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"team building" is like an arranged marriage - either you have a team or you don't, trying to force it doesn't yield any results and usually it's just an euphem

by stiff 15y ago

"team building" is like an arranged marriage - either you have a team or you don't, trying to force it doesn't yield any results and usually it's just an euphemism for being forced to do stupid things, most often to get drunk with everyone or "you are not being a team player". I would feel rather silly doing push-ups at work, especially at the command of my "team leader". Maybe people with more submissive personalities can swallow something like this more easily. Aside from the above, where opinions may and probably will vary, doing just a single exercise very often is actually detrimental to health in many ways. Additionally, push-ups are exactly the wrong the exercise for most computer people, who tend to have rounded shoulders and contracted chest muscles - they are primarily a chest exercise, further exaggerating the rounded shoulders, where actually chest streching is needed and rowing exercises for the back. You might make fun of meatheads, but you actually should think a bit about what you are doing to your body, or it won't really do any good.

invalidOrTaken 15y ago
I don't think it's so cut and dried as "you have a team or you don't." Marriages aren't like that, friendships aren't like that---team cohesion falls on a spectrum as well. I think there's value to team-building exercises when the participants want to be on the team, because just wanting isn't enough. But I agree that those sorts of exercises are certainly not sufficient alone.
- stiff 15y ago
  "you have a team or you don't" should be read in the context of the sentence it appeared in - I do agree there is a spectrum, the point was that you cannot somehow make a team from a bunch of people if they don't go along with each other well by themselves. Those "team building" activities have a very artificial feeling to them and while many management people gladly will jump on any currently popular management bandwagon, I think most participants just think it's ridiculous, even through no-one will say it out loud. The actual team building happens when people do their real work together and there are sensible ways to encourage this, there was recently this post roughly about how Pixar or Apple offices are arranged in a way that you have to go across the whole office to grab a tea, so that people run into each other many times a day and have a chance to discuss stuff.
psykotic 15y ago
Team building just makes me shudder. A bad experience with a job I had in Korea made me almost swear off drinking entirely because I came to associate it with hwaeshik where I'd drink with obnoxious seniors while having to ward off their passive-aggressive male dominance bullshit. It was partly my own fault for setting expectations the wrong way. My friend who hired me and was the team's other foreigner just refused to go from the start. That worked out better for him in the long run, even if it gave him the reputation of being the difficult anti-social foreigner. Push-ups are well within my wheelhouse (and if you do a few hundred a day it's not a bad one-exercise regimen to keep some minimum level of upper body and core strength), but I'd still feel really stupid doing them with my team mates, especially in our business.
- joelrunyon 15y ago
  "Feeling stupid" isn't necessarily a good metric for determining whether or not something is worthwhile doing. Lots of people doing something "stupid" end up being incredibly successful.
  - psykotic 15y ago
    I thought my anecdote suggested quite clearly why I consider it stupid. Reading over it again I still think it does, but I'll spell it out for you: These kinds of team-building rituals make certain people very uncomfortable and anxious. This is no doubt lost on a lot of the empathy-challenged type-A personalities that tend to infect middle management. When it comes to push-ups I wouldn't personally have a problem performing them, but I'd really hate to see the weaker guys suffer. In the eyes of team building gurus, that kind of suffering and struggle is supposed to lead to a death-and-rebirth bonding experience. But for many people, it's the kind of thing that will make them dread going to work every morning.
    - joelrunyon 15y ago
      I think it completely depends on the situation. In my opinion, the OP didn't come across as "empathy-challenged type-A personality" and his company seems small enough that everyone involved seems okay doing them. While it might not be great for everyone (maybe especially in corporate environments), it didn't come across mean-spirited or ill-willed at all in this case. Edit: That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with what seems like a terrible job.
jrockway 15y ago
I agree with you; my personality would not allow me to do this. In addition to the dominant / submissive issue, who wants to crawl around on the floor at work, anyway? I'm disgusted just thinking about it. If you want your employees to work out, give them an hour off in the middle of the day, a well-stocked gym, and showers.
blacksmythe 15y ago
There are a lot of things managers and coworkers can do that either strengthen or weaken team spirit. In my experience one of the most positive is eating meals together. One of the most negative is playing favorites or improperly assigning credit for accomplishments.
- cema 15y ago
  Right, and these are all meaningfully related to work, directly or indirectly. Doing pushups is artificial and feels cheesy at best.
  - aurelianito 15y ago
    Why is it that eating is more meaningfully related to work than doing pushups?
    - Evgeny 15y ago
      Almost everyone would naturally eat at least something during the work day, team building or not. A small minority would naturally incorporate physical activity into the work day. I personally prefer to do it before or after - changing clothes twice, shower + workout itself does not fit naturally into the lunch break.
    - cema 15y ago
      Everybody eats, usually at least once during the work day, and in our society sharing a meal has positive connotations. Besides, it is possible (and in many cases customary) to have a conversation over a meal.
  - joelrunyon 15y ago
    Have you done pushups at work before? I ask because I would assume that it's the only way you would know such a thing.
    - cema 15y ago
      Yes, individually, to fight against sleepiness. Not to participate in team building!
byrneseyeview 15y ago
Arranged marriages are remarkably successful. People are really good at falling in love given the right context clues. Similarly, team-building exercises can be stunningly effective. The military takes a couple months to make you willing to sacrifice your life for a group of what were recently strangers.
- cema 15y ago
  The military takes a couple months to make you willing to sacrifice your life for a group of what were recently strangers. My experience is completely opposite. Perhaps I was in a wrong military (I was: USSR, mid-1980s), mandatory conscription, culture clash. Mandatory conscription is similar to arranged marriages, but not to how jobs are staffed, so the analogy may not hold here. In case my management decides to do this kind of team-building exercise, I think I would be willing to give them benefit of doubt, but the very cheesiness of it all will likely wear me out before I give up and call it bullshit. Conflict with the management will then be almost inevitable. The opposite of team building! Maybe it is just me; I see comments that sound positive.
  - roel_v 15y ago
    Conscripts are not at all like 'proper' soldiers. Conscripts are just there to sit out their time. You can't compare that to training professional, actual combat-ready soldiers (i.e., not truck drivers and radio operators - although of course they all go through the same basic training. The amount of time that is put into taking away individual identify and replacing it with a group mentality in combat troops like e.g. US Marines or Foreign Legion legionnaires is huge (from what I know of reading books and watching TV - it's not like really know anything about this).
    - cema 15y ago
      Conscripts are not at all like 'proper' soldiers. Conscripts are just there to sit out their time. The soldier is sleeping, the service is going on. Of course. And yet, that's how most of the armies of the world are. That how the US army was, to a large extent, during the Vietnam war. (But also during WWII.) I spent two years of service performing mostly bullshit tasks (or doing nothing). When I was in training I received some kind of basic education of driving, uh, amphibious transporter medium - modified (ПТС-М, плавающий транспортёр средний - модифицированный). Was kind of fun. All right, it's completely off-topic now.
mcantelon 15y ago
"Team building excercise" is a good euphemism for "drill". Cults and command-and-control institutions have employed things like "buddy pushups" for centuries. It's pretty funny this startup thinks it's somehow innovative.

