How to Build Team Spirit

[MsAnthropy]

We just got a very long memo about improving team spirit, threatening touchy-feely exercises if we can't get along, and we were assigned to come up with three things to improve our team. These were mine:

1. Give me less annoying co-workers
2. Give me total authority
3. Outlaw touchy-feely crap.

Fortunately she laughed.

My whole life is based on amusing me. How I stay employed is beyond me.

[Spinzonner]

1. Well, she didnt say they had to be good things

[MsAnthropy]

3. That's right! She should have been more specific!

[arwalden]

2. Cheerleaders With Pompoms and Colorful Uniforms?

Type-it-up! Type-it-up! Siss boom bah!

[MsAnthropy]

6. It's almost to that point. Ugh, that hate that rah-rah stuff

I wonder if there will ever be a study to determine how effective it is in increasing productivity. I get more done when I don't have to talk to these people.

[arwalden]

13. I Was A Wal-Mart The Other Day...

... and happened to see a group of blue-vested employees gathered around a management-looking figure who was reviewing a list of tasks and goals.

At the end of the floor-meeting, they all started chanting some sort of sing-songy cheer (although they weren't really singing, it had a rhythm). At the end, there was some sort of soft-to-loud "goooooo team" finale followed by hoots and applause.

Some of them really got into it, others seemed embarrassed by the spectacle of it all.

[meegbear]

4. I worked at a company like that ...

they literally would start with 50 employees on Jan 1, hire 50 during the year, and have 50 employees on Dec 31; I lasted a year.

Management tried all these different "touchy feely" things as you call them to boost team spirit, but in the end, it was, and still is, management that's lowering the spirit. No matter how many great things you try, if the uppers are shitheads and acting like that, it's gonna do no good.

[MsAnthropy]

12. I feel it's my job to balance their feel-good with complete cynicism

if they ask me how my day was I say "I didn't kill anyone today!"

[Spinzonner]

5. There's something to be said for

providing comic relief for your own life

[MsAnthropy]

11. That's what I think

as long as I think I'm funny, f**k em if they can't take a joke.

[Aiptasia]

7. My picks

1. Fewer memos on the subject.
2. Mandatory Paintball sessions.
3. "Casual" Friday to include strippers and sex toys.

[MsAnthropy]

9. YES! I love those--I think I'll submit them for extra credit!

[Lavender Brown]

8. At least you don't have to wear "flair."

:)

[MsAnthropy]

10. That movie gets more painfully familiar every day

complete with "Hawaiian Shirt Day".

[flvegan]

14. You have to be that way, I think, just to get by in today's corporate

world. I'm the same way, and I try to keep things light-spirited on my team, and they appreciate it. I've been here 9 years, and now management "expects" it from me. I'll never be management, but I also don't want to be.

Our upcoming company meeting will include a Powerpoint presentation. Employee comments are included. On mine, I snuck in a reference to alcohol, a buzzword mockery and the term "monkeys with chalkboards" in reference to a brainstorming session.

[VelmaD]

15. My suggestions...1. pay us more

2. pay us more
3. pay us more

:)

[GOPisEvil]

16. 4. More vacation time

[MsAnthropy]

17. You wonder why don't they see that connection

If they doubled/tripled my pay I would have spirit enough for everyone!