Using StringBall to Build Trust During Company Expansion

Learn how a trainer used StringBall with employees from four different sites at a growing industrial firm to build cross-site trust and cooperation

Most of the time, when a company is small, it doesn't have to promote its company culture. The first employees are usually there because they want to be, and leaders are able to handle problems as they arise. But as companies grow and workers are dispersed among various teams and worksites, leaders have to adopt a more proactive approach to promote their organization's shared values and vision.

For a growing industrial company in Germany, this approach took the form of a year-long internal communications campaign with a theme of communication. The company was transitioning from a small business with a family-like atmosphere to a medium sized enterprise with employees at four sites, and leaders wanted to optimize how the sites interacted to sustain their tight-knit culture.

Scaling culture starts with a clear vision

Working with Tanya Hartwig, a coach and author who specializes in communication and conflict management, leaders developed the following culture goals:

• We are better and we can become even better. It is important for people to work well together.
• We want to treat each other in a friendly way, and communicate in a spirit of partnership and equality, no matter what position we hold.
• We want to grow and prosper as friends and partners.
  
• Is it better to wait and see? Or actively intervene and defend your rules?

Share the vision with employees, then invite them to adopt it for themselves

Hartwig then designed a voluntary 'communication day' to give employees from the four different sites a chance to meet and develop their own ideas for how to improve cross-site trust and collaboration. It was part team-builder / part soft skills training, and was open to anyone who wanted to attend. There were seven sessions total with 12-15 participants each. StringBall was a key activity for the day.

"The itinerary," Hartwig explains, "involved making a joint visit to a customer or supplier. Only some of the employees had direct contact with the outside world, so the idea was to make it possible for anyone who was interested to get to know customers or suppliers. Afterward, they traveled to the venue, which was a cooking studio with a large room. They were welcomed with a light snack. We then took over and invited them to indulge in an afternoon of communication."

"The participants were enthusiastic and felt that they could transfer the success they had experienced together into their work with each other. They were able to experience themselves, their colleagues, and their managers in different roles and saw this positively."

Create shared, cross-site experiences that lead to camraderie

Because the focus of the day was trust and cooperation, Hartwig chose StringBall to bring these concepts to life. The goal of the activity is to work as a team to move a wooden egg balanced in a metal ring from one wooden pedestal to the other, but because half the participants are blindfolded and must be directed by the others who are not, trust and cooperation are mission-critical for the activity to succeed. It also gives leaders and frontline workers a chance to swap their traditional roles.

To get started, Hartwig led everyone to the large meeting room, where she had already prepared the two pedestals and spread out the strings that hold the metal ring and egg. She had also set up a few small obstacles. She then outlined the instructions.

"Your task as a group is to transport the egg from this first point to this other point using only these strings," she explained. "Please split into two groups. One group will take the strings and be blindfolded, while the other will lead their colleagues."

During each session, the groups invariably started to whisper, asking each other 'How are we going to do this?' In one session, a few leaders came forward and said they wanted to be led for a change. Participants always quickly formed their groups and got motivated to work together.

Hartwig provided only minimal facilitation, encouraging each group to define its own strategy. The sessions all varied a bit, with the employees discussing and trying different strategies, but tension and motivatation were always present and everyone was always proud at the end.

The sessions were never long, so the reflections afterward were usually brief. But because StringBall was one of the first hands-on activities during each communication day, it always had a positive impact on the group dynamics.

"We discussed what went particularly well, what the group could learn from, and what else happened in each round. The enthusiastic reaction to successfully transporting the egg boosted further cooperation," summarizes Hartwig.