While creating our conceptual model, I often thought of my experience working with a group of volunteers in Thailand, which was one of the best groups that I have ever had the opportunity to work with. While reflecting on my time with that group, I thought of the many variables that made our team successful and applied some of these variables to our conceptual model of what makes a successful. Our conceptual model included communication, diversity, positivity, purpose, embrace challenge, and empowerment. Here is my experience relating to these successful team variables while I worked with my team in Thailand.
My freshman summer I set out on an adventure to volunteer in the remote Hill Tree Tribe Villages of Thailand. Prior to departure, I knew my tasks would be difficult and a personal challenge both physically and mentally with being far from my comfort zone. Although I felt that I had adequately prepared for the volunteer excursion, I soon realized the great obstacles that I would face. Reflecting on my time in Thailand, I realized there were some incredibly important aspects of successful teamwork that had helped us overall succeed in our challenge to volunteer and create a positive change in people’s lives.
First and most importantly, communication was key to the success of our team. In total, there were twenty of us and we had much to do in the little time we had. Our goals were clear. We planned to aid the Hill Tree Tribe villagers by working to create sustainable farming agriculture sites, teach children English, and perform medical checkups on Wild Asian Elephants. However, with twenty young people from all over the United States who have never met nor worked together before, and in an extremely unfamiliar environment where a different language was spoken, focus on strong communication, both verbal and nonverbal was critical to the success of our volunteer projects. To accomplish this, we all made sure to always give our complete focus when listening to others. We did this not only with our leaders, but with our fellow volunteers and all locals. We also always made sure to give very positive nonverbal communication when working hard on volunteer tasks. At times, tasks became quite daunting and the fear of giving up had grown in many members heads, however, failure was not an option when knowing that our work directly impacted the lives of the local villagers.
Strong communication really helped our volunteer members work more efficiently and safely. Open, non judgmental communication with all of the group members also really invited more input from nearly all of the members of the volunteer group. This shown true to be extremely beneficial because, with open communication, nearly everyone from our diverse group of people offered great ideas that really contributed to the group’s work in finding solutions to complex problems.
This communication also led to many other successful team aspects to emerge. While working on the difficult tasks, as some members became too physically or mentally drained, we used communication to spread positivity and promote purpose in order to empower our volunteers to create or find motivation within themselves to further embrace challenge so that we could continue to succeed.
The working conditions in Thailand and the pressure to succeed pushed many team members to the limit, and utilizing positivity was vital in not letting the physical and mental stress bring the volunteers and their productivity down. We continuously and truthfully shared often positive thoughts to one another to boost our team’s morale. Every night we even did a session of ‘good vibes’ where we all write down anonymous notes of positive acknowledgments and compliments of other people for someone to read off to the group. I found this very impactful in boosting positivity as well as mutual appreciation. Understanding what we had to do, why we had to do it, and communicating positive feedback on our work really helped myself and the other volunteers feel purpose in the work we did. This greatly pushed forward the success of our team because with purpose, along with the positive support, we felt empowered to take action each and every day to give our best effort for the better of the team, and the results spoke for themselves.
I am extremely proud of my team, and I am very fortunate to have been able to learn and grow from that incredible experience with an extraordinary group of people.
How To Create A Successful Team 