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 ?!!

In a good work place then people share ideas and best practice within the team all the time, a continual building process. One that doesn't require dangling off a zip wire or drumming or indeed a day at RADA.

"The work you are paid to do" doesn't exist by itself though? The way everything is organised is a decision process.

I'm talking about offsite strategy stuff rather than awful teambuilding icebreakers though, so I'm a bit off the point.

But I slightly wonder why people think they can come in and do their job and never have to think about the bigger picture of the way we all work together?

Hypermice & sparkling brook I couldn't agree more!

RosyPrimroseface Tell that to my brother the Hedge Fund Manager!

But yes, you have a point. The bonuses have to be huge so people don't jump if they are not happy.

'offsite strategy stuff'. Is that something to do with head office?

I am always thinking of the way we work together. If I have an idea I will voice it, and others in the team do too. Luckily we have great managers who take stuff on board from the people that actually do the job.

At a former job in HE at a uni beginning with R. we had a team building exercise and went bowling. The venue stunk of piss the food was disgusting along the m4. We made other suggestions which were better but we're ignored. And new staff members joined us. I still shudder at their Impressions.

I want them to help work out what's best to do and talk about it with each other.

If this is truly what you want, then I commend you as a very rare and admirable manager.

I've only been working for 42 years so far, but in that time I have never met anyone who truly believed this - perhaps just my bad luck.

In my experience "sharing the strategy" works precisely as far as it is aligned with my boss's vision and/or the stupid constraints that S/he has been given to work within. Once any of my views about getting things done step outside of those narrow confines I'm "being negative".

OK then, the easier route is for leaders to do what they are paid to do and lead. Preferably with minimal use of wanky jargon.

Did anyone on here watch The Thick of It? There's a team building scene in one of the later series (the 'Mr Tickle is dead' one) which sums up a lot of team building exercises I've been to. "yes and ho". Painfully cringey but Peter Manion is everything I wanted to be when attending one.

Were

Family day - ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would rather set fire to myself and my DC would probably hate me for the rest of my life. Skin feels hot & itchy just thinking about it.

I don't want to be friends with my work colleagues, I don't really want to be all chummy & teamy, I just want to do my job & I want them to do their jobs & then we all get to fuck off home on time, knowing we did what we were paid to do, hopefully, well.

None of the team building sessions I've been on have ever made me bond with 'my team', they've made me simmer with resentment and quite often feel stabby towards certain colleagues.

Yes, family day. I can just see DH and two teen DSs queueing up for that one.

My neighbour had to do a proper survival course thing in some training "facility" in Hereford. As in, Hereford.

They literally had to navigate using compasses to a recce point, craft their own sleeping shelters out of tarp and branches, do a mass spooning exercise to stay warm (on the forest floor) with the coldest people on the outsides occasionally rotating into the middle of the huddle. The next day they had an assault course where they had to heave each other over high walls and crawl into rabbit holes underneath big mounds of earth, with the clincher being one of those underwater trust things where you get pushed down by one and yanked up the other side by another.

To top it off, they had to buy a shed load of special clothing and kit which they couldn't even claim back!

Anyone ever experienced anything severely negative on a team building event ?

(Alcohol definitely doesn't help).

One I was at saw one guy summarily dismissed for inappropriate behaviour .

MargoLovebutter Well that's the thing, nothing like this should be compulsory!

We do get people queuing up for ours, but I'm not kidding myself that it is for anything but the great freebies and the fact I work in a company that is very children centered!

Maybe if DH wasn't so antisocial and the teens were younger they could get on board with actual freebies qwerty.

I went on a team building course, not in the UK, led by a wanky bloke, which ended with us walking across burning coals. We spent all day supposedly getting into a positive mindset, the idea being that if you didn't anticipate pain, it wouldn't hurt. The peer pressure to do it was too much, but I can tell you now that it did hurt, it was excruciating. The trainer basically said it was my own fault because of my negative thinking. I had to spend that evening getting emergency treatment for burns.

Ugh these are hideous. I hate the “come up with an interesting fact about yourself* thing, I immediately feel like the most boring person ever! Other people all seem to say stuff like “I spent the first eight years of my life in China” or “I’m a triplet” or other unusual things like that and I’m just stuck. Or the similar “two truths and a lie” one.

Burns???!! I hope you damn well sued them

Family day sounds nice

Family day sounds absolutely appalling. All the spouses mingling awkwardly with people they have absolutely nothing in common with beyond their spouses working together. Forced outing of people who aren't "out" to work. It's bad enough that silly fools in HR for whom a Premier Inn is glamor and a Marriott may as well be Versailles think that a cheap hotel meal in the evening is worth losing a night at home for, but when they expect you to drag your spouse along as well it's beyond parody.

I regularly go into the mountains. I have equipment, experience and interest. I refused point blank to go on a faux-outward bound "team day" thing because I'm happy to risk an accident on my own time, with my own limits and my own risk assessment, but I'm not going to risk an accident with people I don't like providing an unhealthy "go on then" attitude, other people's risk appetite and (in the case I'm thinking of) equipment I think is shit. My then employer only ran it once, because a key member of staff who was easily led broke their leg and was off for a month. What a fucking surprise that was.

I had to spend that evening getting emergency treatment for burns.

Did you report your work-related injury to the HSE? You were there on work business, so their duty under H&S legislation still applied.

The trainer basically said it was my own fault because of my negative thinking.

HR departments who organise this sort of shit should be sacked en masse. If I were an incoming CEO I'd find out how much money my company had spent on this sort of nonsense (including staff wages costs for the time wasted on them), find out who authorised it, and make enough of them redundant to cover the cost. If they've got time to organise this sort of time-wasting, they're not useful to the business anyway.

I had a cookery class as a team building event a few weeks back and it was quite fun. We ate the food afterwards too. But I quite like my colleagues, it might be different if I didn't.

I’m single right now, but family day sounds like my idea of pure hell. What if the spouse is working as well? I can’t imagine “I’m off to my spouse’s team building day” would go down very well with a boss.

I think the activity chosen is very important.

Physical activities and drama workshops are very polarising. I can see how a cookery class is a safer option for big group.

Hypermice unfortunately "Paying them fairly
Making their terms and conditions fair" are becoming less and less likely to happen nowadays.

I once declined an activity and was told "Your absence was Noted". My alternative would have been to reveal an embarrassing medical problem that precluded me taking part. Sod that.

I can't lie I loved the last one I was on.

A school I taught at trialled "team-building afternoons" my department was one of the first to have one. Our Head of Department was a babe: she hated them so she ordered pizza, snacks, chips and fizzy drinks and told us all of us to turn of our laptops and put our work away. We spent the afternoon bitching and laughing and got our department meeting at the end of the day done too. The senior manager who ordered us to have a team-building afternoon was part of our department and didn't bother attending. He waltzed in at the end and was horrified to see what we'd done and shouted we'd done it wrong.

Funnily enough, he was one of the things we were bitching about.