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Posted by on Feb 1, 2013 in Business | 3 comments

How Team Building can actually ruin your team

Last Friday my wife and I had our good friends over for a dinner. We started talking about the differences between working for small businesses and large corporations.

A friend, who works for a Fortune 100 company, said: “Do you know one thing I hate about my job? …Team building exercises.”

She proceeded with a very passionate and detailed description of how much stress and anxiety these team building activities cause her. And don’t get me wrong, on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being super socially active, my friend would probably get 12 points.
Team building exercises can be stupid
“Last week they sent us to watch movies”, she said. “I love movies, but I don’t like working until 9pm for a week to get all my tasks done, that I could not do on time because of that silly movie.”

“Can you imagine”, she continued, “this summer we’ve been sent on a scavenger hunt. It was 40 degrees Celsius for God’s sake! (104 Fahrenheit for our USA readers). Team building? Job hating exercise, that’s what I call it”.

The other guests also chimed in. They all shared similar stories of corporate stupidity and sheer embarrassment: karaoke bars, on-site dancing lessons with mandatory attendance, etc.

The common denominator across all these stories was that the team building activities were mandated by the HR department, or a manager who wasn’t even close to the team! These parties were nevertheless insisting on implementing the “team building best practices” for the sake of the practices, without any consideration for the effect on the team.

The HR department might have had the best intentions, but the results were devastating for the team: work was not done on time, and people were demotivated.

Do you remember what it was like being a child, forced by your parents or teachers to play the piano or perform a dance in front of an audience? You feel helpless and embarrassed. You don’t enjoy it and you don’t see the point, but you can’t escape it.

Trust me, that’s not the experience you want anyone, especially your employees, to go through.

What’s interesting in this story is that most small businesses do get team building right. Here are some examples of things that work:

  • Choose activities that are appropriate and enjoyable for your team. Freshbook’s annual Halloween Costume Contest is a great example.
  • Make sure that the team workload is not affected. Do their work for them, if you have to.
  • Don’t force it on people who don’t want to participate. Certain people are wired in different ways, and it’s not your job to change them. Let them be introverts, they’re still valuable to your business.
  • Encourage off-work gatherings where people can get to know each other better: gym memberships, charity drives, etc. Again, the keyword here is: optional or volunteering.
  • And the final advice: let people decide what they want to do. The best way is to just give your team a budget and let them pick and organize the desired unwinding. That’s going to be a great exercise in itself.

Of course, there are other ways to motivate and inspire your team. How does Team Building work in your organization?

Please share the good, the bad and the ugly experiences you have had!

  • http://www.TrivWorks.com David Jacobson

    “Team building” gets such a bad name precisely for the reasons you’ve described – a random collection of lame activities, mandated by HR which don’t do a single thing to promote teamwork or positive workplace skills. This will absolutely kill morale and motivation, which is the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do!

    For best team building results, you’ve got to create a positive shared experience for your group. Meet them at their level, and ask THEM what they want to do; absolutely make it offsite if possible, to give them a sense of “escape.” And don’t make it mandatory, unless you want to foster resentment!

    Good post- thanks for sharing

  • patrick

    Thank you for commenting, David!

    You’re absolutely right. Often, managers and HR have trouble grasping the idea that making people have “fun” ends up doing the reverse!

  • http://www.we-are-a-knockout.co.uk/ Steve (Its A Knockout)

    That’s a really interesting piece, mainly because it is rare to read a negative about corporate team building. Yes it made me think. And I can imagine that some people hate team days. I certainly did in my corporate days but they were really old school (Nobo boards, classroom type exercises). It does depend on your personality but I would have welcomed some refreshing that was fun and ‘play-ground’ like.

    I like your comment that introverts are useful to the business – too right!! They are usually quite studious and get things finished. A business needs all types of people. And maybe that is the crux of the problem that there is this pressure to be out-going. Some people are happy being in the background. Introvert is under-rated!!