Team building NYC group bonding challenges

20 years ago, I was making my way through my freshman year of college a Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. Like many 18 year old kids away from home for the first time, I was quite insecure, immature, and had a lot of difficulty adjusting. To make matters more challenging, I was unfortunately pretty isolated as well: I was assigned to the top floor of a 5-story walk-up dorm, literally on the outskirts of the campus, and had a really hard time meeting anybody, let alone thriving socially.

So, I did what any insecure, immature and socially isolated guy would do: I pledged a frat.

Now, anybody who knew me then – or now, for that matter – knows that I am probably the polar opposite what you’d consider a “frat guy.” None of the widely-held stereotypes really applied: I’m not a “guy’s guy,” was never a big drinker, never smoked pot, wasn’t into sports, and had trouble with girls. In fact, I had pretty much nothing in common with most of the other guys in the house, either the brothers or fellow pledges – however, by some twist of fate and series of decisions on my part, there I was, 2^nd semester freshman year, getting my pledge pin tacked to my shirt.

Pledging a frat isn’t supposed to be an enjoyable process. In fact, it’s deliberately designed to help the pledges forge bonds with one other through tribulation and suffering. I only found out after my pledge period had begun that I had somehow subjected myself to one of the school’s most notoriously brutal houses for pledges – and I was stuck there until the end.

It’s ironic that everyone but me knew that my house had such a vicious hazing reputation, because all that stuff’s supposed to stay secret. I could easily fill this entire blog post and then some with sordid details of the horrible, humiliating, demeaning, disgusting things I was forced to do in the name of “team building” with my pledge class. I won’t do that, however, for the simple reason that I know there are plenty of other Greek System alumni out there who DO hold these sorts of secrets as sacred, and out of respect to them I’ll keep the particulars to myself. But as you might expect, for every day and every night for the better part of 3 months, we were subjected to a litany of terrible things at the hands of the brothers.

We were given a schedule by which we had to live and breathe by, which included daily 5am runs in the freezing Massachusetts cold air. We had to know where each and every one of our pledge classmates were at any moment – and no, in 1996 we didn’t have cell phones. We had to actually MEMORIZE everybody else’s class schedules. Social lives and down time were a thing of the past: if we weren’t in class, we had to be either in the library studying, or at the frat house cleaning. In addition to knowing our pledge class’s schedules, we had to know EVERYTHING about not only them, but the entire brotherhood as well: birthdays, middle names, hometowns, majors, interests, random facts…everything.

Nighttime was reserved for the more sadistic elements of pledging – again, I won’t get into details, but you can probably use your imagination. Basically it involved drinking a lot of alcohol, eating a lot of nasty stuff, and pretty much every bodily function – all within tight proximity to one another.

Now, I will say that after the pledge process was over, just about all of the other pledges fit right in. Sophomore year came, and these guys were TIGHT – not just with each other, but with the other brothers who had tortured and tormented them just months earlier. However, I didn’t feel this way. Not at all.

I wasn’t a good fit.

I did stay a member of the frat for the duration of my college years, albeit on the fringes: by senior year I never went to meetings, barely came by the house for parties, and kind of flew under the radar until graduation. Why? Even though I’d gone through hell (the same hell, incidentally, which every single other brother in that house had gone through), I just didn’t feel like these were “my people.” They weren’t bad guys, they just weren’t a good fit for me – I didn’t fit in.

Now flash forward 20 years, and here I am producing corporate group bonding activities in NYC for a living. What lessons can I take from my fraternity pledging experience? Simply put: you can’t force a square peg into a round hole. Got a team challenge you wish to address? Want to improve communication or collaboration, build trust, boost morale? All great and noble goals, however you MUST know going in that no singular event, no matter how well-planned or precisely executed, is going to make a “bad fit” fit.

Perhaps I was a glutton for punishment, but for many years after graduating college once I entered the workforce, I again found myself in situations where I wasn’t a “good fit.” There were team events which I participated in, but of course they didn’t make me any better a colleague. If the environment isn’t right, then it’s just not meant to be.

Interestingly, I have remained friendly with many people from both the college frat, as well as all of the jobs I held after college where I didn’t belong. It’s not that I disliked them, or that they disliked me: it’s that I wasn’t part of the “type” which the particular culture drew, and which thrived.

It’s funny, I’ve never actually written about any of this before – but maybe now that enough time has passed, it has allowed me some perspective as to why I wasn’t happy in my chosen environs. It’s my hope that maybe this experience can help others who are either facing a similar situation, either personally or as the leaders of teams.

Thanks for letting me share – I welcome your thoughts below.