We Need Team Spirit! (So I've Set Aside Thursday).

Team Bonding: Would you prefer a masked hijacking or a walk on burning coals?

Managers at Ericsson, the Swedish telecom company, were apparently hard pressed for a memorable team-building exercise for their international sales conference in Athens this February. They probably wanted something more than the standard fare: ropes courses, white-water rafting, and other extreme sports. So they turned to...hostage taking.

Unbeknown to salespeople on a corporate bus headed for Corinth, Ericsson had hired two men with masks and weapons to stage a hijacking. The exercise was reportedly designed to test the employees' cool under stress. But the performance was cut short by a meddling passerby with a cell phone who called the authorities. "Definitely, this was very unfortunate," says Ericsson spokesman Lars Ostlund. "The mistake was not giving notice to the police."

While most companies stick to torturing their workers by forcing them to hold hands and accomplish pointless tasks--preferably while blindfolded--others have gone to extremes. Unfortunately, these exciting games have put some team players on the disabled list. In England in 1998, for example, insurance company Eagle Star sent 13 salespeople walking across a bed of hot coals on the advice of a management consultant. Guess what? Seven burned their feet, two badly enough to require hospitalization. Eagle Star says it has learned its lesson and now sticks to more conventional bonding exercises.

-- The above story is Copyright Time, Inc., 2000

ATW public service: Tips for walking across burning coals at your next team function.

Focus, People. Focus!

Building business teams is about business results. The assumption is that if people can find ways to work more smoothly together, better results will follow. That's usually true, especially when reducing conflicts involving lack of role clarity (who should really be doing what) and process (how do things get handed off and when).

Here's where it begins to fall apart:

1. The team leader wants to "improve morale and cooperation." So she hires a consultant to "do something" that will boost morale and cooperation. The problem: Morale is usually a function of leadership and organizational policies and procedures. Cooperation is, in part, what the manager is getting paid to produce.

2. The team leader may not understand the distinction between building effective work groups and having a "group event."

3. The team leader may not understand the array of "help" that's out there: Here are a few examples:

    a. Genuine business team consultants who work closely to understand the immediate issues, interview the team members, then work with the team leader on a design that will address what's really happening so that things will be different afterward if people choose to address them  honestly. This requires an experienced consultant/facilitator, a leader who is also willing to look at his/her part in the team's performance, and a group of people who believe they can improve with some focused help.

    b. "Event" consultants who do the rafting/paintball/trust walk sort of thing. Leaders need to understand--and be clear with their people--that an event is being staged with the hope that some lessons will be transferred back to the job. It's possible to have these work well if the specific activities are designed to be "processed" after each one in the context of an on-the-job issue. The consultant also has to have done a real-life diagnostic and know how to direct an activity toward the "live" business issues.

    Note: Absent the organizational expertise, these activities can still be fun if they are framed as just that. When everyone agrees beforehand that it could be good to blow off some steam together and swing from trees and mountains, it probably beats karaoke. If it's a big surprise and participation is required in activities that are uncomfortable at  many levels, the best result might be a lawsuit settled out of court.

    c. "Team Therapists" who work their mojo. It's pretty amazing what is sold--and bought--as "team building". These types usually have their favorite intervention, jargon, and model of "being" that they bring into the workplace masquerading as team building. What I've learned from seeing these people appear on the scene is that they view the "group" as an entity with a "problem." They are the doctors. But there is often a twist with this crowd. They are often "doctors" who haven't performed a diagnosis, don't understand the business issues, and don't offer a cure. Instead, they opt for a reflective approach, tossing a verbal bone to the group every so often with the assurance that "you are the experts and architects of your own lives...you can figure this out." Without context and a  structured group task focused on real-life team performance, participants wonder where they are and how they got there.

Too Important to Stop Now...

Work gets done through people collaborating. That makes legitimate group development a high priority item for every business. In my next post I'll highlight what team leaders and team members need to do to boost their chances of being more successful at the team building process.

In the meantime, share your favorite team building story with a comment. All contributions gratefully accepted.

Comments

[Jim Stroup]

Hello Steve,

This is a great - and timely - post.

