she believed in Team Spirit was very important. 

When we made our third attempt to climb “The Wall”, our Training Officer asked us to check out our team members who formed as “Facilitators-our Human Wall”in order to be able to climb over“The Wall”.  He told us that it was them who bore the most of responsibility in meeting this challenge of “Climbing The Wall”.  I turned my attention to my team members and saw on each of their shoulders there were numerous footsteps and bruises on the shoulder.  I couldn’t help myself but shedding my tears for their hardship and suffering in order for our team to achieve our goal.  I then realized if it wasn’t our team, we could not and would not be able to finish our challenge.  It just takes Team Effort to be able to do it and not individually.

Finally through the team effort, we succeeded climbing over “The Wall” and together we completed our mission.  Thanks to all that worked so hard together as a Team.

Development in Chinese it has the meaning of stone which used to start a fire in the old days.  This fire symbolizes a light of hope.  That is Development which guides us to the road of success.
Liu Zan, Mechanical Assembly Department

Flash Back #3：
”Ball Dancing on Drum Inspiration” Exercise looks simple at the beginning.  Very quickly I realize that it is not as easy as it looks.  After two rounds of the Exercise failures, our team analyze what we did and come to a conclusion.  We then work out a strategy to master this game:  1) Analyzing team’s strength and weakness and re-position team members to balance the team pull strength on the drum, 2) When ball bounced off onto the floor, we must move the Drum back to vertical axis of the falling ball,  3) Each one must insure to pull tight on the rope so the drum remain level, and 4) Maintain the ball bounce height.  With these four actions, the team must listen carefully to our Team Leader instruction where and how to move together to keep the ball on the drum.  In the final round of competition, we won and was the Champion in this game.  We would not have won if we did not work together as a team coordinating harmoniously between us.  

Though our game competition came to an end, yet through this Exercise our Team Spirit remains in everyone’s mind.  I came to realize that if a group with each one very strong in their respective field but each one work independently, chance of succeeding is very possible.  Only through everyone working together as a Team can we succeed.
Wu Qing, Material Planning and Control Department