Maybe we don't need a consultant
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Kelley Holland had a fine article in the New York Times that was titled "Improve Morale by Knowing Your Employees." Here's an excerpt.
"It would hardly be surprising, then, if many of the workers left standing at the end of this long, long year were depressed, stressed or both. But because dejection is not a viable business plan, managers need to find ways to give their employees a lift. That’s where team-building exercises and other morale boosters can come into play. The theory is that a trust-building game, a paintball session, a wilderness adventure, a cooking class or even full-contact chocolate bingo — yes, it exists — will help promote teamwork, inject cheer and thereby encourage everyone to work harder and better together. "
When I read that paragraph I braced myself for a touchy-feely team-building manifesto. But I underestimated the author. Her Times piece points out that, just perhaps, formal team-building exercises might be less effective and more expensive than just plain good supervision.
If you're considering sending your team off to an "event" that they haven't clamored for, you should read this article.
Team building exercises tend to be cutthroat competitions where winners are invited to jeer losers and/or a facilitator reveals the solution to a puzzle in such a way as to make everyone feel stupid. In spite of good intentions, humiliation is usually more central to "teambuilding" than trust is. Trust is built every day in daily work, not in silly formal games-that-aren't-games.
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Thanks for stopping by and adding your perspective, Kathy.
I don't like most team-building exercises for a simple reason: they don't seem to have any positive affect on either productivity or morale. Often, they're used as a quick fix by managers who don't want to dig down to real problems.
I don't like any exercise, team-building or otherwise, that produces humiliation. In my experience, that can happen in any kind of workshop if the facilitator/trainer is emotionally tone deaf, poorly trained or prepared, or belongs to the embarass-them-into-submission school of training.
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