RE: Team Building

[melonie -dot- mcmichael -at- amd -dot- com]

Howdy,

I agree that all the hokey team building stuff is just 
irritating. 

However, I think there are some activities which can help.
I have participated in an offsite workshop that did help
our group. Offsite is important: fewer interruptions and 
no one slipping out to handle "just a small problem". We 
got together and talked about the problems our department 
faced (both internal and external) and what we wanted to 
achieve as a group (which took some hammering out). We did
a little griping, some moaning and a lot of brainstorming.
It was actually quite productive.

We did have a facilitator who ran us through some exercises
(some where informative, a few were hokey) and who kept us
on track. She also got us to think about things in another 
way.

I think this worked in our group because we were all team 
players and we were all willing to make it work. As 
individuals and as a department, we wanted to improve our 
performance. We got our egos out of it and just tried to 
find solutions. If anyone had been the "I don't want to 
play with you" type, I don't think this would have worked.
You just can't make people work and play well with others.

Melonie McMichael
Tech Writer
AMD-CG
mailto:melonie -dot- mcmichael -at- amd -dot- com