I’m not kidding…because of the lack of enthusiasm and results in our last three mission statement development meetings, my manager feels that we’ll get better results if we combine the next one with off-site team building activities.
curls up in corner and whimpers
It makes work a lot more fun, actually. There’s a few of us who got on really well and started taking lunches together every day. We keep the conversation away from others in the sense that they don’t have to hear it unless they choose to, but beyond that it’s all systems go.
Does it carry over into the actual office? Only in the sense that those of us who hang out together get along well, work together easily, and know that any one of us can speak freely to the others. We get shit done, even if HR might not think the way we interact is always 100% professional.
There’s no fucking around in that sense. I’m actually the only girl in the group, and none of the guys are gay. It’s pretty evident that HR would disagree, but the managers leave us alone because we’re good for the bottom line.
Good thing HR is hundreds of miles away.
The annual conference however, is a free-for-all of fuckability in which anyone not directly in your department is fair game. What do they expect, putting a thousand horny geeks in a resort for a week with unlimited free liquor?
If by inclusive you mean inviting people we have no interest in hanging out with to lunch or dinner, well, that’s probably not going to happen. We’re not rude to people at work, and we didn’t carve out our area of the office and tell everyone else to stay out, but we sure as hell don’ feel the need to publish our plans and say anyone who wants to come is invited.
I had a workplace like that, and it didn’t stop cliques from forming. Pretty easy to text or IM people to determine where and when to go to lunch.
Welcome back, catsix!
I engage my workgroup in team-building exercises every day. They’re usually called “SIT DOWN, PUNK AND GET TO WORK!” No-one ever listens to me, and it strengthens the team knowing they’re united in the ignoring of their supervisor. 
Oh man. I was just reminded of one of the most painful team-building exercises I ever was forced into. It involved several teams each taking a portion of some ugly-ass piece of art and replicating it. The team building part was where the individual renderings from the teams were put together, and oh look, they fit and created a [horrid, eyeball assaulting, primitive and revolting] copy of the original art. Which copy was then *matted and framed * at god only knows what expense to our stockholders and is now not-so-proudly hanging in a conference room.
I showed up in that conference room for a meeting and immediately asked the others if we could move, as the “art” was giving me a headache.
If I remember correctly, this nursery-school painting session followed an interminable Myers-Briggs waterboarding where I ultimately concluded I was an IHOP.
Teambuilding doesn’t.
shudder team building!!
The worst I’ve done: Laughter Yoga - let’s get a team together, combined with some seriously incorrect medical claims and have them pretend to laugh … oddly enough, those that were the nastiest, saddest and lacking in sense of humour actually were the ones laughing!!!
The “best” (really just not as bad as the others): Painting exercise - we had to all get dressed up in coveralls then throw paints at boards (no paint brushes) … it was good because NO one was “good” at it, there was no skill involved, and it made people laugh … did it actually make a change to the team, spending a large amount of the company’s money travelling interstate for a day, to do crap?! Course not!
My preferred avoidance technique is to fake being mildly sick on the day - I’ll turn up but not participate in the activities! Though I’m not quite sure that I’m faking - team building really does make me feel ill.
Are you me? Or do you work with me? (checks location) No, well, but you’ve just described my incredible frustration with professional development on my campus.
Teach me to use some whiz-bang thing to add bells and whistles to my online courses? Yes, please. Teach" me (using cookies, probably) about the fact that there are four generations in the workplace (our upcoming training) and we all need to get along? Leave me alone.
The latter will devolve into team building between the generations, I’ll bet you anything.
Grim! Well, if you can’t weasel out of it they leave you no choice. You’re going to have to fake a heart attack.
Going back a few years, I once saw a team building where I actually felt sorry for the managers. I was wandering along the waterfront trolling for hot bookish chicks when I happened across a skiff building competition at the local marina. I didn’t see any signs or banners, but all the teams were apparently from different corporations. The goal was to build a skiff out of two sheets of plywood and paddle it around some buoys. I strolled up just as the skiffs got underway. Most teams got soaked but managed to splash their way back to the dock.
But one unlucky outfit leaked so badly they went under on the last leg. It was the entry from Arthur Anderson. I have to say they took it well, even as the cynical laughter rippled through the crowd. I even felt a fleeting twinge of sympathy myself. But then I didn’t lose my ass on Enron.
One of my old teams experimented with this but quickly decided that stuff like bocce and croquet were waaaaaay better. After all, they’re played at a slow pace and you can do it one-handed so you can use the other hand to keep hold of your drink.
OTOH, I recently saw some other team at an exercise outside jumping rope in the rain.
With a hammer, some long nails and superglue, I bet I could build something pretty interesting with my team.
A log cabin, perhaps.
Possibly the most perfect description of the M-B process I’ve ever seen.
Before our first year of veterinary school, The Powers that Be decided we freshmen needed a 3-day retreat to get to know eachother. Because spending the next 4 years breathing eachother’s air in class wouldn’t be sufficient. And because 3 days drawing posters will totally prevent 120 people from reorganizing into smaller groups.
They did all the classic stuff, even reworking old favorites with a veterinary bent (Are you a horse personality? Then beware of Cow personalities!!)
I was forbidden from playing in some of the games because I knew the lesson already from team-building exercises in high school. I also deliberately screwed with their results, which was fun. And, I found one of my closer friends through a united hatred of team building exercises.
Holy crap, does that mean it was successful?!?