And, I hope, you were amazed at what a group could achieve through the power of the team, when everyone congregates and becomes musical together through the beat of the drum.

Alternatively, while the experience was a lot of fun, perhaps you may have found yourself thinking what was it all for?

We’ve all been there – in another creative team-building session, wondering what this has to do with our actual daily work.

In the case of Drumming Workshops, there’s the obvious concept of using music to demonstrate how your colleagues can work effectively together, but can such an activity offer some deeper learning to enhance the quality of normal routines.

That’s what I’m exploring in this blog post.

Is Dabbling A Worthy Cause?

I’m writing this in late February.

It is a difficult time of year if you live in the northern hemisphere, as the weather is still cold and, for most of us, that New Year, new approach buzz that you began with in January starts to waver a little.

Did you take up a hobby? Are you still doing it?

If you are, that is fantastic news and I hope it is giving you a new exciting experience to enrich your work life balance.
But maybe you gave it a real go for a few weeks; enjoyed it and then things in life got in the way and it dropped out of your weekly schedule.

If that’s the case, don’t fret – you won’t be alone!

It’s often very difficult to jump back into that new hobby, even if it was a great experience. Which begs the questions, if the hobby didn’t turn into a consistent practice, was dabbling at all worth it?

Do we still gain something from a one-off ‘try out’?

I think that when we try out new hobbies or participate in fun staff activities, the learning can become more profound over time.

New experiences create fresh neural pathways in your brain which can boost your sense of creativity as you make connections between experiences and things you do in your life.

Finding these connections can give you a deeper understanding and sense of purpose in your daily working routine. Trying a new hobby, even if it only lasts a short while, can reinforce skills and resolve problems in seemingly unrelated aspects of your life. 

Correlations & Amplifications…

Recently, I’ve had various revelations about the way entirely different activities have emboldened my line of work.

I have a fun job as a drumming teacher and music facilitator.

It is extremely rewarding, but, like any job, it presents challenges. Like many people, I have dabbled with other hobbies particularly during my middle-age years.

These have included: juggling, yoga, running, baking, fungi foraging, chopping wood and meditation.

Often these things have seemed like disparate activities fighting for first place in my internal list of options of what to do in my free time.

However, I have recently experienced strong connections between some of these activities and it has become an exciting revelation to discover their correlations.

Here are a couple of examples…

When I’ve practised yoga, I’ve become aware of the various poses that involve a sense of focus on body sensation. The Mountain Pose is a good example. It is a simple standing posture where you focus on the sensation of the entire soles of your feet making contact with the ground.

This, for me, has a direct correlation with learning African Hand Drumming technique and the way you rely on the sense of touch and sensation in the hands to guide your point of contact on the drum.

Improving technique in either of these disciplines relies more on how things feel rather than what you can see.

Another correlation is with juggling.

I have dabbled with juggling on and off for nearly 30 years. Having recently started teaching my daughter, I have become aware of the different optical skills which come into play.

As you juggle, there becomes two ways of seeing – the ‘targeted’ point where you focus your sight (the point where the ball reaches its optimum height) and the peripheral seeing where you see your hands catch the balls in the corners of your gaze.

Where is the correlation between this and drumming?

Just as there are multiple ways of seeing involved in juggling, there are multiple ways of hearing involved in playing the African Drums, which involves polyrhythmic music played in groups.
The real challenge is to be able to keep your rhythm together and ensure that it stays in time with the other rhythms being played.

You can only do this by adopting different types of hearing. You are listening to the part you are playing, yet at the same time you develop a softer ‘passive’ hearing of the other rhythm patterns.

Like the peripheral vision in juggling, this doesn’t pay too much attention to the detail of other patterns but hears them enough to form an impression of how they fit with what you are playing.

The Aha Moment
A friend of mine, who for many years has been involved in learning and development, describes this experience of finding analogies between seemingly disparate things as the ‘Aha Moment’.

Experiencing this ‘Aha Moment’ can feel like a profound revelation. 

As though a light has switched on in your head when all of a sudden, a connection you have made gives your life a new sense of meaning and purpose.

This can reinvigorate and bolster our mindful dedication to the different activities and skills in our lives – whether it is in work or hobbies and interests.

So, to go back on the original question – is it worth ‘trying something out”?

Is it worth organising the Team Building activity, even if some of the employees at the time do not quite ‘get it’?