I'm thinking about scheduling one for my team. Either paintball or just go to a restaurant and get full and butt drunk.
We have a day every year dedicated to it. Typically, they split it into two half-day sessions. Some years, some sessions are OK -- like we went to a baseball game and had catered food there. Another year, we toured the new Lucas Oil Stadium.
This year, it is all HR-related BS activities-- like taking the various self assessments that at the end of the day, meaning nothing. If you're going to try to "develop" my career, how about actually giving me opportunities? Otherwise, you're just wasting your time and more importantly, mine.
Just remember guys, while you're all neffing this afternoon, I'll be stuck in a conference room reviewing crap like this and having to pretend that I'm engaged and happy to be there.
does it occur to you that not everyone wants to lead?Sounds like a lot of folks are content to be full of themselves and playing for a team of one. People that blow off team building exercises, self-evaluations, personal development training and all that are usually smart people who believe they're too smart for these type of trivial matters. In reality, they just put forward a face of being uncooperative, self-absorbed and petty. They also don't build their networks, meet people who work outside of their own immediate team, and then wonder Wonder WONDER why they get passed up for promotion to managerial positions and don't get a lot of recognition for the work they do.
Believe me. I manage a team of engineers. This opinion of the OP is pretty common. It's pretty helpful when people are obvious in their disdain for their teamwork. I know that I can count on them to be great code monkeys but little else and I can spend my efforts cultivating the real talent. Good coders are a dime a dozen. Good leaders are tough to find.
does it occur to you that not everyone wants to lead?
i want to work as a part of a team by actually working on something
not doing fruity exercises
i didn't go to school so that i could be psychologically manipulated by management
sounds kind of interesting ... we don't have that here.
Stay where you are then, i'll take that promotion
Good coders are a dime a dozen. Good leaders are tough to find.
Not everyone is nor should be a leader.
My last company placed excessive emphasis on developing "leadership skills". The problem with this approach was that management would then develop and implement cumbersome and mostly pointless procedures so that same management could justify their existence as "look at me, I'm making an impact!" They do this without taking into consideration the morale impact on the team, nor the ability of the team to get real work done.
I reported to a manager, who reported to a senior manager, who reported to a director, who reported to a senior director, who reported to a vp, who reported to a higher level vp, who reported to the CEO. That's a fucking lot of layers.
Sounds like a lot of folks are content to be full of themselves and playing for a team of one. People that blow off team building exercises, self-evaluations, personal development training and all that are usually smart people who believe they're too smart for these type of trivial matters. In reality, they just put forward a face of being uncooperative, self-absorbed and petty.
They also don't build their networks, meet people who work outside of their own immediate team, and then wonder Wonder WONDER why they get passed up for promotion to managerial positions and don't get a lot of recognition for the work they do.
Believe me. I manage a team of engineers.
This opinion of the OP is pretty common. It's pretty helpful when people are obvious in their disdain for their teamwork.
I know that I can count on them to be great code monkeys but little else and I can spend my efforts cultivating the real talent. Good coders are a dime a dozen. Good leaders are tough to find.
Sounds like OP isn't a team player. I hate coworkers like u
does it occur to you that not everyone wants to lead?
i want to work as a part of a team by actually working on something
not doing fruity exercises
i didn't go to school so that i could be psychologically manipulated by management
I really hate leaving the Navy and having to work with spoiled, self-absorbed civilians who think they're too good to be part of a team.
But you are correct, most company team exercises are stupid and pointless. If you guys cant get teamwork going for the job where your survival is on the line, it sure as hell wont happen for a game.
If I had a dime for every time I've seen someone with true leadership potential passed over, I'd be wealthy. Fortunately, I've worked with some good managers in the past who recognized what motivated me and that I had awesome potential.
Bingo. I am here to do a job and to get results, not to hold hands and give group hugs to my department. And when I say department, I'm not talking about my IT colleagues; I'm talking about people in accounting, operations, HR, etc. as well.
Team building excersizes should be going to the local bar and relaxing.
One of the many pleasures of watching Mad Men, a television drama about the advertising industry in the early 1960s, is examining the ways in which office life has changed over the years. One obvious change makes people feel good about themselves: they no longer treat women as second-class citizens. But the other obvious change makes them feel a bit more uneasy: they have lost the art of enjoying themselves at work.
The ad-men in those days enjoyed simple pleasures. They puffed away at their desks. They drank throughout the day. They had affairs with their colleagues. They socialised not in order to bond, but in order to get drunk.
These days many companies are obsessed with fun. Software firms in Silicon Valley have installed rock-climbing walls in their reception areas and put inflatable animals in their offices. Wal-Mart orders its cashiers to smile at all and sundry. The cult of fun has spread like some disgusting haemorrhagic disease. Acclaris, an American IT company, has a chief fun officer. TD Bank, the American arm of Canadas Toronto Dominion, has a Wow! department that dispatches costume-clad teams to surprise and delight successful workers. Red Bull, a drinks firm, has installed a slide in its London office.
This cult of fun is driven by three of the most popular management fads of the moment: empowerment, engagement and creativity. Many companies pride themselves on devolving power to front-line workers. But surveys show that only 20% of workers are fully engaged with their job. Even fewer are creative. Managers hope that fun will magically make workers more engaged and creative. But the problem is that as soon as fun becomes part of a corporate strategy it ceases to be fun and becomes its oppositeat best an empty shell and at worst a tiresome imposition.
The most unpleasant thing about the fashion for fun is that it is mixed with a large dose of coercion. Companies such as Zappos dont merely celebrate wackiness. They more or less require it. Compulsory fun is nearly always cringe-making. Twitter calls its office a Twoffice. Boston Pizza encourages workers to send golden bananas to colleagues who are having fun while being the best. Behind the fun façade there often lurks some crude management thinking: a desire to brand the company as better than its rivals, or a plan to boost productivity through team-building. Twitter even boasts that it has worked hard to create an environment that spawns productivity and happiness.
Mad Men reminds people of a world they have losta world where bosses did not think that fun was a management tool and where employees could happily quaff Scotch at noon. Cheers to that.
BWHAHAHAHA!!! I had to take that once...worst part is going around the room and discussing your results and then expanding on them and how you can relate certain aspects of your personality to the results.
I prefer to leverage relationship building and cross-functional organizational awareness achieving strategic non-silo-ed synergy to promote and facilitate team member human capital development.
I'm thinking about scheduling one for my team. Either paintball or just go to a restaurant and get full and butt drunk.