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I looked at my email inbox one morning, and there was an email with the title, “Team Building,” from Mark, the Chief Operating Officer of the company I was working at.
I opened the email, looked at the content, and I groaned my disapproval. The team building exercise Mark wanted a limited group of senior managers to do was to go to an indoor rock-climbing facility.
How a bunch of out of shape, 40 somethings were going to bond and become better teammates going rock climbing was pure insanity, I thought to myself. I laughed, and said to myself, “I hope the company has good insurance.”
A week later, we all assembled at the rock-climbing facility, and we went through the team building exercises that were prepared for us. Some people participated, and some people did the minimum possible.
Team building exercises aren’t likely to fix your team’s poor performance.
The end result was predictable: Nothing changed.
I asked Mark why he thought team building was needed. “’Bob’ (the company’s CEO) felt the team was underperforming, so he suggested the idea.”
I laughed. “And going rock climbing is going to improve performance? You’ve gotta be kidding.”
