Teambuilding

 

One of the unnoticed benefits of Coronavirus and social distancing has been the complete demise of Team Building courses. For those of you lucky enough to never have experienced a team building course, I should explain.

When the management of large corporations realise the business isn’t performing as well as they hoped, and they have no real idea how to fix things, they send the whole work force on a team building course. It’s intended to boost morale and foster team spirit. Attendance is mandatory for employees because “you’re really going to enjoy it and come back a better person”.

Team building courses are an export from America. This country has contributed many wonderful inventions such as rock ‘n’ roll, spaghetti westerns (OK most were made in Europe), the personal computer and spandex. To keep the balance they have also inflicted some monstrous crap on the rest of us, and team building courses are high in the top 10.

The courses are often a 2 – 3-day residential programme, so it intrudes on your personal time. The one possible saving grace of the whole sorry event is that they might have a free bar. If it doesn’t, then you really have been screwed.

So, you get to spend three days in the company of your fellow employees. You already suspect that half of them are dicks and a team building course is the perfect stage for them to prove it.

The course is always run by a team of insanely cheerful idiots. They encourage you to exchange hugs and high fives and bond with your colleagues. They love an inspiring theme song and they probably have a dance routine for you to learn. They repeatedly use annoying buzz-phrases like “positive mental attitude,” “let’s deep dive this,” and “winning is baked into our DNA”. I suspect that most team building organisers eventually end as members of whacky religious cults.

The courses always involve a series of pointless exercises. A favourite is to take turns falling backwards off a chair and a group of colleagues will catch you – this builds trust. What you really want is for the whole team to back up a few paces and let your manager fall flat on the deck. That would also teach a valuable lesson – how to laugh your arse off. Even worse, in the cringe sessions you might get invited to talk about your inner feelings or tell your colleagues why you think they are such a valuable member of the team.

If you really want to know the true meaning of friendship and loyalty – get a dog and take them for long walks on the three days you would have wasted ‘team building’.

Alastair and Daisy