Away Day: Team Building Morning
Mar. 6th, 2009 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylHaving had the foresight to ask the concierge for a map and some running routes last night, I got up early and went out to take a better look at Sidmouth by daylight. Following the advice of the woman on the desk, I took a spin through the Byes — a lovely riverside park — up to Sidford and back before taking in a few long, leisurely loops around the town. All in all, I ran a little over 7 miles in a slightly disappointing 45 minutes, although in my defence, I was held off slightly on my pace because I wasn't familiar the route and didn't want to run out of juice before getting back to the hotel.
Grabbing a shower, I caught breakfast with my colleagues before we all trooped off to the hotel dining room for a morning of team coaching, which confounded my initial expectations. While a couple of people came out with what seemed to be very much the party line, there was a refreshing candor and lack of cynicism to most people's contributions. Yes, some people expounded on their pet peeves somewhat interminably, but most people seemed to have a common consensus of what was wrong with the organisation at present and useful suggestions about the sorts of things that could be done to improve it.
In the end, I came away with positive feelings about the whole event. Yesterday's stuff, which might have been just a fun day out, was actually structured to get us all talking to each other — not something that usually happens in the office, where everyone tends to focus on the things that happen within their own little silo — and to get us all trusting each other. Without that, I'm not sure that we'd have been half so candid as we were during today's seminar session. But equally, I don't think the fun day out would have worked without the seminar to reinforce it and to give us the feeling that we have a commonality of purpose, that management were willing to listen, at least, to some of our shared concerns, and that we might possibly be able to make things better by doing small things for ourselves to improve the situation. So, while I might not have drunk the Kool-Aid, I rather more convinced than I was beforehand that the whole thing was worth doing.
Plus, rather to my amusement, most of the Brandscape people — the company who arranged all the events — were fellow Midlanders and one was even a Coventrian, born and bred. Not that this in any way biases my judgement...
Grabbing a shower, I caught breakfast with my colleagues before we all trooped off to the hotel dining room for a morning of team coaching, which confounded my initial expectations. While a couple of people came out with what seemed to be very much the party line, there was a refreshing candor and lack of cynicism to most people's contributions. Yes, some people expounded on their pet peeves somewhat interminably, but most people seemed to have a common consensus of what was wrong with the organisation at present and useful suggestions about the sorts of things that could be done to improve it.
In the end, I came away with positive feelings about the whole event. Yesterday's stuff, which might have been just a fun day out, was actually structured to get us all talking to each other — not something that usually happens in the office, where everyone tends to focus on the things that happen within their own little silo — and to get us all trusting each other. Without that, I'm not sure that we'd have been half so candid as we were during today's seminar session. But equally, I don't think the fun day out would have worked without the seminar to reinforce it and to give us the feeling that we have a commonality of purpose, that management were willing to listen, at least, to some of our shared concerns, and that we might possibly be able to make things better by doing small things for ourselves to improve the situation. So, while I might not have drunk the Kool-Aid, I rather more convinced than I was beforehand that the whole thing was worth doing.
Plus, rather to my amusement, most of the Brandscape people — the company who arranged all the events — were fellow Midlanders and one was even a Coventrian, born and bred. Not that this in any way biases my judgement...
