I’m old-fashioned. I think collaboration is best taught on playing fields and other non-academic venues. It’s actually a dangerous crutch when thinking itself is the lesson.
“I’m old-fashioned. I think collaboration is best taught on playing fields and other non-academic venues. It’s actually a dangerous crutch when thinking itself is the lesson.”
I’ve participated in some very powerful team building sessions and some very poor ones during my business career. The better ones stress dealing with hard interpersonal and business directly and honestly as well as team members holding each other accountable for performance and results. In those sessions personality and behavioral issues preventing the team from succeeding were dealt with by the team with a facilitator. These sessions were brutally honest and “real”, not theoretical. At the end of the multi-day session the team had wrestled with several real interpersonal issues that were getting in the way of successful collaboration.
The poor team building exercises were emotional “feel good” sessions. There was no direct application to business issues or problems getting the team members to collaborate. These sessions were about cheerleading and “trying harder”.
To your point, actually working through real issues in real time is a more productive exercise than listening to theory that may or may not apply to the leadership management tasks at hand.