Today was the Team Outing for my group. It's the first and was a rather nice extended lunch at the local park. Since i'm about as athletic as a stack of post-its (although i'll happily walk 20 miles just for fun), i kinda skipped out on some of the "team building" activities like the Three Legged Race and the Egg Race.
Still there were a few general observations that were fun to make (hey, i'm an arm chair psychologist, so i'm entitled to make rash determinations based on pure conjecture).
One thing i noted was that if you want to get folks engaged in the team building activities, you have to know what reward they want. My suggestion to future planners of said events? Hold one activity per every ten employees. Each employee must participate in one activity. They get progressively worse/embarrassing/harder/etc. You'll have folks fighting to be part of Musical Chairs just so they don't have to be part of the Egg Toss. Evil? Yes, yes i am.
Second: The careful observer will use such outings to determine what the cliques are. People like the tribes they know and will congregate accordingly. In one fell swoop you'll see who the groups are. You generally won't see the directors (or equivalent highly ranked individuals) with the group members, these will be probably be grouped together, usually near the beer. Generally because these folks know each other the best and don't get a chance to get together very often.
And, as always, beware the guy in the goofy looking hat sitting and watching everyone. He's probably up to no good.
He's probably plotting trouble, 'e is.
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Or thinking he shoulda played musical chairs instead of waiting for the egg-toss.