Club News - July 15

Rtn Pushpinder Chahal—Our Ambassador to Rotary Club of El Dorado, Hills, CA, USA
Rtn Dr Pushpinder Kaur Chahal, during her trip to USA, visited Rotary Club of El Dorado Hills. She substituted as the Guest speaker there as the originally invited speaker could not attend. She gave a presentation on various projects of our Club. She was presented with a mug and a flag. “The Rotarian of El Dorado Hills were very impressed by our projects and showed keen interest to partner with us in future projects,” she said.

Thank You
Rtn Dr Santosh Gupta  for donating an additional Rs 3000 for the Uttarakhand Relief Fund on her birthday.

Paul Harris Fellows

Rtn Vikas Garg was presented the Paul Harris Fellow pin and certificate by Rtn Jagesh Khaitan.

Rtn Pawan Katia was presented the Paul Harris Fellow pin and certificate by IPP Vivek Gupta. Rtn Pawan Katia is a multiple PHF.

 

Blood Donation Camp by Rotaract Club of Chandigarh

Rotaract Club of Chandigarh organised a blood donation and eye donation camp at Rotary Blood Resource Centre, Sector 37-A Chandigarh on 13 July . The camp was held as part of Rotaract Club’s 6-week internship programme—Rotaract 360. 51 volunteers from all age groups donated blood.
The presence of the Rotarians from our Club—President Hassan S. Mejie, PP Baldev Aggarwal, Rtn. Desh Deepak Khanna, Rtn. Mona Khattar, PE Prof. Paramjit Singh and Rtn. Surinder Paul Kaur—motivated the Rotaractors and the interns to donate blood for a noble cause.
Rtn. Mona Khattar was among the donors to encourage the first-time young girl donors.
Many of the young donors were refused due to low haemoglobin count. This is a disturbing trend and it was decided to organise a seminar for the youngsters, especially girls to enlighten them about healthy eating habits and importance of having a healthy body.

The noble provision of eye donation was facilitated in accordance with provisions of the Eye Bank, PGIMER, Chandigarh. All the volunteers' got themselves registered for eye donation after  death.

Lucky Draw

Rtn Rajinder Jain was the winner of the Lucky Draw prize this week.

Teaming and Power Play

The 15 July meeting was a meeting with a difference. We had Dr Amandeep hold an activity based session on Teaming and Power play. The ball was set rolling with the “Marshmallow Tower Challenge”, a simple team-building exercise that forces the individuals to team-up quickly and collaborate and innovate to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, 36 inches each of tape and string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top.

Members were divided in to eight teams of 7-8 members each. The task was to be accomplished in 15 minutes. There were no prizes for the winners. The idea was to show the importance of team work in achieving success, be it in a corporate world or in an organisation like our Rotary Club.

Walking around the tables, one could see the Rotarians challenged by the task. Many participants were found to be upset with tape not opening or the sticks getting broken or lack of coordination among the team members. Some just sat back and gave up, while others plodded on. “No project is blessed with perfect conditions, problems can arise unexpectedly. Such situations arise in all organisations and good team-work helps in dealing with them successfully,” said Dr Amandeep.

Building on the experiences from the activity, Dr Amandeep shared that organisational success comes from aligning individuals to perform well in teams, collaborate and contribute to the overall goals.
Talking on “power”, she said that it impacts organisations negatively, harms teams and can cause distress to individuals. Most individuals exercise position based power or formal power and their team members display compliance solely based on their leader’s role, position or title rather than the person specifically as a leader. Coercion and selective distribution of rewards are  ways in which position based power can get abused. Real power is the expert power that comes from your knowledge and expertise. This power helps you become a real leader, irrespective of the fact that you hold a position or not. Then, there is the referent power, gained by a leader who has strong interpersonal relationship skills. It is of particular interest as leadership today is more about collaboration and influence rather than command and control.

Taking the talk further, Dr Amandeep discussed the various ways in which individuals translate power bases into specific actions. The best teams are those where the leaders use rational persuasion, inspirational appeals and consultation. Jostling for power leads to organisational politics, and should be avoided.

The game also taught us the importance of systems thinking.  “Systems work the best when perfected at the design stage,” said Dr Amandeep.

All in all, it was an interesting and a very useful exercise that was thoroughly enjoyed by the participants. “It was a refreshing change,” said Rtn Dr Pushpinder Chahal.

Rtn Varun Rao welcomed Dr Amandeep with a bouquet. She was introduced by Rtn Vipin Dewan. PP Arvind Mehan presented her a memento. Rtn Jaiparkash Hasrajani proposed the vote of thanks.