Suddenly a sleepy town of Kozhikode was abuzz with activities…. Students from outsides cities (like Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and elsewhere) started to pour in for their second in-campus module on one sleepy afternoon of 30th May to Calicut. I was one among the crowd. However this time my Organizational Behavior (OB) studies started to come into play and was helping me in analyzing individual, group and team behavior.
Important thing to note was that this time around there were known and familiar faces and I saw people exchanging pleasentaries and greetings be it in aeroplane and/or at airport. People were able to attach face to the name they would have heard before. A perfect example of crowd transforming into a group was seen when almost 30 people waited in a bus which was arranged by IIMK for tranporting people from airport to IIMK campus. Inspite of a humid and perspiring atmosphere at Calicut, people in the bus waited for almost 45 minutes for another bunch of people who had similar flight timings and were coming from Banlagore. However this time there was a tolerance, patience and sense of belongingness and people didn’t mind waiting for fellow students. During this time occasionally one could hear the jokes being cracked by few of the students.In the picturesque locations which resembled a resort at hilltop all of us were provided hostel accomodation which was in no terms less than a 3 star hotel comfort.
On the second day itself one could see this group transforming into team when couple of them took initiatives and formed a cultural committee for a purpose to have more interactions among students and took upon the task to organize intercultural and sports events. One could see the concepts of forming, storming, norming and performing of the team dynamics coming into play during these days. Each classroom gave a name for their own team (Da-bang, Chaplins, C3 and Krazy4) and took upon the task of winning the events. Be it Kaun Bagega CEO (KBC), Ad Mag Show, Roadies and Antakshri and other sports events like Cricket and Kho-Kho the team’s sole mission was to outperform each other and win the event. One could hear cheering, clapping, hooting and slogan being shouted to support their own team during various events. Next couple of days was the time when one could see hidden talent of the students – be it singing, acting, mimicking and/or the sportiness of the people in games like Cricket/Kho-Kho. Students enjoyed the interaction with faculty on two of the nights when a faculty dinner was arranged. There was an excitement and people were eager to take their own picture with the faculty members. We could see the demonstration of the some of the management principles (like self-management, be the change agent etc) when we saw director Debashish Chatterji waiting for us (btw most of us were late for the event by 10-15 minutes) and shaking hands with all of us before his inspiring lecture on Leadership. Earlier known and familiar faces were now friends and collegues and one could see people exchanging phone numbers, emails etc during after their class. Wow!!! I figured out that it was the ‘Adjourning Stage’ of the team. People went their home with pleasant memories of their stay and promised to see each other again for their third in-campus program which they hope would happen during second year of their program.
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Vinay Bhutani Blog 