I’m not talking about team building trust creating rope climbs or raft making. I’m talking about taking the team away from the office to sit all day in a stuffy over heated hotel conference room whilst a dysfunctional group of people find lots to disagree about. The aim is to draw up a business plan, agree priorities, finalise the budget cut proposals, review the EDI strategy, develop effective partnership working. The best part of the day is lunch provided someone doesn’t suggest you work through it. At the end of one of these away days you’re left with a pounding headache, a lot of frustration.
I have experience different types of team away day hell.
The manager has lost the dressing room, the team don’t have confidence in the manager, everyone has different ideas about what’s wrong and how to fix it, the manager is seen as weak, indecisive and has lost control of the increasingly acrimonious debate.
One individual who frustrates everyone by disagreeing with every proposal and every one. They refuse to compromise, they want to discuss the detail when everyone else wants to agree the strategy. It gets so bad they can’t even agree when we should break for lunch.
It’s two teams and the other team is a disaster. We come prepped to make it work so have they but they spend the whole time arguing with each other. It’s like being invited round to the neighbours to discuss the parking problem only to find they have had a major row before you arrived and spend the whole time you are their bickering contradicting and undermining each other. It’s embarrassing, uncomfortable and frustrating. But when you suggest you go and we meet up at a more conducive time they both insist you stay, saying we’re making real progress.
Despite how unsatisfactory such away days are, despite the acrimony and the tense atmosphere in the room throughout the day the leader feels obliged to justify the event by stressing the usefulness of getting away from the office. Then the moment you dread, before you can get out the door they suggest that another away day is put in the diary. And who is the first to agree this is a good idea why the person who has not been able to agree a single thing all day.
Away days work when the team gets on, when colleagues support each other and when there is general agreement on the problems and solutions and the leader leads. The opportunity to spend time together sharing experience and discussing the way forward can be very productive and leave people with renewed energy and enthusiasm. Away days won’t fix a dysfunctional team, resolve a personality clash, or turn a disempowered manager into an inspiring leader.
Blair McPherson former director author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
