Team building exercises

I wrote recently about how much the phrase “team building” stinks – thanks to decades of lame activities and pop culture references, just the utterance of those two words is enough to make any staff member’s skin crawl.

But believe it or not, there’s something worse: “team building exercises.”

Who came up with this horrible moniker, anyway? It’s as if a bunch of corporate trainers deliberately set out to create the most appalling phrase by combining the two most unappealing concepts for most workers: “team building” and “exercise.” Even here in competitive, fitness-crazed NYC, “team building” & “exercises” are words which evoke a powerful negative response from most people – often associated with cheesy, lame activities, and grueling pre-dawn or post-work physical activity, respectively.

It’s basically the worst name imaginable.

Whenever I encounter a group for the first time, it’s one of the very first things I say as an icebreaker: “Who’s excited about today’s team building exercise?” I boom rhetorically into the microphone, usually with a big ironic smile to go with it. Without exception, I always get boo’d (or I get the sarcastic cheer). I do this because I KNOW that every single person in the room has a negative association with the term, and not one soul is genuinely excited about being there, IF it’s been billed as an “exercise.”

My advice to people who are planning these type of employee activities: when announcing the event to staff and in subsequent communications referring to it, do NOT call it an “exercise.” Try something fresh and new and fun, such as “group bonding activity for our awesome people,” “staff appreciation party” or anything else which might elicit some form of positive response. Because if you call it a “team building exercise,” I can GUARANTEE that everybody will go grudgingly, nobody will be enthused, and they will expect it to be the worst event ever.

And is that really the tone you want to set surrounding your event, before it’s even begun?