Team Experience – 4 April 09

Everything about today was magical – even the flat on my car at 7:30 this morning. (I met a wonderful man, who changed my tire.) With 3 adult tires and a baby tire, I continued on to the May, 2009 Pay It Forward More To Life Weekend Pilot Team Experience …. whew!  What a mouthful! Rhonda Schlatter is the Training Supervisor, surrounded by her most capable team of Assistant Training Supervisors – Michele O'Keefe, Sherry Merritt, Joy Partain, and Adriana Holt – that's called "stacking the deck." This morning was the second Team Experience.

Adriana has created an impeccable and eye entrancing website – check it out – www.mtlpayitforward.com. Amidst the clarification of logistics and context for the pilot weekend (and there are Plenty!), Leslie Pierkowski, Rhonda, and Michele created and led an exercise that supported the team to work with their growth edges – with an Easter theme.

Here's what we did … divided into teams of 4 or 5 folks. The object was for each team to use vibrantly colored plastic golfing clubs (child size) to get all the same colored plastic Easter eggs into the proper bucket (one for each team). When a player got an egg in the bucket (harder than you would suspect), they would race over to the next person, hand off the golf club, and continue the relay until all same colored Easter eggs were in the proper bucket. There were a lot of brightly colored eggs, scattered all over the yard. (Michael Swartz and Kathy Collins on the left.)

The main purpose of all this was to live out the growth edge, individually and corporately, that everyone agreed before the game began. After the game, everyone checked in with their team to share how they did. Then Michele announced "Round Two." At that point, Tracey Taul, Miss Effervescent, shouted out that we should shake this up even more, offering a suggestion. Leslie Pierkowski looked at me with an unholy gleam in her eye. Here you go,
Tracey. Leslie pulled out several bandannas to use as blindfolds for one member of each team. Tracey was "IT" for her team.

Building on the lessons learned from round one, the object now was to practice your growth edge again (individually and corporately) while having the 'blind person' supported by his/her team members to get 3 colored Easter eggs into the proper team bucket, using the plastic golf club. Hilarity reigned. (There's Tracey Taul, Rose Messer, and Michael Arizola on the right.)

And isn't that a lot like life? just when you think you have the knack of something, the ante is 'upped' without prior consent. And isn't it also true that life responds to our requests – not necessarily exactly. Thank you, Tracey, for asking for what you want and for playing full out – exemplifying the Warrior Spirit!