“It’s time for that team building activity.”

It was the first day of our HBO class and we were discussing ‘what makes a best employer’. Among the various points brought up, one of the points that a student attributed to his company being a best or at least good employer, was the team building activities undertaken by that particular company.

This got me thinking, whether team building activities within a company genuinely helped in developing team strength or if it is indeed something that is cleverly designed (or should I say disguised) to achieve something else ultimately. I know that I am being a bit too cynical here, but somehow the idea of going out for that ‘team building lunch’, always made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Now don’t get me wrong; I am actually quite a friendly person (or at least consider myself to be) and in my short career of four years, I have usually been rated fairly well as a team player. However, I somehow felt that an artificial atmosphere usually existed during these labelled team building activities, which was not the case when we casually went out for lunch or some other gathering with the same people.

Moreover, I started getting the feeling that there actually may be an alternative motive behind the team building activity, particularly when it is called by the supervising team manager. I had a circle of friends within the banking space in India, who were involved in sales and marketing of various financial products. These guys used to mention to me that the number of team building activities (mainly lunches) within their banks, usually used to dramatically increase during the close of the fiscal year, when targets were being chased by them and their team managers. The same was also being repeated when some major project was being undertaken.

I am not saying that team building activities are generally bad. However, how do we know that they are meant to be genuine and not for some alternative motive. Anyway, I have been known to be horribly wrong in interpreting these things sometimes, so I need your help on this too. I request you to participate in a short poll given on the sidebar of this blog, to help me in collating thoughts of others on this particular topic. Please take out a few seconds – Your opinion counts here!