IMC Journal Part 3

Well I have been planning to write this journal entry for sometime now but thanks to Placecom I could not write it. I was extremely impressed by one of the lectures of Mr. Rahul Mirchandani. The one which I attended before leaving for Delhi for our placement trips. On this day, we were given the task of making towers made out of straws. Each row was divided into a group with one member from each row as their leader. The tower needed to be erected in 20 mins. The rule was that we had to make it stand without any external help. The tower would be judged on 3 parameters, namely beauty, strength and height. All of us tried very hard to build the towers. At the end of the 20 mins., people from each group had to promote their towers by being the official spokesperson of the launch. Then Sir evaluated us on above mentioned parameters. Though our group's tower wasn't very successful, there were a lot of take aways for each one of us. Through this event we were taught various styles of leadership. The leader of each group joined their teams after the construction started and each one of them had been instructed to behave in a particular style of leadership. Hence they tried to either positively or negatively influence the group dynamics.
The major learnings were in the field of behavioural dynamics of teams and various styles of leaderships. The statement of the professor that intrigued me the most were his concluding remarks. He made some simple but amazing observations. He told us that in the 20 mins. we simulated a product launch with all its nitty-gritties. Though the entire class was friends, but still there was a sense of belonging within each group and people cheered for their row and chided the other teams with the major emphasis on downplaying the achievement of the other groups. Hence, if something as small and trivial as creating the supposed tower out of the straws could create so much of drama and action in the class, so much of passion and sense of belonging towards the straw creation, how must it be for a real life product launch? This question left me spell bound and gave me food for thought!