Are Team Building Games Truly The Way To Build Team Spirit?

Last week I had to attend orientation for my new job. Because I am working for a large corporation, orientation lasts one full week and there is an entire training department staffed to give classes and presentations to new employees. I didn’t mind the parts of orientation where they gave background information about the history of the company and its huge line of products. What I hated were the team building games that were sprinkled in throughout the week.

One of the team building games required ten of us to stand up in the front of the room wearing big signs around our necks to represent the different departments within the company. Every business department was represented from Quality Control right on down to Shipping. If you’re wondering, I got to be Sanitation. So we stood there in a circle in front of our fellow new employees wearing big signs and looking like fools, and we were instructed to toss a ball of yarn back and forth to each other to create a yarn web in the middle of our circle. Then the presenter placed a piece of paper with the company values written on it in the center and instructed us to let go of our strings one at a time. The object of this little exercise, and most all of the other team building games throughout the orientation, was to show that each department is very important, and if one of us screws up we all fail, which was represented by the values paper falling to the floor.

I always wonder in exercises like this why people who are seemingly intelligent enough to be hired to work for a successful company are then treated like second graders once they get us all into a group setting. This kind of thing always goes on in corporate training seminars, and it seems that the team building games we’re required to play would be more suited for an elementary school. Does the trainer think we will somehow not understand the concept of teamwork if we don’t play a game about it? Am I supposed to think about the yarn web every time I’m tempted to slack off on the job, thus reminding myself that my job is important? I don’t think I will ever understand the corporate mindset when it comes to juvenile team building games.

One thing I wish was that if I have to participate in silly team building games, that the rewards would be a little bit better. The prize for winning any of the games was always candy, so no one really tried very hard to compete. If they were giving away gift cards or cute tee shirts, people would probably feel less foolish about competing.

Leave a Comment