Leading A Team ....

My company is having the annual post-Lunar New Year gathering at our Chief’s place tomorrow. As usual, there will be a team performance, and the best-dressed team as well as the one with the best performance will win cash prizes. This year, the theme for the event is “Shanghai Night”.

For some reason, I have been “chosen” by the organizing committee to be the leader of my team. So, I called for a meeting last Friday to discuss what we will be doing. Everything was done in a rush. I only got to know about this last Wednesday, and immediately after that I had to get my team mates together for a meeting. Luckily they are rather sporty and agreed to meet on Friday. It was a pretty lively discussion, everyone had their own ideas and opinions. Finally, after various brainstorming, we decided on a “Shanghai Gangster” theme, a la Chow Yun Fatt in “The Bund”.

For the group performance, we will be lip-synching and swaying to a song that fits the theme of the team - Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" from his "Moonwalk". In fact, we will all be wearing white tops with black pants, and we rented hats for this purpose, complete with black jackets, and black ties for the men and shawls with varying shades of red and pink for the ladies.

It will be a skit, where we will start off with an introduction on the theme, then go on to the setting of the story, then the dance begins, shooting starts and the last man standing will be the one that becomes the Chief.

It is rather daring and unorthodox, but we figured that if everyone is going to come dressed like a “China doll”, it will be the same as the rest of the teams, so we thought it will stand out more to be different. Thus this week we had been staying late to practice. The dance moves are pretty smooth after trying out for two days. Tomorrow will be when we have a last dry run then the performance at the residence!

Being a team leader is not as easy as it seems. Not everyone is willing to participate. I must say I am rather lucky that most turned up for the meeting on Friday. However, as some are working in other offices and outlets, they were not able to make it for any of the sessions at our main office. But they are all willing to participate when I called them to update them on what was going on.

Furthermore, after getting all the hats today, two emailed me to say they will be dropping out as they are not able to make it to the event tomorrow after all. So I have to work with whatever manpower left! Comparatively to other groups, my team is pretty good already, as I understand some of the other groups are not even able to meet once, and some are not even willing to perform! So I think I am rather lucky!

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