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 ?!!

I have been known to make up the ‘interesting fact about myself

Me too - a lot of mine are total arse

God save me from passionate people

I want passion in bed - anywhere else it's fucking unwelcome - especially as a spectacularly unoriginal description for anything work related.

OMG BeUpStanding - I can't quite believe that happened!!!!!! Makes people having to pass balloons between their knees seem positively tame.

I remember one gruesome WEEKEENDER where we had to shout out suggestions to go on a flipchart and we all secretly conspired to make the first letter of each word spell out a rude word.

I suppose it did make us bond as a team in some respects... YANBU I hate them with a passion too. Just give me the money it would have cost and I'll absolutely work harder and more efficiently. Money is a pretty good universal motivator I reckon.

HR are responsible for all evil in the workplace in my experience.

Why would anyone want a job in HR? They spy on their colleagues, write up reports on them and tell their boss. They hang around and get the gossip on employees then tell their boss. Oh the most unpleasant people I have ever known have been in HR. Make up crappy recruitment polices. Find ways to 'beat' employees in Industrial tribunals when it's them who have been cunts. Always last out the door.

Only kidding. I love those happy bunnies really.

I agree re. passionate. Horrid word in the work arena and smacks of arsekissing. I have customers/clients and I work really hard for them, enjoy working for and with them, get great satisfaction from giving them exactly what they want, exceeding expectations if I can.

But no I am not "passionate" about "creating great customer experiences." or "finding innovative marketing solutions"...

Oh God they are awful. I got sent on one where we had to close our eyes in a row and pull a large rope, passing it along. We had to say where we were born first and stand in alphabetical order town-wise. I felt furious and opened my eyes to see my line manager standing laughing at me. I had gone in her place and I could see her teeth were stained red from all the wine she had drunk the evening before. Needless to say when I got back to the office, angry words were exchanged. But what did it all mean?

I refused to go on one of those forest Go Ape type things because I am absolutely terrified of heights and even if I wanted to do it, I knew I would have palpitations and spoil it for the other eager team members. The boss was fuming with me and told me I had to take the day out of my holiday allowance.

Next day my manager told me she had done it but felt really ill because she felt she couldn't back down and lose face and she was also terrified of heights. Worst of all, my colleague landed badly and broke her leg in several places resulting in her being off work for nearly six months.

I've never had a problem with HR. When I inherited a complete tool of a junior when I joined a new firm, they helped me get rid of him quickly and efficiently. To be fair, he had shouted at two of them in his first week because he wanted paying weekly instead of monthly like everyone else (?) and so they took me very seriously when I found out he had been referring (in emails to his girlfriend, sent from the office computer) to the people he worked with as his "slaves".

We got flown to Italy to the racetrack and got to wear boiler suits and do a pit stop thing. It was quite fun if you in your twenties and got no kids. Still slightly baffled as to what the point was we were all solicitors not mechanics.

Oh god, we have one in 2 weeks time! I thought it may be good (never been to one) but now I'm wondering. I assumed there would be no wanky introduce yourself type bollocks because we all know who everyone is. All I know is it's in work time, tea and cake will probably be involved and we have a couple of speakers coming in to talk about 2 subjects (which actually sound interesting although don't affect my job) and something else which hasn't been planned yet. It's actually on a Friday which isn't my working day but I was planning on going. If it's going to be "Hi I'm Weirdy and here's nothing remotely interesting about me" then I don't want to do it, or any acting shite. I have aspergers and only my line manager knows, even the team manager doesn't know and I'll probably end up blurting it out as my 'interesting fact' as I won't be able to think of anything else.

It depends, my dad does Team Building which includes trust arrows, breaking boards by hitting through them and then fire walking.

MorganKitten But why? Are the people training to be in a circus?

Companies are so sucked in!

What do we think are the best ways to help a team work together? I get that most of these more big-ticket team builders misfire badly. But you can't just go to the pub/do days off, can you - if you want people to engage with strategy etc?