by stiff 15y ago

invalidOrTaken 15y ago

I don't think it's so cut and dried as "you have a team or you don't." Marriages aren't like that, friendships aren't like that---team cohesion falls on a spectrum as well. I think there's value to team-building exercises when the participants want to be on the team, because just wanting isn't enough. But I agree that those sorts of exercises are certainly not sufficient alone.

stiff 15y ago
"you have a team or you don't" should be read in the context of the sentence it appeared in - I do agree there is a spectrum, the point was that you cannot somehow make a team from a bunch of people if they don't go along with each other well by themselves. Those "team building" activities have a very artificial feeling to them and while many management people gladly will jump on any currently popular management bandwagon, I think most participants just think it's ridiculous, even through no-one will say it out loud. The actual team building happens when people do their real work together and there are sensible ways to encourage this, there was recently this post roughly about how Pixar or Apple offices are arranged in a way that you have to go across the whole office to grab a tea, so that people run into each other many times a day and have a chance to discuss stuff.

psykotic 15y ago

Team building just makes me shudder. A bad experience with a job I had in Korea made me almost swear off drinking entirely because I came to associate it with hwaeshik where I'd drink with obnoxious seniors while having to ward off their passive-aggressive male dominance bullshit. It was partly my own fault for setting expectations the wrong way. My friend who hired me and was the team's other foreigner just refused to go from the start. That worked out better for him in the long run, even if it gave him the reputation of being the difficult anti-social foreigner. Push-ups are well within my wheelhouse (and if you do a few hundred a day it's not a bad one-exercise regimen to keep some minimum level of upper body and core strength), but I'd still feel really stupid doing them with my team mates, especially in our business.