A perceived lack of teamwork in an organization is viewed by management as a deficit among the staff. Thus, they want team-building exercises to teach employees how to trust each other and to work more as a team.

While there can be some value in such lessons, they are most useful when learned by management, rather than by employees. They should lead to the creation and careful maintenance of the environmental conditions in which teamwork can thrive in the actual workplace - not at an off-site training event.

Thanks for a great post - and an attention-grabbing article citation to start it off!

[Mark Harrison]

> "The mistake was not giving notice to the police."

No, the mistake was doing something unbelievably dumb.

If phoning up the police and saying "It's OK - we're going to stage a PRETEND crime - don't bother coming out to investigate" was a good strategy, it's possible that CRIMINALS might pick up on it, and use it to buy themselves an extra few minutes in police response times by bogusly reporting "tests" ahead of time.

[David Zinger]

It all sounds like episodes of The Office gone bad. I am not a fan of the blind trust walk. It was big 30 years ago but still hangs around where you blindfold one person and the other person verbally navigates them around a building. A great bowler (don't ask how I know this) once said, "trust is must or your game is a bust." - Yet I don't believe you manufacture trust or team out of cute little exercises.
Got to go now, I am off to bob for apples!

[Beth Robinson]

How do you see the your key points above changing when it involves people from different locations - or do they?

We did a couple of overnight events in 2005 and 2006 and the best part of them was people from different job func0tions and three different US locations, plus some with offices in different parts of the building in the same location, were all in one place and interacting. If that rope course had been followed up by some counseling, then yes, we might have gotten more out of it, but having it in the afternoon after a morning session of brainstorming did seem to at least increase the comfort level of different people talking to each other when we all returned to work.

[Michelle Malay Carter]

Hi Steve,

Oh my! Good intentions gone bad here. Great post.

Two of the best things organizations can do to improve "teamwork" is to:

1. provide clear context within which the team can work so they can make decisions enlighted by the broader purpose.

2. Clarify accountabilities and authorities so that people know going into situations who can "break ties" and when to escalate and to whom. It can be done fairly easily using a pre-defined set of about 10 types of relationships. This keeps people from having to manipulate one another or use force of personality to "fight things out" to get their way.

Anyway, I posted a Friday Funny months back which still gets quite a few hits. It strikes a familiar chord with people who have suffered through silly team building events: http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/teambuilding-a-friday-funny

Regards,

Michelle

[Tom Haskins]

Steve: Your diagnosis rocks! You've nailed what goes wrong, what solutions get tried and what works with team building. I find their choice of "hijacking a bus" to reek with symbolic significance! Management is saying that amping up teamwork calls for an "act of desperation". Acts of appreciation and amplification are "not on their menu". This so often happens when the attention, goal setting and rewards are devoted to individual heroics, initiatives and ambitions. Teamwork is held in disgrace implicitly and takes the form of commiseration, conspiracies and counter-insurgencies. However, in cultures that thrive on cooperation, collaboration, coordination and compassion, showing appreciation for teamwork is a natural, daily thing. But getting individuals to take initiative and deviate from the group norms then takes an act of desperation. Escaping the "tyranny of either/or" requires "distributing the intelligence" to diagnose either extreme throughout the team, so no one is waiting for "a divine intervention of top management" to restore balance of individualistic cooperation.

[Steve Roesler]

Jim,

Doesn't this really fit into our discussions on both blogs regarding "systems" and "thinking systemically?"

The idea that it's "them" seems kind of strange to me. If "I'm" with "you" every day, then there must be something about "us" that we can work on.

[Steve Roesler]

Mark,

That response does seem a bit naive at best, eh?

[Steve Roesler]

Thanks, Michelle,

I'll pull out the post and put the link up...no reason not to have lots of fun with this one:-)

[Steve Roesler]

David,

Perhaps bobbing for bowling bowls would create a more trusting environment.

Let us know how that works out...

[Steve Roesler]

Tom,

You did another brain tweak on me. I hadn't thought of certain "team building" events in the context of acts of desperation; yet looking back through that lens, I can see how many actually fell into that category.

Maybe this is why I've always felt uncomfortable "doing team building". For me, building effective groups is an implicit part of management/worklife. To separate "team building" from "team meeting" simply sends the message: "This is how we should really act but we couldn't really be expected to do it every day." (??!!)