If it was done well, would all you naysayers be up for it? Is it the quality of the experience you don't like or the very idea of trying to cohere a team out of different humans?

When I had a budget for this my staff asked for more professional training instead so we had a training day with a case study and the juniors got to see how the partners actually solve problems - they all rated it much more highly than the previous years outward bound stuff (might be that we had enough money left over for a fancy night on the town though).

DH got to do one that was a day out at Duxford playing on the tanks/planes etc - and it wasn't even his team (not that I am jealous).

I did get asked to organise one for a major pharma once - it was a huge new team and they turned up in this grotty old school and transformed the art block into a gym for people with certain medical conditions. They all loved it as they could see the difference at the end of the day and couple came back as volunteers.

I think team building is best if its either a jolly (even if its just drinks on a Friday before going home) or actually doing something useful. SO much of the "educational" stuff is just nonsense and everyone knows it is and resents having their time wasted.

I got out of going to one by having an endoscopy instead,frankly having a doctor insert stuff into my arse was much better than attending that......

BeUpStanding that is just the best. Or the least worst depending on how you look at it. No actually the worst worst.

And I was about icebreakers.

if you want people to engage with strategy etc?

Well you can start by not calling it fucking bollocks like that.

If you want me to do something at work, just fucking say so.

If you expect me to "passionately embrace the company ethos driving synergies towards a shared mission" you can fuck off to the far side of fuck and then fuck off some more.

Just speak sensible English - that would be a start.

Our team leader once got the idea to pass around "anonymous" pieces of paper with our names on.

Each person sat around the table had to write one good thing and one bad thing about the person written on the paper.

She had presented the whole thing like it would be completely anonymous. But anyone with brains could work out exactly who had written what as the pieces of paper were all passed around the table in order.

It was horrendous. As soon as everyone got their pieces of paper back, it was like the atmosphere became swampy and resentful, with flashes of anger.

As if this wasn't bad enough, she then had us all read out our feedback in turn.

People had written things like "lazy, doesn't do anything", "always gossiping", "talks too much", "crunches food too loudly".

It was about as far from "team-building" as you could get.

"Is it the quality of the experience you don't like or the very idea of trying to cohere a team out of different humans?"

Both.

People are different from each other. What they have in common is the workplace and (maybe, hopefully) a liking for the field they are in. So farting about with something completely random is pointless. For the odd one that wants to sing in a choir, Go Ape, or eat fire, take it up as a hobby.

As a pp said, training days may be useful, especially if you get to see what other people do and how it all fits together. Every year on "Family Day" in our company we get colleagues saying they really enjoyed the tour that is put on for their children! Each department makes an effort to explain what they do and make it fun.

If it was done well. There's the problem. IMO there's no such thing.

I am all for cohering a team of humans by actually doing the work we are paid to do and having the odd lunch hour together and a Christmas do. Anything else a bit pointless.

*...trying to cohere a...."

^ There's your problem.

Why use that expression?

Who ever says "cohere a team?"

Family day sounds nice. And I agree on the fire / go ape kind of stuff.

On the point about not wanting to think about strategy - I apologise for using the word engage as it is indeed wanky! The problem is, companies sort of are a team. Things work better and everyone has a nicer time if everyone is sharing a sense of what we're here to do and how to get it done better. So I don't want to just tell people what to do all the time - I am likely to get it wrong. I want them to help work out what's best to do and talk about it with each other. So yeah, there is a strategy, and you're either involved in building it or it just happens to you.

I suppose if the place you work is rubbish and you don't trust that it is a real discussion, it all feels fake and awful.

And as for loyalty. Bonuses and gifts!

I say cohere a team! Not specially at work, I'd say it with my friends too

How would you say it?

Bonuses and gifts don't work either if you think the management is shite though.

You can engender loyalty by the earth shatteringly rare and difficult techniques of:

Treating your staff like adults
Paying them fairly
Making their terms and conditions fair
Allowing flexibility

I know it’s a bit unorthodox but it does actually work.