ANSBACH, Germany – Personnel from Mihail Kogalniceanu (MK) Airbase Romania and Novo Selo Training Area Bulgaria, which comprise Army Support Activity – Black Sea, recently attended a team-building event conducted in MK Airbase by Daniel Jones, the workforce development program specialist for U.S. Army Garrison Ansbach.
Twenty-Eight Army Professionals working for the Installation Management Command (IMCOM) at Army Support Activity – Black Sea participated in the training experience to increase cross organization communication and collaboration during the last week of September. They came together to sharpen their skills and codify the meaning of a high performance team.
High-performance teams are defined as a group of professionals with specific roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common purpose, who consistently show high levels of collaboration and innovation, produce superior results and are highly skilled.
This level of professionalism is evidenced by the way these teams consistently and effectively come together to meet complex mission requirements for United States and international rotational units.
The complexity of the missions includes an area of responsibility for an IMCOM footprint, which stretches over 200 miles and multiple international borders. The teams work with rotational U.S. and partner nation units to provide base operations support in order to build readiness in the Black Sea Region. The requirement under these conditions demand high performance levels to support multi-domain operations and set the conditions for success. Without an effective team, these missions would be impossible to meet and greatly increase the risk.
The leadership of Army Support Activity – Black Sea understands the need for high performance from their professionals and leveraged support from their higher headquarters, USAG Ansbach, to bring targeted training to them. The value of team building is that it brings people together by encouraging collaboration and teamwork. Through a series of planned team-building events that are fun and motivational, teams build communication, planning, problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills. These cooperative activities help to facilitate long-term team synergy through fostering genuine connections, deeper discussions and processing.
This training falls in line with IMCOM’s commitment to its Army Professionals. “IMCOM tries to establish a culture where members of the IMCOM team take pride in the organization, fully understand and live by the organizational values, feel valued, and respected and are led by engaged and caring leaders,” said Matt Margotta, program manager for the Service Culture initiative. The training underscored this commitment; Army Support Activity – Black Sea leadership understands that without their teams the mission would be virtually unmanageable.
The training participants walked away with a good understanding of the need to effectively communicate and work together. The teams took the time to get to know each other and learn about each other, which will, in the end, help them collaborate more effectively as a team. Effective teams are a force multiplier and high performance teams are better equipped to support the Soldier and the mission.
Story and photo by Daniel Jones (Directorate of Human Resources)