Wow. . . Eight responses to your own post about how much team building sucks? Yeesh. I believe you're pretty much dead right on your assessment of people and dead wrong on your methods.
Errr, I've been in training all day and had to respond to the posts.
Finding leaders in your group of reports is one of the most important things a manager can do. Not everyone is a leader, of course. Not everyone wants to be a leader. But if you want to grow your company organically, instead of going outside and hiring in your leadership, you need to spot those people who can lead.
That's great in theory, but in practice, it isn't universally applied well. Many "leaders" I've seen "discovered" were incompetent employees who simply sucked up and invited the right people to their parties. Seriously, it was horrible.
You build up your teams from the bottom. I call that cultivating talent. You can call it blowing sunshine up people's asses if you want, but if you're not doing it you're doing yourself and your company a disservice.
As a manager, your primary job is to achieve the goals set forth for you by your organization. In doing so, your job is to recognize deficiencies in your team and rectify that along the way, along with identifying growth potential for your employees.
The key component here is to ASK your employees what their goals are. Forcing someone to take "leadership training" when they have no desire to be a "leader" is a waste of your time, their time, and the company's time and money. That is what I take exception to.
From my point of view, if someone does not want to participate in team building, leadership training, or step outside of their role is not someone that's going to grow to the next level. The same would apply to anyone close-minded enough to consider something like a team building exercise a waste of time from the get-go without seeing whether they could actually learn something from it. That's fine. We need plenty of people at the lower levels who are singularly focused at the tasks they are comfortable with.
That is such a condescending tone. Many of those folks laugh at people like you, leave, and go on to be consultants making more money than you doing their "singularly focused tasks." Just because you're a manager doesn't mean you're automatically better than everyone else, nor does it mean that you automatically have some special, other-worldly ability to "know what's best" for your employees.
If you really are a manager, what an awful example you must be setting for your reports with your attitude. Maybe you are a born leader and team member and get nothing out of these things, but many people are not.
Who says I openly display animosity towards these sessions except on ATOT? Believe me, I know how to play the game and know office politics. I smiled, acted interested, and put in my time at these sessions.
You're right -- I am a born leader. Seriously, read up on the DiSC assessment if you haven't already done so. To me, it is all common sense. Also read "Strengths Finder 2.0," which was one of the few good training sessions I've had from HR. Again, common sense, but I am interested if our company will REALLY follow what the book says. I suspect it won't.
If you are going to convey to your coworkers that these things are a waste of your time, did it ever occur that they might not be a waste of their time? That they might really need to develop the skills that team building exercises are for? And that they *would* like to be good team members and leaders but don't know how? OK, you're awesome. . . I get it. If you're a manager and you have such disdain for team building, do you think your reports won't pick up on it? Why sabotage them?
Read the excerpt from the article Yllus posted.