Yes. I have very strong reality-based feelings about this. . .

[Jo]

Good post Steve. I think you need to syndicate this. Mind if I link to it a million times?

It gets worse than this though, doesn't? I find I can't relate the worst that I have seen. I am afraid some "team building experts" are just bullies. I feel my stomach heave at some of the things I have seen.

What is gratifying is when team members protect each other from this type of thing and start to take care of each other within the event! I have also seem warmth and consideration which is amazing.

My "scotch.cart" name is a play on the games we play and are asked to play. Most people chose to be luxury vehicle such as a BMW. I choose to be a Scotch Cart. A push cart that people aspire to own as a first vehicle, usually laden with goods and people and pushed by a whole crowd of little boys.

[peter vajda]

Hi, Steve, thanks for the provocative post:

In my experience, when folks are not getting along in the workplace, a “team-building experience” is often suggested as a “solution” to the “problem” – that building trust, collegiality, collaboration, mutual-accountability, shared values, friendship, positivity, etc. will somehow arise where is was non-existent.

For example, attempting to build trust, for example, through a process that many folks don’t trust in the first place has its limitations. Hmmm.

Too, using team-building to hopefully deal with deeper personal issues that leak out in the workplace also is most often futile. Perhaps short-term gains, but I want to visit the workplace six months to 18 months down the road to see what really “stuck.” Often, what I experience is a form of recidivism.

When individuals bring their “stuff” to work (and almost everyone does in some way, shape or form), folks don’t get along. They gossip, bully, become disrespectful, mistrusting and mistrustful, become sloppy, frustrated, angry, resistant, hoard information, don’t communicate any more than is required, seek power and control, etc. So, management decides the issue is “the team” and the solution is a “team-building” experience.

This leads to a “team” problem, to be sure, but working at the surface level to create harmony is again, futile - putting a band-aid on a deeper wound, never getting to the individual source of each person’s contribution (e.g., individual interpersonal and intrapersonal dysfunctions, lack of vision, purpose and direction, resistance to change, etc.) to the deeper wound. Deeper solutions cannot be had with a quick ropes course.

Perhaps rather than dealing with the team, one might deal with the individual (perhaps more effectively with a coach) and ask, for example:

1.What is keeping me from doing my best work (i.e., what is it in me and what is it in the organization)?
2.Why is this important to consider?
3.How am I contributing to the “problem” and how am I keeping myself from contributing to the betterment of the team/department/organization?

Team building and some type of “bonding” (if it happens) does not equate to “problem” solving or "team building". It could just as easily lead to team collusion and denial about the “elephants in the room” - but at least we all feel positive, feel “tight”, in our denial, even among folks we don’t like!

Finally, often team building (experiential, such as ropes, etc.) does not work because of the inherent fears and emotions many folks bring with them to the experience - fear of heights, closed places, snakes, fire… due to some childhood trauma that leaks out in the experience. And the implicit or explicit “Get over it on Thursday!” is not an appropriate directive.

For me, team-building as “fun”, as a social experience, as you suggest, can play a superficial part. Team-building as “intervention” hardly ever succeeds.

I like the way you break this down, Steve. Very insightful for me.

[Steve Roesler]

Jo,

Well, I was wondering if others had had some of the same experiences in this area as I have had. While I'm not thrilled to know that that is the case, at least I know that other professionals are seeing the same things happen and are equally as concerned.

I like the Scotch Cart story; it reflects much about your approach to people in just a couple of words.

[Steve Roesler]

Peter,

As I read and re-read your comment, my mind kept returning to: Accurate diagnosis.

When a manager hires someone from the outside to help with a situation, then that person has an obligation to do a complete diagnostic regardless of what the client(manager) identifies as the issue(s). The dynamic is the same as any counseling dynamic: The client may be there because of an unclear assessment of things. That's quite understandable--sometimes we're so immersed in the issue that we can't see it clearly; certainly not our own part.

You also pointed to the distinction between group dynamics and individual issues. Without some solid probing beforehand, it's impossible to identify what can best be addressed one-on-one and what are "communal" issues. The best team development design won't do anything productive if the real issues are individual or managerial.

