Teambuilding

I’ve got a very strong opinion about team building activities.

During my working life, I have attended quite a few team building events. Some of them were organized for everyone in the company, some were just for the individual departments. If there was ever a second team building event at the company I was currently working for, I’d come up with some lame excuse (I am part of the bridal party for my sister’s cousin’s ex-boyfriend’s mother’s niece’s wedding) to avoid it.

I would usually attend the first ones just to get a feel of how the company views “team building” (and also because I needed to make a good impression)

I can safely summarize that all these activities did nothing to promote team camaraderie, build rapport or (eek!) bring everyone closer with revelations of deep personal details and emotional connection. Thankfully, in all of these events (so far) no one has ever forced me to perform the trust exercise (you know, the one where you fall backwards and someone catches you)

All I got from these session were very awkward moments, loads of wasted time and very shabby accommodation (food was bad too). There was one time I injured my back, carrying multiple (that’s right, more than two) people, trying to balance on a 4 by 4 piece of paper. I wish I was making this up.

I think companies don’t understand the objective of team building. If they wanted to use up the department budget by creating an outing for every employee to (forcefully) attend, then yes, these companies achieved their objective.

Every activity has one team pitted against the other. How is that building a sense of camaraderie? Sure the people in those teams will bond over their attempt at beating other teams in competition, but what about the relationships between teams? That’s only going to become more negative as the competition gets stiffer.

For example, my team beat out a particularly aggressive, obnoxious, over-confident leader of another team. Sure the victory was so, so sweet. However, until today, this person doesn’t give me any eye contact anymore. Apparently team building should include “may burn bridges as well as build them” in their small print.

Leaders are the worst. They will stand up in front of the whole team and talk about what a good session that was when most of the time they clearly have no idea that new perceptions are being created, most of them negative.

There was this one lady who was a senior in the company. She was known as a backstabbing, rumor mongering snake. During the teambuilding, she made a big show about how she was “burying the hatchet” and “starting new”. There was even this exercise that required her to genuinely get everyone to bury what ever hatchet (that she had flung behind their back) The very next week, she conned the HR manager into getting rid of a younger version of her.

I could not make this up even if I wanted to.

I think we are missing proper team building companies that truly understand the spirit and the objective of these activities. There was even once a facilitator that stressed that we would only get benefits from sessions together if we put in the proper effort. To drive home the point, he said that if we thought we didn’t learn anything, it was all our fault. It was *our* responsibility to ensure that we achieved our goal to build an effective team.

Then why are we paying so much money?

I just don't get team building.