• About Us
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Client Portal
  • Contact Us
  • today headline
  • Write for us
Today Headline
No Result
View All Result
  • breaking news today
    • Politics news
    • Sports
    • Science News & Society
  • Entertainment News
    • Movie
    • Gaming
  • Technology News
    • Automotive
  • Health News
    • Lifestyle
    • Insurance
  • Finance News
    • Money
  • Enterprise
  • Contact Us
  • breaking news today
    • Politics news
    • Sports
    • Science News & Society
  • Entertainment News
    • Movie
    • Gaming
  • Technology News
    • Automotive
  • Health News
    • Lifestyle
    • Insurance
  • Finance News
    • Money
  • Enterprise
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
TodayHeadline
No Result
View All Result

Hate those workplace team-building exercises? Here’s the solution

July 13, 2021
in Lifestyle
Reading Time: 4 mins read
1624256947 GettyImages 975123164 960x600 - TodayHeadline


Voiced by Amazon Polly

Team building in the workplace, let’s go! If we can improve our office relationships and team rapport, we’ll boost productivity and conquer the world and be winners. Yeah!

Sound like a nightmare come true? You’re not alone.

A new study from the University of Sydney School of Project Management found “many employees resent compulsory bonding and often regard these exercises as the bane of their workplace existence”.

Doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Associate Professor Julien Pollack is interim director of the John Grill Institute of Project Leadership and one of the study’s co-authors.

In a prepared statement, he said: “Many people do not want to be forced into having fun or making friends, especially not on top of their busy jobs or in stressful, dysfunctional environments where team building is typically called for.

“These activities often feel implicitly mandatory. People can feel that management is being too nosy or trying to control their life too much.”

Is there a solution to painful team building?

Attempting to improve the social dynamic in a workplace isn’t a bad idea in itself. There are projects that implicitly demand genuine trust between colleagues.

But workplaces are full of cliques and hierarchies not dissimilar to the school playground.

And as it goes on sports day, classic team-building exercises actually tend to reinforce those cliques and intimidate the lower orders.

The goal of nurturing your more socially hesitant colleagues and creating a more inclusive, functional and creative space gets lost – because exercises that are meant to deepen workplace relationships tend to be self-sabotaging.

As the study found, team-building exercises “which focused on the sharing of, and intervening into personal attitudes and relationships between team members may be considered too heavy-handed and intrusive”.

But the Sydney researchers say that “some degree of openness and vulnerability is often necessary to make deep, effective connections with colleagues”.

But how can that be achieved?

The trick is to get real, scale down the exercise, and focus on building relationships between selected workers whose successful collaboration and communication are necessary for a project to succeed.

The process must be voluntary and private

Professor Pollack said: “We recommend an approach where people can opt out of team building discreetly, by conducting team building only among selected pairs of individuals who can choose whether or not to proceed with strengthening their relationship. Their choice would not be visible to management.

“An important point is to target the right relationships.”

But how do you build a relationship without the project turning awkward?

In a previous study, Professor Pollack and Dr Petr Matous trialled a “self-disclosure approach where participants were guided through a series of questions that allowed them to increasingly disclose personal information and values”.

The 36 questions that lead to love

The questions used in the study were first published in 1997 as part of research by psychologist Arthur Aron about “how feelings of interpersonal closeness are cultivated by disclosing personal details”.

They became an “internet sensation” in 2015, when The New York Times published a piece by Mandy Len Catron that claimed the questions could be used to make strangers “fall in love”.

The questions start with relatively safe topics, like, “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”

Near the end of the session, they’re like this, “When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?”

The final question involves you sharing a personal problem with your discussion partner and asking their advice on how to handle it.

“This is not the sort of thing most people would normally choose to do at work, but our results show its worth,” the researchers say.

They measured significantly changed patterns of communication over three months.

Participating pairs felt more comfortable talking to each other, and talked more often – the most common change being from “not in the last month” to “once a week”.

The authors conclude: “In any such exercise you need to proceed at a pace at which you and your colleague are willing to reciprocate.”

But it may not suit everyone – and “management shouldn’t compel anyone to feel uncomfortable”.

The bottom line: “If you are willing to accept a little discomfort, our findings suggest that sharing a bit more in the workplace can be both personally rewarding and beneficial to the group.”

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
bitcoin lightning network all time high 420x280 - TodayHeadline

Lightning Network Surges to All-time High as Bitcoin Short-term Rally Continues

urine diverting toilet - TodayHeadline

Urine-diverting toilets expel fewer virus particles than traditional toilets, study suggests

2164c13906f658f06c19d60e5a98817b - TodayHeadline

Armed man arrested after being barricaded in home

Andrew Tate accused by ex-girlfriend of 'strangling her during violent sex until she passed out'

Andrew Tate accused by ex-girlfriend of 'strangling her during violent sex until she passed out'

PopularStories

bitcoin lightning network all time high 420x280 - TodayHeadline
Money

Lightning Network Surges to All-time High as Bitcoin Short-term Rally Continues

urine diverting toilet - TodayHeadline
Health News

Urine-diverting toilets expel fewer virus particles than traditional toilets, study suggests

2164c13906f658f06c19d60e5a98817b - TodayHeadline
Lifestyle

Armed man arrested after being barricaded in home

Andrew Tate accused by ex-girlfriend of 'strangling her during violent sex until she passed out'
Politics news

Andrew Tate accused by ex-girlfriend of 'strangling her during violent sex until she passed out'

About Us

Todayheadline the independent news and topics discovery
A home-grown and independent news and topic aggregation . displays breaking news linking to news websites all around the world.

Follow Us

Latest News

bitcoin lightning network all time high 420x280 - TodayHeadline

Lightning Network Surges to All-time High as Bitcoin Short-term Rally Continues

urine diverting toilet - TodayHeadline

Urine-diverting toilets expel fewer virus particles than traditional toilets, study suggests

2164c13906f658f06c19d60e5a98817b - TodayHeadline

Armed man arrested after being barricaded in home

bitcoin lightning network all time high 420x280 - TodayHeadline

Lightning Network Surges to All-time High as Bitcoin Short-term Rally Continues

urine diverting toilet - TodayHeadline

Urine-diverting toilets expel fewer virus particles than traditional toilets, study suggests

2164c13906f658f06c19d60e5a98817b - TodayHeadline

Armed man arrested after being barricaded in home

  • Real Estate
  • Parenting
  • Cooking
  • NFL Games On TV Today
  • Travel and Tourism
  • Home & Garden
  • Pets
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
  • About

© 2023 All rights are reserved Today headline

No Result
View All Result
  • Real Estate
  • Parenting
  • Cooking
  • NFL Games On TV Today
  • Travel and Tourism
  • Home & Garden
  • Pets
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
  • About

© 2023 All rights are reserved Today headline

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.