Team Building activities collaboration

I’ve written a lot here on my blog over the years on the topic of frustration. It’s not going to come as a surprise for me to tell you that the workplace can be a pressure cooker of disagreements, resentments, poor communication, and ineffective teamwork. If you’re reading this, you may in fact be seeing this phenomenon taking hold in your own office, or experiencing it firsthand.

I’ll bet that more than anything, for you this is extremely frustrating.

Workplace frustration is just a fact of life. I’m often told by people who genuinely love what they do for a living (like I do), that there are still parts of their jobs which they dislike, or actively hate. It’s part of the deal, and may manifest itself in many forms. Here are some case studies which illustrate several aggravations commonly experienced by corporate event entertainers in New York City, team building activities planners and other events professionals like myself.

To these, I’d like to add one new one.

About three years ago, I was sitting in my office in Brooklyn, dreaming up ways to bring my team trivia for corporate groups to new and varied audiences. One of the ideas I had was to actively reach out to not only venues which host these sorts of activities, but to other event production companies as well. There are certainly no shortage of those in the NYC region, especially those who are specifically servicing corporate audiences such as TrivWorks does.

About a year prior, I had produced and hosted an event for a major pharmaceutical company at an exclusive corporate retreat center in Westchester County, NY. I called my contact there up, reminded her of the great experience we had with the client at their facility, and inquired about the potential for collaborating in the future. She politely told me that while they were happy to bring in outside vendors such as myself who were arranged separately by their clients, when it came to providing entertainment and group bonding activities “in house,” so to say, they had another vendor whom they worked with exclusively to provide all of those services.

I asked for the name of this other vendor, and was given their company’s name and Website address. I checked them out, and they were pretty much what I expected: a locally owned and operated purveyor of event entertainment. Their Website was sparsely designed, and they didn’t have any client list, testimonials or press coverage published which would otherwise help me to understand their audience and expertise. However, they DID have a long list of programs, which truly ran the gamut: traditional outdoor exercises like ropes courses and trust falls, cooking classes, sports, races and other gross motor-based activities, “build-a-bike,” improvisation, and a zillion other cool offerings.

But one activity was conspicuously missing from their impressive lineup: team trivia.

Seeing how this is what I specialize in – I do exclusively trivia events for corporate groups, nothing else – I called them up. When I got someone on the phone he was extremely friendly, and enthusiastic about the potential to collaborate, as was I. They had apparently never offered trivia before, and were excited by what I had told them about my company. And what wasn’t to love? Here I was, an established reputable brand with a large roster of Fortune 500 clients, who was looking to bring a proven service which they didn’t offer. For me, I saw the potential to team up with another established brand that not only had existing relationships with their own clients and venues, but which I could quite possibly integrate what I do with their other activities as well. It was a win-win!

At this guy’s request, I put together a detailed overview package, providing a snapshot of what this potentially new and exciting alliance could look like. I smiled widely as I attached it to the cover Email, and hit send.

And then – I waited.

Days went by as I twiddled my thumbs, without hearing anything. So after a week I picked up the phone, and wound up with his voicemail. I left a message, then followed up with a polite Email, to confirm he was in receipt of my document and see if we could schedule another call to discuss.

And still, nothing.

I tried this for about two weeks, calling a couple of more times and sending a few more Emails, all of which went unanswered. Maybe my contact was away, or had left the company? I went back on their Website to see if there was someone else whom I could reach out to – and that’s when I learned the true meaning of the word “frustration.”

Right there on their homepage, on the list of available activities, was one which hadn’t been there just a few weeks before: “Team Trivia Night.” Scowling, I clicked the link – and found a truncated version of the overview document I had sent them. Proclaiming to offer “unparalleled experience and expertise” and offering “the best trivia hosts in New York City” as emcees, they were serving up their own adaptation of what I’ve been doing for years – under the guise of having been doing this for years as well.

Yeah – like I said: frustration.

So why am I bringing up this long-winded story from three years ago, in a blog post that’s supposed to be about turning frustration in the workplace into positive collaboration? To make a point, of course! Follow along.

What happened to me was terrible, but not entirely unexpected. I took a risk by reaching out to this other vendor, having known nothing about them other that what I had been told by a venue I’d worked at, and what I could read on their Website. This is a competitive business I’m in, and there are some elements of it which are, for lack of a better term, unsavory. I’ve been incredibly fortunate in that I’ve been able to forge partnerships and collaborations with many talented hosts, performers, and other organizations to mutual benefit. But as the above case illustrates, that’s not always how things turn out.

But I still reached out anyway, because even though this was a competitor, we still had much to potentially offer each other, as well as to gain. What’s more, we had many, many things in common – I mean, look at our career choices!

The exact same thing can be said of people in the workplace. When coworkers are frustrated with each other, resolving differences can often seem like an insurmountable task. But if you can get them to take a step back, they might see something that’s gotten lost somewhere along the line: they have many things in common, too. Perhaps it’s a passion for a certain industry or cause, or a similar deep-seated interest which has inevitably drawn them to this same workplace. Maybe they have other things in common as well which they wouldn’t know about. One of the things I love most about team building trivia is that, especially when it comes to pop culture, people often know the same stuff that they didn’t realize others knew as well. I get to see it happen right before my eyes, and it’s great!

As 2016 winds down – a frustrating year for just about everyone, it seems, in one way or another – just remember that you CAN turn workplace aggravation and grievance into successful collaboration and teamwork, so long as you put your mind to it and are creative in your approach.

For another useful article on turning office frustration into an employee morale boost, follow this link.