Here is a team building exercise that you all should try. It
is a guaranteed success.
First, organize one of those silly team building exercises
that many corporations seem to love – getting the entire company together,
break them into small groups that have nothing to do with the employees’ real
teams, and then do some link building, get-to-know-you activities like treasure
hunts and ropes courses.
Then end the day about an hour before your employees usually
go home and watch the magic begin. The
real teams will congregate and start grumbling about how huge a waste of time
this day was. What ignoramuses our upper
management must be to think this could work !!!! They may even all go out to happy hour or
dinner together to keep the gripe-fest going.
It may even last all week. And
THIS is the team building that is my guaranteed success. You would be amazed at how unifying against a
common adversary can bond a team together.
This is real bond-building, not the link-building that the ropes courses
create.
But in all seriousness, there is a potential consequence
that you need to worry about. Who is it
that they are bonding to oppose? You can’t
let this turn into longer term negative competition between workplace teams or
disruption against organizational principles once they get back to their real
work. But that is not too hard as long
as you follow a few basic guidelines.
·
Make sure that the groups inside the fake team
building exercises are orthogonally created to their real work teams so there are
no out-group identity schema created during any competition. If you have any questions about this, please
ask me about it in the comments because it is really important.
·
Make sure that the rules of the fake team
building exercises are structured using good gamification principles to discourage
any cheating, even in fun. If you have
any questions on this one, read my new book when it comes out in the fall. (Yes,
this is a convenient plug. So sue me
!!).
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