In team building, M is for....?

Mountains?  Er, not specifically.  Though they are the reason we took a week's break half-way through this A-Z series of Team Building. 

Raising the Baa co-founders Chris Farnsworth and Caroline Palmer, alongside a team of 5 entrepreneurial folk, clambered a marathon up and down mountains in the French Alps.  Why?  To raise much needed funds for Inner Flame, a charity close to our heart as you will be aware if you know the story behind Raising the Baa (our first episode of Sheep Dip).

And many lessons were learned about teamwork along the way too - but we'll leave this for another episode and on our socials meanwhile too.

Meanwhile this podcast series continues to reflect on themes cited by our clients in their reviewing sessions, following their experience of herding sheep - Raising the Baa style. 

Today's episode features topics beginning with the letter M.  Mmmm, let's think...

Each episode of our A-Z series of team building lasts around 10 minutes - just right for a (sheep)dip into each of the topics.

Expect plenty of sheep/shepherd/dog references from Head Shepherd and Founder of Raising the Baa, Chris Farnsworth, in these short and lively conversations with Paul Warriner, our Lead Facilitator.

Enjoy - and thank ewe for listening :-)
----------------------------------------------------------
FREE resource:
Sheep, Shepherd or Dog - which one are ewe? Take our personality quiz and find out.

Connect with the Speakers via LinkedIn:
Paul Warriner - The Recognition Coach and Lead Facilitator, Raising the Baa
Chris Farnsworth - Head Shepherd and Co-Founder, Raising the Baa

What are your main team challenges and desires? Maybe we can help?
Book in a 15-minute Exploratory Call now and let's see.

Transcript

Chris (00:03):

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to Sheep Dip the podcast from Raising the Baa. We're global leaders in team building with sheep. I'm Chris Farnsworth and I'm Head Shepherd and co-founder of this somewhat unusual business. In this season of Sheep Dip, we are discussing the complete a-z of team building, including my perspective from the world of shepherding. I'm here with Paul, Head Facilitator for Raising the Baa.

Chris (00:32):

Hi Paul.

Paul (00:33):

Well, hello. Good morning, good afternoon, whatever it is. I can't remember what time it is! Hello Chris. How are you?

Chris (00:40):

Really well, it doesn't matter what the time is, we just enjoy the moment and M, I can't believe it!

Paul (00:49):

How on earth do you do it. We find that way of getting those letters in! So at the moment we're doing the A-Z of team building.  And moments, yeah there are many of those in a day with Raising the Baa, aren't there? Indeed.

Chris (01:02):

It's the Magnetism of sheep, which brings out the Magnificence of the team.

Paul (01:10):

Okay, okay. Okay. Where you going with this?

Chris (01:12):

I'm just in a Magical Moment.

Paul (01:14):

Well, look, let's get down to business now and let's talk about Motivation.

Chris (01:19):

I'm always impressed by the Motivation the dog gives me to get out in the morning.

Paul (01:25):

Well, there's a very good interpretation of that. That's excellent. So he's the one that gets you out of bed and gets you into the groove in looking after sheep then, is he?

Chris (01:33):

Yeah, there's a certain amount of responsibility for the dog, and the dog loves the work so much he wants to do it seven days a week. And actually that's great.

Paul (01:43):

That sometimes isn't reflected in the workplace. I have to say that.  I might be being a bit mean and not representing the whole of the community out there, but maybe there are some people out there that don't want to do it seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. How do we get that motivation?

Chris (01:59):

It's all about the energy. It's got to be energy, it's got to be enthusiasm. It's all those things we've mentioned beforehand that is infectious, isn't it? The dog loves to go for a walk. It loves its work. Its enthusiasm for life is brilliant.

Paul (02:17):

I think in team building, Motivation is really important as we're discussing, to have that focus, that energy, that enthusiasm. These are words that we've used before that motivates people to deliver on the task, whatever that is. And are you just getting together to have fun? That's an element of it. Are you getting together? Are you building a team to do a particular task? There's another element. Are you building a whole business around this new team and how are you motivating everybody? And of course what motivates me is completely different to what motivates you.  So how do I understand that? How do I get to know what that is? Asking questions, listening, looking for feedback, being in touch with somebody, being aware, using all the peripherals that we have at our disposal all helps motivating and if I'm not motivated to contribute, I'm not going to.

Chris (03:14):

I think there's a big aim in there, which we haven't mentioned. And that is Money. Does money motivate?

Paul (03:24):

Doesn't motivate your dog. Does it?

Chris (03:26):

No, it certainly doesn't. It would make a lumpy bed to sit on!  But often people quote money, I'm going after the quality of the money.

Paul (03:35):

Well, that's an interesting question. Uh, I think my intellectual brain says that it isn't the money that motivates people, but I think now anybody doing a job, anybody in a team is maybe not motivated by money. They're more motivated by something higher, a higher purpose of commitment, a cameraderie, fulfilment and achievement or whatever it is. Sure. Money's important to a degree. Is it everything? It'd be interesting to see what the results of that, but I think many surveys have been done and it's not necessarily the biggest motivating factor.

Chris (04:08):

I would say the magnetism of the team is greater than money.