joelrunyon 15y ago
"Feeling stupid" isn't necessarily a good metric for determining whether or not something is worthwhile doing. Lots of people doing something "stupid" end up being incredibly successful.
- psykotic 15y ago
  I thought my anecdote suggested quite clearly why I consider it stupid. Reading over it again I still think it does, but I'll spell it out for you: These kinds of team-building rituals make certain people very uncomfortable and anxious. This is no doubt lost on a lot of the empathy-challenged type-A personalities that tend to infect middle management. When it comes to push-ups I wouldn't personally have a problem performing them, but I'd really hate to see the weaker guys suffer. In the eyes of team building gurus, that kind of suffering and struggle is supposed to lead to a death-and-rebirth bonding experience. But for many people, it's the kind of thing that will make them dread going to work every morning.
  - joelrunyon 15y ago
    I think it completely depends on the situation. In my opinion, the OP didn't come across as "empathy-challenged type-A personality" and his company seems small enough that everyone involved seems okay doing them. While it might not be great for everyone (maybe especially in corporate environments), it didn't come across mean-spirited or ill-willed at all in this case. Edit: That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with what seems like a terrible job.

jrockway 15y ago

I agree with you; my personality would not allow me to do this. In addition to the dominant / submissive issue, who wants to crawl around on the floor at work, anyway? I'm disgusted just thinking about it. If you want your employees to work out, give them an hour off in the middle of the day, a well-stocked gym, and showers.

blacksmythe 15y ago

There are a lot of things managers and coworkers can do that either strengthen or weaken team spirit. In my experience one of the most positive is eating meals together. One of the most negative is playing favorites or improperly assigning credit for accomplishments.

cema 15y ago
Right, and these are all meaningfully related to work, directly or indirectly. Doing pushups is artificial and feels cheesy at best.
- aurelianito 15y ago
  Why is it that eating is more meaningfully related to work than doing pushups?
  - Evgeny 15y ago
    Almost everyone would naturally eat at least something during the work day, team building or not. A small minority would naturally incorporate physical activity into the work day. I personally prefer to do it before or after - changing clothes twice, shower + workout itself does not fit naturally into the lunch break.
  - cema 15y ago
    Everybody eats, usually at least once during the work day, and in our society sharing a meal has positive connotations. Besides, it is possible (and in many cases customary) to have a conversation over a meal.
- joelrunyon 15y ago
  Have you done pushups at work before? I ask because I would assume that it's the only way you would know such a thing.
  - cema 15y ago
    Yes, individually, to fight against sleepiness. Not to participate in team building!

byrneseyeview 15y ago

Arranged marriages are remarkably successful. People are really good at falling in love given the right context clues. Similarly, team-building exercises can be stunningly effective. The military takes a couple months to make you willing to sacrifice your life for a group of what were recently strangers.

cema 15y ago
The military takes a couple months to make you willing to sacrifice your life for a group of what were recently strangers. My experience is completely opposite. Perhaps I was in a wrong military (I was: USSR, mid-1980s), mandatory conscription, culture clash. Mandatory conscription is similar to arranged marriages, but not to how jobs are staffed, so the analogy may not hold here. In case my management decides to do this kind of team-building exercise, I think I would be willing to give them benefit of doubt, but the very cheesiness of it all will likely wear me out before I give up and call it bullshit. Conflict with the management will then be almost inevitable. The opposite of team building! Maybe it is just me; I see comments that sound positive.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Conscripts are not at all like 'proper' soldiers. Conscripts are just there to sit out their time. You can't compare that to training professional, actual combat-ready soldiers (i.e., not truck drivers and radio operators - although of course they all go through the same basic training. The amount of time that is put into taking away individual identify and replacing it with a group mentality in combat troops like e.g. US Marines or Foreign Legion legionnaires is huge (from what I know of reading books and watching TV - it's not like really know anything about this).
  - cema 15y ago
    Conscripts are not at all like 'proper' soldiers. Conscripts are just there to sit out their time. The soldier is sleeping, the service is going on. Of course. And yet, that's how most of the armies of the world are. That how the US army was, to a large extent, during the Vietnam war. (But also during WWII.) I spent two years of service performing mostly bullshit tasks (or doing nothing). When I was in training I received some kind of basic education of driving, uh, amphibious transporter medium - modified (ПТС-М, плавающий транспортёр средний - модифицированный). Was kind of fun. All right, it's completely off-topic now.

mcantelon 15y ago

"Team building excercise" is a good euphemism for "drill". Cults and command-and-control institutions have employed things like "buddy pushups" for centuries. It's pretty funny this startup thinks it's somehow innovative.