Thank you for extending the conversation as far as you have. . .

[Rowan Manahan]

Hi Steve, So on the money as always. The amount of energy, money and time wasted on this stuff!

My wee tale relates to a wee boss I worked with many years ago, who was all gung-ho about the prospect of a day's paintballing - until he kept coming across conversations along the lines of, "Well I don't care what team I'm on, he is soo getting shot in the back from close range. I hear these things can really hurt ..."

So, the scary guns never materialised, and we spent a sweaty day building rope bridges and learning to abseil.

One of those little lost opportunities I guess ...

[Steve Roesler]

Ah, Rowan,

It's never too late to gather the old crowd for a special "reunion" with a guest of honor...

Isn't it fascinating how we all seem to have these stories?

[Wally Bock]

Great post, Steve, with many fine comments. I've often wondered why business teams find it necessary to do things other than the team's actual work to increase the ability of members to work together. Sports teams don't. Football teams don't practice basketball to get better or go to an offsite and learn to cook.

And then there are those "trust" exercises. If you and I are working together, I don't care much about whether I can trust you to catch me during an exercise, but I sure care, a lot and often, about whether you get your work product to me on time.

[Steve Roesler]

Wally,

You know, I enjoyed the comments as much as I did writing the post. This is one of those things that, unfortunately, a lot of us have bumped into along the way.

Your examples of sports teams and what they don't do to get "teamy" is as good an example as any I've seen.

Coincidentally, I'm sitting here putting together a list of questions for a CEO/Senior Exec Team who want to build a "How Are We Doing?" segment into their meeting. They suggested that the focus of the discussion be on how they are really supporting each other in the execution of the company's strategies as well as respectfully challenging each other enough in decision-making sessions. No mention of paintball.

[Anne Thornley-Brown, President, Executive Oasis International]

BRAVO Steve,

Thank you for this.

I have been writing about this topic for some time now too. I am glad to see that I am not the only one sounding the alarm.

I want to stress the fact that I see nothing wrong with recreation for teams or a day of fun. Companies have been having picnics and parties for ever. This is a good thing but it has it's place. It's great to get the team out of the office for a time of relaxation and bonding, BUT....Some companies seem to have forgotten that a recreational and even frivilous activities and events are not team building. They are replacing team building with activities that are strictly recreational. Team building is about improving team performance and achieving business results as you have rightly pointed out.

I see a number of trends that are disturbing:

- companies participating in strictly recreational events and calling it "team building"

- hotels jumping no the band wagon and dubbing some of their recreational events as team building

- organizations that provide activities like treasure hunts, grape stomping, walking on coals, drumming, and cattle round-ups are passed off these activities as "team building" and marketing them as such

The result, team building comes to be perceived as a frivilous non value added activity that can be cut when tough times come.

It's time companies got a grip so to speak and got back to the basics when it comes to team building. Many organizations have now come to lump these frivilous activities together with bonafide team building and budgets are being slashed. A few years ago, I predicted that this would happen. This is one time that I wish I was wrong. Still, it boggles the mind that, at a time when funds are supposed to be tight, some organizations are still spending money on some of the activities you have described and bypassing business team building that is focused on generating business results and boosting corporate performance.

[Steve Roesler]

Hello, Anne,

We certainly are of like minds and experiences on this one. And it's always good to know that there is a kindred spirit out there and one also willing to write and speak to the issues.

Agreed on the "fun" part, too, especially if a group simply needs to chill, decompress, or be rewarded for a job well done. Nothing wrong with that.

Our posture now is to educate clients and prospects on the alternatives and the reasons for them. Those of us who are so close to the business of team dynamics and performance sometimes forget that even the best of execs don't have an understanding of the options and their outcomes.

Good to hear from you...

[Anne @executiveoasis]

Things have ramped up a notch since we last communicated about this. Now it's not enough to BBQ employees's feet and scare them to death with fake hijackings. Check out the latest lunacy in what is being passed off for team building in my latest blog entry:

The Height of Stupidity in Team Building:
Tree Jumping, Base Jumping, What's Next?

http://bit.ly/notteambuilding3

You wouldn't believe how some companies are spending their money in the name of team building. It's sheer lunacy.