Years and years ago, I worked temporarily for a small company in Australia.
I hated it but I needed the money so each and every day I went there to destroy my soul.
I was not the only one.
So one day, this company announced they’d hired some specialists to help build trust between us all. The irony was there was already a lot of trust between us, it was the management we thought were dodgy bastards.
So off we go to some hotel where we are subjected to all manner of inane and condescending bullshit, when one of my colleagues announced …
“For this to work, we have to trust your bosses aren’t stupid and you’ve failed in achieving that”.
Within 2 seconds, pandaemonium happened and for all intents and purposes, we rebelled and all went to a coffee shop.
Of course management weren’t happy and a few people were fired and a lot of people were given written warnings – and while I am a big believer teams being built on trusting each other to help each other – that comes from the everyday environment, not some totally unrealistic experience in some nondescript hotel room outside of an industrial estate.
Half of the time the reason for doing it is simply for the management to say ‘they’ve spent money on training’ … which is VERY different from actually training … but none of this matters, because the only reason I’m telling this story is so I can justify showing this clip.
