We Need Team Spirit! (So I've Set Aside Thursday).

Team Bonding: Would you prefer a masked hijacking or a walk on burning coals?

Managers at Ericsson, the Swedish telecom company, were apparently hard pressed for a memorable team-building exercise for their international sales conference in Athens this February. They probably wanted something more than the standard fare: ropes courses, white-water rafting, and other extreme sports. So they turned to...hostage taking.

Unbeknown to salespeople on a corporate bus headed for Corinth, Ericsson had hired two men with masks and weapons to stage a hijacking. The exercise was reportedly designed to test the employees' cool under stress. But the performance was cut short by a meddling passerby with a cell phone who called the authorities. "Definitely, this was very unfortunate," says Ericsson spokesman Lars Ostlund. "The mistake was not giving notice to the police."

While most companies stick to torturing their workers by forcing them to hold hands and accomplish pointless tasks--preferably while blindfolded--others have gone to extremes. Unfortunately, these exciting games have put some team players on the disabled list. In England in 1998, for example, insurance company Eagle Star sent 13 salespeople walking across a bed of hot coals on the advice of a management consultant. Guess what? Seven burned their feet, two badly enough to require hospitalization. Eagle Star says it has learned its lesson and now sticks to more conventional bonding exercises.

-- The above story is Copyright Time, Inc., 2000

ATW public service: Tips for walking across burning coals at your next team function.

Focus, People. Focus!

Building business teams is about business results. The assumption is that if people can find ways to work more smoothly together, better results will follow. That's usually true, especially when reducing conflicts involving lack of role clarity (who should really be doing what) and process (how do things get handed off and when).

Here's where it begins to fall apart:

1. The team leader wants to "improve morale and cooperation." So she hires a consultant to "do something" that will boost morale and cooperation. The problem: Morale is usually a function of leadership and organizational policies and procedures. Cooperation is, in part, what the manager is getting paid to produce.

2. The team leader may not understand the distinction between building effective work groups and having a "group event."

3. The team leader may not understand the array of "help" that's out there: Here are a few examples:

    a. Genuine business team consultants who work closely to understand the immediate issues, interview the team members, then work with the team leader on a design that will address what's really happening so that things will be different afterward if people choose to address them  honestly. This requires an experienced consultant/facilitator, a leader who is also willing to look at his/her part in the team's performance, and a group of people who believe they can improve with some focused help.

    b. "Event" consultants who do the rafting/paintball/trust walk sort of thing. Leaders need to understand--and be clear with their people--that an event is being staged with the hope that some lessons will be transferred back to the job. It's possible to have these work well if the specific activities are designed to be "processed" after each one in the context of an on-the-job issue. The consultant also has to have done a real-life diagnostic and know how to direct an activity toward the "live" business issues.

    Note: Absent the organizational expertise, these activities can still be fun if they are framed as just that. When everyone agrees beforehand that it could be good to blow off some steam together and swing from trees and mountains, it probably beats karaoke. If it's a big surprise and participation is required in activities that are uncomfortable at  many levels, the best result might be a lawsuit settled out of court.

    c. "Team Therapists" who work their mojo. It's pretty amazing what is sold--and bought--as "team building". These types usually have their favorite intervention, jargon, and model of "being" that they bring into the workplace masquerading as team building. What I've learned from seeing these people appear on the scene is that they view the "group" as an entity with a "problem." They are the doctors. But there is often a twist with this crowd. They are often "doctors" who haven't performed a diagnosis, don't understand the business issues, and don't offer a cure. Instead, they opt for a reflective approach, tossing a verbal bone to the group every so often with the assurance that "you are the experts and architects of your own lives...you can figure this out." Without context and a  structured group task focused on real-life team performance, participants wonder where they are and how they got there.

Too Important to Stop Now...

Work gets done through people collaborating. That makes legitimate group development a high priority item for every business. In my next post I'll highlight what team leaders and team members need to do to boost their chances of being more successful at the team building process.

In the meantime, share your favorite team building story with a comment. All contributions gratefully accepted.