Recently, I was at an event where our group -- made up of meeting planners and travel journalists -- was taken to our hotel's kitchen for some very rudimentary instruction on how to make sushi. After which, we all took part in a competition to make the best sushi roll. Thankfully, our host only declared a winner. If we had been ranked, I think I would have come in last. It turns out I'm no better at rolling raw fish and rice together than I am at navigating it into my mouth with a set of chopsticks. The purpose of the activity was to demonstrate a possible teambuilding activity available to groups holding meetings at the hotel.
Framing the event in that context gave me food for thought. I had fun. I definitely think it was an experience that was worthy of the consideration of a planner putting together an agenda of optional activities. But was it really teambuilding? I'm not so sure. There are a lot of companies in the marketplace that offer experiences that are fine optional activities, but don't really teach the participants anything. Perhaps a professional teambuilding consultant could have taken the sushi competition and worked it into some kind of lesson about the role cooperation plays in holding sushi ingredients and organizations together. But is that stretch necessary to elevate a fun activity to the level of teambuilding?
The simple act of play does have its place in meetings and organizations. Sharing a good time makes an important contribution to the sense of camaraderie in a group. Learning to play together can build a bridge to learning to work together. The journey across that bridge is where the value of a true teambuilding consultant comes into play -- and often, it's where suppliers who are just labeling a fun optional activity as teambuilding fall short.
In this month's cover story, we take a look at some of the pitfalls organizations fall into when integrating teambuilding activities into meetings. Our writer, Alex Palmer, has interviewed numerous experts in teambuilding and corporate psychology to identify top strategies and best practices that ensure organizations properly make the link between teambuilding activity, and activity in the workplace.
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This article appears in the August 2015 issue of Successful Meetings.