Team Building Companies – Five Frightful Ideas
After blogging about the eight questions you must ask potential teambuilding companies – and offering industry-insider tips for choosing between teambuilding companies, now we want to tell you a few teambuilding horror stories.
The following five frightful activities have actually taken place (and these ideas should absolutely see you running a merry mile away from any team building company that even suggests them).
1. Trust Exercises
These come in many shapes and forms – whether falling backwards into another team member’s arms, or placing your palms on each other’s and stepping back until you form a shaky human bridge. Whatever the exact form it takes, trust exercises have plenty in common…
Invasion of personal space? Check. Possible litigation from an employee with a broken nose/arm/bum bone? Double check. Absolutely no positive outcome for your team? Well, it seems it’s a full-house for the most pointless team activity going.
2. Turn Right, Turn Left – Right, Right, Right!!!
This event involves one blindfold, one sightless employee, and another employee who shouts, probably swears and gets seriously frustrated. Working their way through an obstacle course, this task is meant to improve communication. We’d simply say – if your teams aren’t professional obstacle course runners, this has very little application in the real world.
3 . Terrifying the Life Out of You
Kayaking through white water rapids? Taking a death defying base jump off the side of a building? Some say that these events are designed to push you to your limits and forge unbreakable connections with your fellow team members. We say, you’d better ask your team building company whether they have insurance.
4 . Things I Hate About You
Everyone knows that team building events should be feel-good affairs, don’t they? Well, it seems not. One all too common strategy is to ask each individual in a team to share their thoughts as to what they don’t like about their fellow team members. Ouch. This isn’t only painful, it’s incredibly counter-productive.
5 . Parrots and Monkeys
It’s true to say that teams are full of wonderfully individual people, and that any office may be home to people who fall into certain categories (you can read more about our thoughts on this in our guide – including everyone in your teambuilding).
However, we’ve heard a tail or two about animistic team building, where each individual is assigned into an animal category. Unsurprisingly, most bosses are lions and there’s almost always an over-emphasis on how parrots, monkeys, or another animal should or shouldn’t be treated so as not to stifle their creativity. Cowboy psychology at best. An absolute waste of time at worst.
We promise we won’t categorise Peter in Production as a parrot, or Macie in Marketing as a monkey. You see, Accolade are all about the positivity – enhancing the strengths of teams, and boosting collaboration. Let’s talk about team building that works. Full stop. Send us a message, or call us directly on 0800 083 1172.
