In this blog, Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Partnership student, Nell Pates, describes her experience taking part in a challenge team, a unique component of the Grantham Institute-led PhD programme that focuses on public engagement and translating science into real-world impact.
The Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet (SSCP) Grantham Expedition Challenge Team was a highlight of my first year as a PhD student. Challenge Teams are an opportunity to step outside normal PhD life and do something different and – if you do it right – something really great. This blog is about my experiences and what I learned about teamwork as a member of the Grantham Expedition Team.
Our challenge team wanted to complete a physical expedition in a sustainable way. A lot of our team do remote fieldwork for our PhDs, and all of us like to travel and explore in our holiday time. We noticed how much single-use plastic goes into a lot of activities like hiking and camping – and the waste it creates. So, we wanted to design a fun challenge while limiting our ecological impact.
We used only public transport, bought no new equipment except for the trail maps and guidebook, and kept packaging on food down to an absolute minimum. We hoped we would find out which aspects of sustainable adventure could easily be adopted by anyone planning holidays or research travel.
Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
Before I became a PhD student, I worked at a company running leadership training for businesses, so I thought I would summarise our experience using a model: Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development. Tuckman outlines a path that is often followed by new teams – it tracks what we went through quite closely.
Forming
Forming is when a team first comes together – performance is typically low, but enthusiasm is high. We attended Grantham events to pitch ideas for challenge teams and volunteer for the ones we liked best. During these events, a few of us were drawn together by the idea of an expedition team and I think we started to form a team even before the projects had been handed out. We were excited to find a shared adventurous spirit among our peers and we started discussing our ideas – what did we think would be fun and interesting, and how much did we think we could achieve in the year?
Storming
The eight of us selected for the Grantham Expedition Team were delighted. We started by meeting and trying to plan. This was when we entered the second stage of teambuilding: storming. Storming can be a difficult phase early in a team’s relationship, characterised by disharmony and low performance. I am pleased that we didn’t suffer any disharmony, but I think it is fair to say that we experienced a lack of focus. Everybody was excited, but nobody wanted to say ‘alright, we’re going to do this’.
For weeks we kept throwing up new ideas, without making many decisions. We settled on an expedition to walk the southern section of the Cape Wrath Trail (the most challenging trail route in the UK) using as little single-use plastic as possible, making and carrying all our food, and buying no new equipment.
Norming
Norming is what happens when a team gets to know each other better and performance improves as initial difficulties are ironed out. I think we found this rhythm in about February. We got to know each other’s personalities and that familiarity made it easier to say what we meant in meetings. Once we had the concept decided, we started working together more effectively to work out a route, a transport plan, and to complete the health and safety paperwork.
Trust was building in this time, too – we didn’t do everything by big group meeting, but smaller groups were getting things done and feeding back to the team. We encountered challenges: agreeing which foods we should take was tricky. We had to agree on something that we would all be willing to carry and eat every day for a week, with trade-offs around weight and nutrition. Not everyone had all the equipment to keep them safe and comfortable on an expedition of this kind but, working as a group, we managed to source the things we needed without buying anything new.
Performing
When a team know each other well and everything just works, they have made it to the performing stage.
For us, everything came together at the right time. We made the big decisions about food as a team – we ended up making a spreadsheet of calorific value for our main food sources (oats, lentils, and couscous), then worked out a per-person per-day allowance and we bought it all from a plastic-free wholefoods store. The most expensive component was high-calorie snacks – these had to be dense enough to make up our energy needs, and tasty enough that we wouldn’t get too sick of them over the week with nothing else to eat! We made a really good trail mix with nuts, seeds and dried fruit.
When the day arrived and we set off from London, we were feeling good about the expedition and strong as a team. Five of us completed the walk, while the other three provided support from London and success on the trail depended a huge amount on team morale and the desire to stick together and see it through.
If you’d like to learn more about all the fun we had up in Scotland, we made a website that has photos and some of our blogs, but here I want to end by saying that teambuilding can be difficult, but it is almost always worth the effort.
Advice like ‘just start working together really well from the first day’ is unrealistic. The fact is, you can’t get to norming and performing without going through forming and storming. Don’t expect plain sailing from day one and keep in mind that a rough first few meetings doesn’t mean your team is doomed! The eight of us didn’t know each other before this challenge team project, but we took enthusiasm and ideas, and we managed to do something really excellent together.
Interested in learning more?
- Find information on the SSCP DTP Challenge Teams.
- Visit the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet DTP website, including details on the programme, studentship opportunities and research.
