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The Brain on Teambuilding

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: Two companies booked the same beautiful park for their team buiding exercises, what happens next is what makes great comedy.

The Brain on Teambuilding

As a business leadership expert I am always amazed to see how easy it is for us to "devolve" back to an earlier state of behaving. I saw this with my own eyes this summer.

Two companies booked a wonderful park for their team building exercises. Now mind you, this was a huge park, acres and acres of open space, trees, green grass, picnic tables, enough room for ten more companies to come and play.

One team was made up of sales and marketing types. They were there to explore how to get along better, break down the silo mentality that they were competing with each other, get along, learn to get along. There were maybe 30 in this group wearing business casual attire, lots of Lacoste shirts and bright colored Merrill footwear instead of sneakers.

The other company had a team from production, it was a big team with lots of strong guys and gals who loved to put the puzzle pieces together that made up the machines shipped around the world. Dressed in their red, white and blue company shirts and jeans they were as American as, well as apple pie.

What was I doing there? Scouting the place for an outing with another team I would lead sometime in the fall. The place, somewhere in the Midwest, seemed perfect. I was sold on the park and ready to leave when the head of the sales and marketing gig started to talk with me during the lunch break.

What happened then was the stuff of movies, flicks with John Caddy and food fights and basic potty humor that cracks up the four year old crowd. Only these were grown-ups, business people, responsible citizens. I will report it the way Anderson Cooper would for CNN:

There they were fighting, not fighting yet, contemplating it, over the barbeque grill. One group, the S and M team (stay with me: for sales and marketing) stuffing hot dogs in buns and flipping burgers while there was taco sauce, special red and green chili sauce in bowls, French mustard, and an assortment of arugula, chicory and fennel salads on the side.

The production crew had great looking homemade potato salad, lettuce and tomatoes, Heinz ketsup and mustard and a ton of jalapeno peppers on paper plates. It looked like the side salad bar at Roy Rogers. In fact, that is what started the tension.

A marketing type quipped that they should be saying "Howdy Partner" and "Happy Trails" just the way they do in the fast food chain. No biggy! Except from the sidelines it was seen as an insult, a putdown.

Here is what I know from my research, you can find it in "Don't Bring it to Work", when stress hits the hot button we all tend to revert to behavior we learned as kids to keep us safe and secure. We also learn to protect "our clan" and, man, that is exactly what happened.

The first hot dog was flung in jest, or so it seemed. Fortunately most were on seconds, some on thirds. I must say, it got sloppy. How long did the food slinging last? It seemed like hours, only by the clock it was minutes.

Now what? The four facilitators from the opposing camps met in neutral territory. I was riveted to my seat in the stands.

How did it end? Apologies all around and then they went back to their respective areas far, far from each other to complete the day. Nothing else was said. My curiosity was up and I did go to talk with "the team leaders from Sand M and from production." It was shrugged off with a "boys (and girls?) will be boys (and girls?) kind of attitude.

For me the frustration was the missed opportunity, a teaching moment, where they could have gotten together and talked about "the incident" and talked about, well whatever, would have come up. They were there to learn about team building, about how to handle conflict, not just in their own companies, the same behaviors are what keep us as a country from blending together.

Oh well, maybe next time!

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Article Tags: behaviors, brain, conflict, exercises, food fight, frustration, leadership, marketing, opportunities, protecting, team buiding



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