ShareThisBy Dr. YVONNE FOURNIER
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Dear Dr. Fournier:
My company is sending my co-workers and me on a wilderness retreat to help each other literally jump hurdles, climb mountains and do all kinds of things. I hate doing all of this, but it is mandatory. It is hard to believe that these "team-building" activities have been around for years and still seem to be popular. They say we are learning teamwork. Any thoughts?
THE ASSESSMENT
The workplace is for work, to be carried out with working, professional relationships. Unfortunately, as a society gone crazy with the need to "feel good," we are quick to get on the bandwagon of "touchy-feely" experiences, ready to tear down the appropriate barriers of private space.
The idea that I must physically climb a tree to be a creative problem solver is way out on a limb for me. Taking risks and cooperating for problem solving in the wilderness is supposed to make you capable of doing all this at work? Unfortunately, this process confuses cooperation with collaboration and it assumes _ unjustifiably _ that the lessons learned in the wilderness will translate into creativity that is valuable to the workplace.
The simple assumption that creativity and risk taking leads to valuable innovation leaves out too many steps in the process of this complex development.
WHAT TO DO
Maintaining personal space in the workplace is extremely important. New employees often enter a job with an overriding emotion _ loneliness, intensified by fear of failure. This motivates a search for new "friends" at work, leading to confiding fears, intimate problems, and other personal information in order to demonstrate "friendship."
Just as there is a difference between cooperation and collaboration, there is a vast difference between personal friendships and professional acquaintances. In a professional environment, we should not be expected to confide personal information that might eventually lead to resentment, embarrassment and a loss of pride.
Regrettably, many companies disregard the difference between professional and personal activity when a wilderness trip becomes mandatory. If you are not comfortable with this program but feel compelled to participate, dare to take risks and set your own ground rules that respect personal space. You have a right to establish the relationship you want with your co-workers. You alone must determine which barriers you want to tear down and how far into your personal space you choose for them to go.
The workplace is no place for intimacy. Professional relationships can foster collaboration, problem solving, creativity and risk taking in the workplace. Pushing a friend over a hurdle has little to do with clearing the hurdles that you encounter at work.
(Write Dr. Yvonne Fournier, Fournier Learning Strategies Inc., 5900 Poplar, Memphis, Tenn. 38119. E-mail YF7thsense(at)aol.com.)
