Recently. when I went through this
link http://solutiondesign.com/food-and-trust/, I got new insights on how to build
up trust through eating together. The author comes up with refreshing insights
on what needs to be done to build-up team spirit through eating together.
In organisational growth, this is a factor which is grossly neglected. When
people in organisations don't trust each other, they try their best to avoid
each other. They just do their job, without caring to find an opportunity to
intermingle with others, or do some activity in leisure time together.
Some of the people in
the organisations show a lonely approach when they don't feel the inner urge to
share lunch with their team-mates. As a
result, they feel stress. which affects their work productivity. Eating
together provides a wonderful opportunity to build up informal relationships, which
go beyond the work domain. All this helps in building up trust, which helps in
the work performance too. The organisations which encourage people going out
for meals together, or picnics, etc are bound to create a culture which is
open, and which allows people working in the organisations bond together. I
find that encouraging workers to indulge in some sports /cultural activity in a
group manner can also be a good way to bust out their stress. Many of the
organisations are doing this, but the fact remains that many of them neglect
this vital factor,is a worrisome trend.
Organisations can build up trust when
employees are given opportunities to trust each other through creating
non-official channels of communication which are not based on professional
relationship. I think this can be a difficult process, and may lead to people
comparing with each other on personal front too. But, the benefits are more in
this approach, simply because this provides an opportunity for each employee to
know the personal side of each other. A compassionate outlook thus can be
created, which helps remove the ill-will amongst the employees.
A futuristic vision for robust
organisational growth rests on formulating effective trust devices which are
based on encouraging group activity amongst the employees. At a time when
team-building is given much emphasis in organisations for achieving the
targets, informal group activities can help in building up an open and
transparent work culture, which can uplift the morale of an organisation.
Even in other fields too, doing an
activity together has good results. Researchers from University of Buffalo
recently studies 634 couples through their first nine years of marriage,
finding that divorce rate was higher only when one person was a heavy drinker.
Surprisingly, if both partners drank equally heavy then their choice of
splitting up were no longer high. When I
read this interesting statistics through a news-item, I got convinced that the
power of doing an activity together is immense.
With our society becoming individualistic,
community ties are becoming weaker. Group activities, whether informal, or
formal are needed to build up community ties. Bonding of couples through mutual
involvement of partners is much needed to strengthen families which tend to
break due to the inflated egos of the partners.