Paul (04:13):

Yeah, the pull of wanting to do a great job, is that what you're meaning, with like-minded colleagues?

Chris (04:18):

Yeah, the joy of going out and working with the dog and the sheep is infinitely more than the money because that's not even in the radar. You don't ever go, oh gosh, you know, there is an element of "well, I can work incredibly hard" but it's that pride in the job which drives the shepherd. Not the the financial reward.

Paul (04:42):

It certainly is a vocational type of commitment. I think one of the challenges that we have in the workplace is how do you motivate people in what could be fairly routine jobs. And it's always a question on a manager's mind or a supervisor's task list - getting people inspired and motivating them. So motivation is really important. And of course it's associated with success and building things and delivering things that people are motivated and commitments and all those things. But how do you get people moving beyond "I'm just here for the pay cheque", having just said that it's not money. Some people come to work just for the pay cheque and go home and they don't want to get involved with any out of work activities, for example. Or they don't want the responsibilities or they've had responsibility, they don't want it any more. How do you re-engage people? How do you motivate them to do more than the task that's at hand? How do you? We can experience that at Raising the Baa. It's a brand new activity. Not many people have done it. How do you motivate them to get involved? So some of the key elements are brought to bear on that particular day. You've seen it where people have suddenly been transformed into energetic beings running around or contributing in undescribable ways. That motivation came from somewhere.

Chris (06:05):

The question, you know, how do you motivate a dog to chase the sheep? And the thing is, it has to come from within the dog. You can't force a dog to chase sheep. So you can train any dog as long as it wants to chase sheep. Because once it wants to chase sheep, you then tell it to stop and then go left and right. But if it doesn't want to chase sheep, it will never do it. My point is, is if you encourage a behaviour, then it will get more and more praise for doing it. The employee, in this case the dog, has to want to work.

Paul (06:47):

I think that's very true in a team environment. You know, it has to come from within, otherwise you're forcing somebody to do something against their will and that's not necessarily going to have the results that you want. If somebody wants to do it and wants to learn from that process, then they will do more and be motivated because of the rewards and recognition that they're getting. Great words that you can associate with motivation. Packaging all that together? I think in a team building environment, in the workplace, the challenge is how can we package all of those elements that we know need to be in there? They're the ingredients for the recipe, but how do we pull them all together? And then how do we bake this perfect concoction to produce this motivated environment? What I've seen about the exercises that we do is we can bring the same challenges to sheep herding and we can find those ingredients and bring them to bear on the day. I've seen that happen. And then the challenge is for the companies, the delegates, and for us to take that successful recipe and bring it back into the workplace. We can do that. I've seen it happen.

Chris (08:12):

Yeah. It is very much that motivation to get the job done.

Paul (08:19):

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we've seen it where they won't stop until it's done.

Chris (08:24):

Yes. They want to get it done. They want that sense of achievement and they're very motivated to achieve.

Paul (08:31):

And again, where they will not accept not being able to do it.

Chris (08:36):

Is that because, I guess it's the assumption that these are just silly sheep and surely we must be able to do this.

Paul (08:44):

I'm not sure it is that.  I think there is, when you get the ball rolling and they don't quite achieve the task, there becomes ... it's like a collective spirit that builds to the point where they have got to achieve the goal. They've got to do it because everybody has worked so hard to get to this point. It would be unforgivable to give up now and accept defeat and not get the sheep in the pen. And I think that collective, collective collective spirit and that almost a gathering of moss as this momentum rolls and rolls down this hill, I think is almost unstoppable. We've had to put the brakes on some groups, haven't we and say "Look, let's pause. Come on, give yourself a break and give the sheep a break". But eventually they get it and they achieve it. What is motivating them at that point? Because in answer to the question for a minute, it's definitely not the money.

Chris (09:51):

Definitely not money.

Paul (09:52):

Is it the task itself or is it the sheep? No, I don't think it's the sheep. I think there's something going on that we've managed to stir up where the team will not accept defeat. I think there's some magic.

Chris (10:10):

What is it then? What is it that we do?

Paul (10:13):

It's not what we do, is it? It's what the team have started to do. What have we brought out in that team? I haven't seen a team go "This is useless, we can't do this" and walk off or "We've done this. No point doing it again". There's a growth isn't there, they want to do it quicker, better, easier. Or if they hadn't achieved it easily, they want to do it until they do it and they want to do it. But what has happened in that process where magic has happened? And the challenge is to bring that back to the workplace and say, look, these are the tasks that this team's got to deliver on. Bring that magic back and make this happen here. That's the challenge. The cross-fertilisation of the two environments.

Chris (11:03):

Yeah. Because if you can get that passion to getting the sheep in the pen in your business, where would your business be? So gosh, we have been surpassing ourselves with the, uh,

Paul (11:16):

Only in time, sir. In content, quality, who knows?!

Chris (11:20):

Always a pleasure to talk to you, Paul.

Paul (11:22):

Likewise, likewise, Chris. Take care.

Chris (11:25):

And you.

Chris (11:26):

Thank you so much for listening. If you found it insightful, we'd really appreciate it if you could give us a review on your favourite podcast platform. Have a baa-rilliant week. Bye for now.