Honestly? Order a bunch of pizzas for lunch (on the company dime, of course) and have everyone hang out and eat for an hour. Conversation and bonding will ensue for most people. There will always be some people who do not want to bond with everyone in the office and you should come to terms with the fact that this is okay, provided they are still able to get their work done and treat everyone with respect. Don’t try to force people to be a family at work.
My old job had a ping pong table and a fridge full of beer to foster a team spirit but they used it wrong. They had mandatory after hours ping pong tournaments which just made me hate them worse because I had such an awful commute and I didn’t like my coworkers in the first place. My new job provides breakfast on Fridays to encourage people to stand around and get to know one another for a bit. This is a much, much better option.
That’s a good question, button. I think the first thing to know is: what behaviors are hindering this group’s working together as a team? What do you think needs to improve? Don’t just throw them into a random exercise that some outsourced douchewaffle thought up. Specifically identify what needs changing, and while you’re at it, give equal measure, if possible, to what is working fine.
You could get some great advice here, I think. Give us some good parameters and release the hounds!
If you absolutely must do an off-site team build, consider taking on a charity project. One of the least unpleasant team builds I’ve done involved painting a Salvation Army shelter.
The nature of the work demanded a certain amount of cooperation, which we were left to work out on our own, and did. We ended up making so many jokes that I had more fun than I’ve had on most “fun” corporate outings, like . . . ahem . . . sailboat racing.
And even if it would have sucked, at least we did something for charity.
I was at a seminar where as a closing exercise we had to sum up our feelings about what we’d learnt over the past couple of days creatively: and yes, one woman did do an interpretive dance. This is the same organisation where we spent 45 minutes of Health Board tax dollars deciding what kind of biscuit we were and why: most people had crunchy outsides and layers of gooey sweetness within, but I was weevil-ridden hardtack.
I like my job and we do a lot of genuinely good and productive work in an area where it’s badly needed, but unfortunately the field does lend itself to indulgent flakiness if its unchecked.
The problems in chief are the typified interpersonal difficulties; individuals making value judgements on the behavior of others, he said-she said, and everything from complacency to laziness. The majority of the people in this case are women, which makes the job a little more challenging because of the differences in how men and women interact in a team environment. I formed a training group to address our weaknesses as a team and as individuals. What I intend to do by using the individual strengths of the trainers, is to perfect the overal skill-sets of the team. I first need to teach the trainers how to train, then give them the material and set them loose. I think if I can bring the training group together as a team first, and THEY start working and clicking, that it will be somewhat contageous and we can pick up people as we go. I know, not everyone will be on board, and I know it’s not a complete problem solver and I know what’s working. I just need to find the right “thing” to really cement the team concept.
You guys are reminding me why, with 14 years experience in office/accounting work, I still prefer to be a temp.
Buttonjockey, pbbth’s idea is good. What most people resent about team-building is the inconvenience to THEM on their personal time to benefit THE COMPANY, doing things that they don’t care about in the slightest (that survey in the OP - I don’t fill things like that out for my family, and I like them). People like free food. People like goofing off for a few minutes on the company dime.
Management sets the tone in a workplace; it sounds like you are management, so it is up to you to make it known that complaining about other people and backbiting is not encouraged. You aren’t going to get one quick fix to make a team gel, either. Feeling like a team comes from working together, ideally under a manager who prevents complaining and backbiting.
When, as a manager, I do a team-building thing, it involves going to a bar for the afternoon and putting my credit card down. Everyone is free to stay or go after they eat their lunch. If they stay, they may drink and eat as much as they like, as long as they either get a ride, call a cab or are sober when they leave.
I usually do that the day before the Christmas break.
Point and point. I forgot about pbbbth’s response. That’s also a good one. I’m not looking for a quick fix single solution, but a start on the journey.
Our HR person thinks that having lunch together once a week is a good way of dealing with a co-irker with a drug and alcohol problem and a psychiatric disorder to boot.
There are a total of two states in the Union which I have not yet been to - North Dakota and Oklahoma.
I have not yet figured out what kind of nifty vacation (or team-building exercise) might involve a swing through these two wonderful states, but I’m sure once I visit I’ll want to return again and again.
The first thing you need to do as a manager is examine the objectives of each person/team and see if there are any conflicts. No amount of “team building” is going to make up for the fact that one group is evaluated on something that conflicts with what another group’s evaluations are based on.
For example, for a time, our copywriters were evaluated on the sheer number of pieces they produced. That was in conflict with other groups (marketing, proofreading, etc.) who would send back those pieces for revisions. No number of off site exercises or group lunches would make up for the fact that the copywriters wanted to get us our stuff as quickly as possible and we wanted them to take time on our materials and accommodate multiple revisions.
The honest answer is you don’t. Do you think Eli Manning, Tom Coughlin, and Plaxico Burress did any team building exercises before winning the Super Bowl? Each man did their own job. Eli threw the ball, Plaxico caught it. They didn’t play two truths and a lie in the locker room.
My answer this is to forget about the team per se, but focus on individual skills, and make sure people have the best tools to do their jobs. Provide training that is directly applicable to performing their jobs. Ask your people what they need to do the job better – you’d be surprised how many good answers you’ll get.
This works really well - one that I was a part of was for an airline that did a one day teambuilding event that was for Habitat for Humanity. Great all around, made the company look good, the team (regional country managers) had to work together and it helped people that genuinely needed it so it was money well spent and not wasted.
I get what you’re saying, but that’s really an apples/kumquats comparison, I seriously doubt Eli Manning called Brandon Jacobs a slut in front of the entire locker room and even if he did, I doubt Jacobs cried about it to the coach later. Still though, you’re right, kind of.
Boyo Jim That’s a suggestion we’re exploring already, and we get different answers for each different person. I suspect taking the answers and combining them to fit the mission is the best plan.
MaddyStrut The entire group has one goal, one mission, take intel from point a, parse it, record it and move it to point b. Every person does every job, cross trained for everything. As I type this, I begin to see the real problem…
