Must Shared Experience be Enjoyable to be Effective for Team Building?

I read an incredibly interesting New York Times article last night, entitled “Cleansing From Cubicle to Cubicle.”

The focus was on a new form of corporate team building activity in NYC and other major US cities, whereby staff embark on a group “cleanse” diet of fruit & vegetable drinks. Citing health benefits paired with a shared experience, the article reveals that companies big and small are going on collective staff cleanses of up to 5 days, drinking nothing but grassy drinks described by one interviewee as “gnarly tasting.”

Yuck.

While this sort of experience wouldn’t interest me, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the idea, as well as the results. As a passionate advocate for shared positive experiences in group bonding, I’ve dedicated quite a lot of digital ink in this space to the importance of team building being fun and enjoyable – the simple reason being that such shared experiences are more fondly remembered, and thus the messages and skills conveyed are more readily recalled & applied back at the office.

But then again, MUST a shared experience be enjoyable to be effective for group bonding?

To answer that question, I need look no further than my college fraternity experience.

Yes, I was actually in a frat; this will likely come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, not just because it’s something I never talk about, but because I’m perhaps the least-likely guy you’d ever expect to have been in a frat – I don’t follow sports, never smoked pot in my life and my alcohol tolerance is pathetic. But alas, like many 18-year-olds shipped off to college, I had my share of Freshman year insecurities and feelings of isolation which made the Greek System appealing (my pledge name, by the way, was “Joker” – which those who know me WILL find appropriate).

Pledging was a nightmare. While bound to secrecy about the time-honored crucible my fellow pledges and I ensured, it should come as no surprise that we spent an entire semester being humiliated, scrubbing kitchens & bathrooms, being forced to eat and drink horrible stuff and running in the snow at 5am. The culmination was an aptly-nicknamed “Hell Weekend,” spent entirely in the basement of the frat house – and no, there was no plumbing down there.

I think you get the idea – it was a horrible, horrible experience. However, just like the liquid diet mentioned above, it was something which was engaged in voluntarily, not just for the reward – be it the right to wear fraternity letters or feeling healthy – but for the shared bonding experience of having gone through something unpleasant with others. While I ultimately wasn’t a “frat guy” and drifted away from the house, I was surprised to find that I remained friends with some of those in my pledge class – one of whom was even at my wedding last year!

While I still believe that enjoyable shared experiences and team building events and will produce the most positive lasting results, I think that there is certainly merit to the “collective negative experience” for fostering group bonding, be it on campus or in the workplace. I’m curious to see what happens to this trend.

What do you think – must shared group bonding experiences be positive to be effective?