Sands Academy Holds Team Building and Trust Workshop

Continuing with their Elevate Series, Sands Academy held a workshop on Team Building and Trust for Las Vegas Sands Managers and Supervisors. In its continued effort to provide Team Members with an outstanding work environment, extensive training and other opportunities to advance, the workshop focused on understanding team formation, benefits of team collaboration, and the components needed for a high performance team.

“Team building and trust go hand in hand,” Ian Thompson, Director of Talent and Organizational Development, said. “This is what it takes to build a high-performing team. Managers and supervisors have no power over who joins their team most of the time. Team Members are inherited or transferred and managers have to figure out how to manage them.”

The definition of a team is a group of people working toward achieving a goal, sharing the responsibilities to get to the goal and sharing each other’s collective talent. A high-performing team is when all Team Members are contributing, people are challenging each other and they are energized and engaged.

“Team Members are constantly looking for guidance, feedback and coaching,” Thompson said. “People want to know when they’re doing something wrong. Teams need clear goals and need to have people that want to be there.”

Towards the end of the workshop, Thompson had attendees gather to do an exercise modeled after The Tuckman Model, which is where a team is asked to work together towards a common goal, so they form into a group, then they all don’t see eye-to-eye so they begin to argue (storming), then there is a breakthrough where they get into a rhythm as a team and then they begin to perform as a team should or as their manager needs them to. In the exercise, Traffic Jam, the group had to get each Team Member to move to the other side of the room by only taking a step at a time and not landing in the same square as a fellow Team Member.

“It’s amazing to see Team Members go through the Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing process right before your eyes,” Thompson said. “They begin to address the objective, the ideas and solutions start to compete, egos emerge and then a leader emerges and guides them to the end goal. Teams begin to agree and trust each other.”

As a manager, Thompson advised to take a step back, encourage Team Members to manage the process themselves and delegate if possible. The goal is to provide positive energy and build enthusiasm within the team so that leaders are just left to support and mentor.

“So far, I’m using what I’ve learned in my day to day tasks,” Lorraine Kalayanaprapruit, Exhibit and Business Service Center Manager for Sands Expo said. “These classes have helped with my own growth. It’s allows me to be a better leader, someone that the team remembers and someone that can help my team grow. I love that the company chooses to invest in its Team Members and there is no opposition to take the classes from supervisors. It’s encouraged. I appreciate and value the chance to advance myself.”