AIBU or are team building events really f*cking awful...

[rOsie80]

Especially the variety that ask you for an "interesting" fact about yourself so you all sit around and reel them off in an awkward, stilted fashion for an hour.... does anybody really enjoy this stuff ?!!

So cringey and awful, surely there are better ways to do this.

There was one memorable one .... we were all asked to tell the group something interesting and unknown about ourselves .... yawn .... to be fair there were loads of quite talented people there describing books they had written, music levels they had achieved, fantastic degrees etc ..... this all paled into insignificance when the new guy stood up and said "I used to date a member of Steps"

I had one where they made us play Jenga.

I pretending that I didn't know how to play it. There were no instructions.

I then asked what the point was, when it seemed the whole point of Jenga was that you were competing against each other, and as I hadn't played it before I was really really confused as to why it was chosen on a team building day. The question was met with complete silence. Idiots.

They're all shitty shite, exactly as SGB says. Even worse when you're in some shite job with shite pay and the management want employees to attend one of these wanky time wasting things on your time off, for free, of course.

We took the entire group (120 people) away on long weekends to hotels, where the team building exercises consisted of:

• meal in the restaurant
• drinks in the bar
• walks in the nearby nature reserve OR swimming in the indoor pool OR lounging around having coffee/tea/cakes OR sleeping in OR doing whatever you felt like
• band and party in the evening

Upper management never asked how we spent our TB weekends, they just wanted us to do them.

Took the whole crew across the channel once as well, man that was a weekend :D

I've just remembered one from a few years ago.
We were sent to a forest in Wales and then split into two teams. At that team there was a lot of tension amongst the staff.
We were told to build some kind of shelter. Two people that absolutely hated each other were on opposite teams and there was snide remarks throughout the day. It ended in a fight!!!.
We didn't have anymore away days after that!

I like them.

I think they should be followed up by a two-stage meal then pub to cement the team building. Of course some are wanky but some is great. Since becoming more senior, I've always made sure I and more senior colleagues leave so more junior staff aren't watching their backs or what they say. I also pick up the bar tab as I leave (well, the company, but I don't tell them that).

My false 'fun fact' is usually that being in prison turned made me vegan. People rarely question it, even when I'm eating meat later on.

They should do this stuff at school where the age group and naivety are more suited.

Also, they use the same exercises and tricks all the time. Went to one once where none of the exercises were unoriginal and my line manager and I just sat there saying the answers (“He lived in a lighthouse”, “There was no murderer”...) to get it over with but two women from another department refused to believe us and kept trying to think of alternative answers.

If anything those days sort out who not to work with because they are rather thick and fall for and old pseudocrap.

I have never attended a great one. Just the fact I even had to go would automatically put it in the wanky category for me.

YANBU.

Make me cringe.

We once did a "fun" one at GoApe. Was awful, I hate heights so that coupled with "team building..."

I think id actually enjoy them if i could sit in the background and not join in but watch and listen to others, im very nosey.

I feel like everyone hates them or merely tolerates them...but yes, I grit my teeth and try to remind myself it's just one day, taking advantage of the free tea and biscuits to push through!!

Anything that involves needing to wear a hard hat and dangling off a rope would be a no from me. GoApe is for children IMO.

Shots that video was for curlingly bad. 'Creating innovating sounds'...As if that is going to be helpful unless you work in the music industry

Horrific, I have a photo of me in a wheelbarrow, being pushed along by a group of blindfolded men, in a field . I’d had a baby 2 months earlier ( was thin again, thankfully for them ) but I wasn’t amused, and it went on for days too.

My DH’s previous office was sent on one team building day too many. Everyone was asked to write something positive about other staff and they all wrote ‘she smells’ ‘he’s fat’ ‘she wears horrid clothes’etc. During the physical stuff they did silly walks and splashed in puddles deliberately. I think it broke the person running the day because they walked out. The staff were all told off when they got back to the office like a bunch of naughty kids which they found hilarious. However the management never organised another team building day!

Yes, there's nothing like a good booze-up to make a non-drinker feel part of team is there? And it's fine for all the extroverts, but the introverts don't feel particularly valued by their colleagues.

Whereas standing up in front of a bunch of people you hardly know and talking about yourself is sooooo much better....

And plenty of non-drinkers go down the pub - you don't have to sit at home in your cellar reading up on the evils of alcohol......

brokeforyou You pretend you are paying yourself but it’s the company really? Why? Just to lord it over them?

Great team building skills. Not.

And you know they all know that you are the wanker that lies about it, don’t you?

Role playing, even as a bit of an amateur thesp, is awful. That whole "now what could Work have done differently" and then you have to redo it, like a naughty schoolkid who has to do their work again because they did it wrong, except with an audience of your peers, thinking thank fuck it isn't them.

The better ones involve some kind of physical activity, like the Go Ape stuff, you can have a laugh at that. But usually budget constraints mean that more than likely it's ice breakers and roleplay all the way.

At my work they used to have a full on weekend of olympic style stuff in teams and a party, a proper getaway of teams (large corp). I couldn't make it on my first year, then the following year they decided to have local 'sports afternoons' instead. Everyone knew it was budget, management insisted it wasn't. Then the whole event was never mentioned ever again :(

These days, any team days for us now means voluntary gardening somewhere.

I do think team bonding (not building) can be effective, (depending on your co-workers!) it's nice to let your hair down and see people in non work mode. But most places don't want to put the money behind nice activities that people would like to do, so you get icebreakers and a crap biscuit.

BigSandyBalls2015

Was it H?

When they started doing this at my firm it was always a weekend away somewhere. We’d leave Friday lunchtime, do work-type exercises and presentations until dinner, then drink until bedtime. On Saturday we’d do more team-building type things, have dinner and drink again until bedtime. Sunday morning would be more leisurely and after a late-ish breakfast we’d be allowed to slide off home. Even so, that spoke for your whole weekend.

I was then in my 50s and used to being away from home on business trips. However, most of the team were younger and recently married. They hated being apart from their spouses, having been at work all week. The ill-feeling gradually sunk in at management level and by the time I left that job our team building events consisted of leaving the office Friday lunchtime, work-type presentations or team building activities until dinner on Friday night and then a late-ish breakfast and off home on Saturday morning!

What gets me is, I have never met anyone who genuinely actually likes them.

So senior managers who think these are great must once have been low level workers who don't like them.

So why, when they get to the position where they can say no, we won't do that dross again, do they get on the team building band wagon.

Is it some form of sadism?

We once did a "fun" one at GoApe. Was awful, I hate heights so that coupled with "team building

Omg that is the stuff of nightmares I also hate heights and cried the night before a trip to GoApe with the dc. It was looking like Dh and me would have to do it with them to cover the adult to child ratio rule they have. In the end a lovely GoApe helper took pity went in my place. I cried again in relief. It seems I can’t even do team building exercises with my own family either.

qwertyuiopy

No lording anything over anyone. I say something like, "I won't cramp your style, thanks everyone for a great day. I've paid off the bar tab so whatever happens next is on your own head."

I'm the wanker with incredibly low staff-turnover for the industry.

I think your insecurities are coming out.

It's fairly clear from this thread that almost everybody hates them so i am baffled as to why anyone does them.

We took the team to Vegas! It worked brilliantly