TeamBuilding

maninthestreet

If it was me, I'd only agreed to do it if I could choose the song - which would be 'Who the f*ck is Alice?' by Roy Chubby Brown.

globetraveller

or even this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPrSVkTRb24

Nick_C

I've been on a few in my time. Yes, I've had to do things I didn't really want to do, but I've tried to be as enthusiastic as possible, and have found them all very useful. You only get out as much as you put in. Some of the exercises may seem silly, but in my experience the people running the courses knew what they were doing. It was all about learning about each other, trusting each other, and respecting each other, and in each case I did feel afterwards that we all bonded and worked together more productively.

If you have to go on one of these events, embrace it. If you fight it, you will lose out in so many ways. If you can't participate in something like this, consider self employment!!

uknick

I was once "told" to go on a one week residential course as part of a new starters introduction. I worked in part of a government department that "assisted" British companies selling arms overseas.

None of us on the course had anything to do with customers/suppliers, just back office finance/admin work.

Part of the training was to do a presentation on how to sell a weapons system. The point of the task was to give us experience in talking in front of a group. My small team were given a ground to air missile system. We were given its name and a picture of it only, no tech data at all. We stayed up late the night before finalising the presentation as that day's other activities had run late into the evening.

The presentations were "judged" by the big boss, who was seconded from industry. As it happens he'd been product manager of this product in real life. Something we were not aware of before our presentation.

His feedback on our presentation skills? Nothing at all. But, he did spend 5 minutes criticising us because we didn't mention the unique selling points of the weapon. Needless to say we were more than a little disgruntled.

I heard afterwards that, when he attended a sales team meeting, he instigated a food fight during their evening meal. Go figure.

Morglin

What a waste of time, these things are!

Most of us manage perfectly well to get along with colleagues, and do a fair day's work, without all this guff. :doh:

Lin:)

PlutoinCapricorn

Being self employed means that you don't have to endure such stupidity: just reading these posts makes me cringe.

DKLS

Have attended a fair few of these some of them were truly abysmal (a small % of HR bods need to be water boarded on a daily basis) and some that were good fun where you learnt something genuinely useful and involved some legendary nights.

Funky_Bold_Ribena

Nick_C wrote: »

I've been on a few in my time. Yes, I've had to do things I didn't really want to do, but I've tried to be as enthusiastic as possible, and have found them all very useful. You only get out as much as you put in. Some of the exercises may seem silly, but in my experience the people running the courses knew what they were doing. It was all about learning about each other, trusting each other, and respecting each other, and in each case I did feel afterwards that we all bonded and worked together more productively.

If you have to go on one of these events, embrace it. If you fight it, you will lose out in so many ways. If you can't participate in something like this, consider self employment!!

You are obviously a follower, not a leader Nick. You don't lose out in so many ways. You may actually find you have the strength to stand up to these idiots.

elsien

I'd probably hastily develop tonsillitis, if it happened to me. Politically sometimes it's better to show willing and find ways to opt out than rock the boat and make a stand.
My card is still marked from the last session I went on when they asked for honest opinions on what we expected from the day. On the basis that if they don't want to know, they shouldn't ask, I told them I didn't want to be there, didn't expect to get anything from the day, and couldn't think of anywhere else I'd less like to be.
(In my defence, I was massively stressed because a close relative was dying, my workplace was short staffed so my workload was horrendous, and I'd asked to defer to be told I had to go. So to arrive and then be told how lucky I was to be there as there was a waiting list was the final straw.)
However my manager still hasn't forgiven me.......

KevInChester

If they asked me to sing I'd have to sing in what my girlfriend calls my 'castrato voice' (whereby I deliberately sing in the highest pitch I can possibly do). They'd soon stop me

I hate all these attempts to be 'wacky'. I remember once starting a job and the team leader was incredibly proud of how wacky they were, pointing to a couple of red balloons as evidence. Laugh a minute it wasn't.