Team Building Activities.
What comes to mind when you hear/read those three words? Images of people trust-falling into the arms of their colleagues? Building egg-drop mechanisms in small groups? Do you get excited at the prospect of the challenge? Or do you react with disdain, disgust, and/or fear?*
Starting out, my hypothesis was that I would see a clear trend in the sorts of activities that people loved and the sorts of activities people hated. I should have known better.
I did a quick Twitter (aka highly unscientific) poll, and canvased some folks at work as to their best and their worst team building experiences. I heard everything from horror stories where people were taking stress leave and filing worker's compensation claims afterwards to stories about lifelong connections forged afterwards.
Here's a quick summary of some of the responses I got:
| GOOD | BAD |
| - Going to play pool over beers (yes, I realize beer isn't always feasible) | - Trust exercises |
| - Canoe trips | - Kayaking trips |
| - Building buildings (à la Habitat for Humanity) | - "Touchy-feely roundtables" ("my hero is... because...") |
| - Marshmallow towers | - Marshmallow towers |
| - High Ropes courses** | - Personality tests |
| - Presenting your teammates as super-heroes | - Watching cheesy videos |
| - Strategic thinking games (i.e.: get all teammates standing on a small piece of paper) | - "Telephone"-like games (transmitting a message from one person to the next, whether aurally or physically) |
A couple of things that I found to be of note:
1. Overlap
Note that Marshmallow Towers appears twice on the list - once in each category. I spoke to two different colleagues who had done this activity (and have done it myself), and they both had extremely differing opinions of it. One thought it was a brilliant way to demonstrate peoples' thought processes and to re-think their team dynamic. The other found it unbelievably frustrating and said that it made her want to scream at her colleagues, not get closer. I, personally, completely disengaged after about one minute, and wanted to go work on my own.
2. Purpose
Why do this? What is the point behind the exercise? Do you have a new team that doesn't know each other yet? Did you just have a shakeup and were a large number of team members changed? Then sure, team-build away. As a team lead, I'd treat it as an observational exercise. What are peoples' working styles? It's an excellent opportunity to learn. However, there's a lot of team building that seems to be totally random. I sometimes think managers feel that they have to do something team-building-y at least once every six months, or else they've doing things wrong. But really, are things going well with your team? Then why fix what's not broken? Or if there's something broken, and it's a problem with an individual, address the problem with that individual. Don't inflict team building on everyone. Odds are if you pull people away from a project where they're on a roll, they're probably not going to be too pleased. One of my respondents even said that his worst team building activity was "all of them, esp. those with [others] who don't want to be there". Which brings me to my last point...
3. Engagement
Yeah, I know, engagement is the buzzword du jour. But I don't believe team building can magically create engagement out of nowhere. In fact, some of the activities I've been made to do have entirely turned me off of my coworkers, my work, etc. and others I spoke to felt the same way.
Team building doesn't have to be an all-day thing. With one of my previous teams, we had bi-weekly staff meetings, where I quickly zipped through relevant announcements, and then we had a round table. No touchy-feely stories, just a "tell us about something going on outside of work". I got everything from vacation plans to "a car crashed into my house the other day". I even let people pass if they wanted (a couple of times each) - but encouraged them to tell a joke instead (one guy on the team had a wealth of amazing pirate jokes - which was a cool thing to know about him in and of itself). I'm sure not everyone loved it, but the feedback that made its way back to me was good.
The key here, though, was that it was a way to get to know individuals.
I know you can't please all of the people all of the time, and please don't get me started on stereotyping people (especially not based on their age - I honestly believe that the way we are categorizing generations in the workplace borders on ageism - but I'll save that for another post), but it's worth shaking things up. Don't go on that same retreat every year. Don't do trust exercises all day.
CONCLUSION: INDIVIDUALS MATTER.
No matter how many times you build a tower of spaghetti and marshmallows, it won't make a world of difference if your people don't feel valued. Don't automatically assume that because someone isn't engaged, your team is broken. Remember that sometimes there are factors in peoples lives that will be beyond your control. Maybe this is a temporary thing (I know that I was pretty useless and snarky at work in the week after the tornado hit my grandmother's town). Maybe the person isn't in the right job - know that they will thank you for helping them find their right fit, even if it means you have to let them go. Talk to them. Ask them their opinion on things. Acknowledge that you can't always take their suggestions, but that you will always _consider_ their suggestions. Remember that there may be no "i" in "team", but there sure is a "t" and an "e" and...
PS - Just because I'm still curious, if you didn't respond in my original poll, what was your best-ever team-building exercise? Or the worst? And why?
*For the record, I generally fall into the latter camp. Say "Team Building Exercise" or "Ice-breaker", and I will likely run away screaming. I am a certified introvert, and team exercises just aren't my bag in general.
**My personal favourite. I am still in touch with some of the colleagues that I did this with - 9 years ago. There is nothing like having your entire team cheering you on as you make your way through what is, to a large extent, a personal challenge.
