“A retreat may feel more relaxed than the office, but it is still a workplace, and the power dynamics don’t disappear,”
Ah, so sad :( Another story of a person who believed other people in the workplace too much.
These kinds of exercises are unfortunately a waste of time. If you’re honest, you’re walking into a minefield. But if you’re not being open, then no one is really getting to know anyone else in any meaningful way. In the end, a bunch of money and time is spent with zero value gained.
And given that this was about someone sharing their experience with a medical procedure to help them process the death of a parent, the company will probably lose the lawsuit, wasting even more money.
What a tragic waste of resources. Also, my heart goes out to this person. Loosing a parent is terrible.
Google banned political conversations at work. Tech companies are learning from first principles why work/life separation, traditional office culture exist.
So like that interview candidate being asked about the hardest day of their life and answering honestly about a miscarriage or did this guy do something inappropriate with some ping pong balls in a Guinness-record way?
I'm torn here because it does seem like Netflix brought this on themselves. At the same time the litigious nature of American workplaces are part of the reason large corporate environments are so soul-crushing, with language meant to deliberately obfuscate what's actually happening.
"It's difficult for me to share this but I care about Netflix, some would say, too much. My mother died recently and rather than go to the funeral I worked through the last season of goop lab because I know the synergy of Netflix and Gwyneth Paltrow will enrich our subscribers lives like nothing before. Thank you for listening but I think I ate some bad fish at the retreat and need to go lie down in my room."
The article implies it was from sharing his experience using Ketamine therapy for depression, which likely would have been done with a doctor. Which makes this seem much weirder to my ears.
I am not sure how old he was, but I would guess he was under 40 and relatively inexperienced.
Part of the purpose of these exercises is to train management, especially executives, to remain fully focused and make decisions solely on performance and the business, even when someone asks them to show emotion. Anyone who is in executive management position should understand that.
Your company, your coworkers, are not your friends. HR is not there for you, it's to protect the company from you. Do not disclose personal information to those who control your livelihood. Once you leave or if you build up a personal relationship with a coworker, outside of work, then maybe. Even still. I will never divulge what I have been through simply because corporate wants to be "inclusive".
hr and corporate are always your enemies but coworkers can be friends. they are on the same level as you and dealing with the same problems. just be careful who you trust because some of them might turn out to be class traitors and make up some allegations to get you fired.
I wonder if this is a generational thing. I grew up before social media and have long taken the position that I never post anything to the Internet that I wouldn't want public. I don't have a secret Reddit account or anonymous Twitter profile where I post stuff that could be fired, charged or worse.
This goes moreso for work. I assume anything you do can and will be used against you. I have zero trust. You're being a sanitized version of yourself. Do people not know this?
It's part of the reason I hate these working bonding activities. Well, that and being neurodivergent. There are fiarly standard questions and I have prepared answers that may or may not be the truth. Just like with interview questions. Sorry, but none of you are my friends or can be trusted. You might be shocked how often confiding in a coworker is used against you.
The trick with coworkers is saying just enough so they think they can trust you without saying anything that might get you fired or have other consequences. You can't say nothing. That's almost worse. But you have to basically invent a persona, particularly if you're neurodivergent because the default position of neurotyhpical people is to not like you.
And at the end of the day so much of your work life is governed by whether or not people like you. And I hate it.
So for a trust exercise, I'd come up with something everybody has likely done or is at least sympathetic to. Like, nothing to do with stealing. That might get you fired. Here's an example: "when I was in high school, I lied to my parents and drove to another state for a party and got drunk with my friends".
It's better to base your sanitized answer on the truth but I'm not above wholesale lies. They're just harder to remember so you have to be light on details but not too light.
It always surprises me when people don't understand that the employee-employer relationship is an adversarial one. Unless you're in a democratic co-op or similar your employer is the enemy and you should never forget that. The correct move is to try to screw them in every legal way at every turn because that is what they are doing to you. Never divulge any information that increases your attack surface, always try to extract the most money for the least effort. This is capitalism 101.
You must not allow them to fool you into thinking that these aren't the rules they're playing by. David Sirlin's "Playing to Win" is a good treatise on how to be good, and perhaps the most important lesson is to play the game by the rules as written, and not by some other set of rules that exists only in your head.
(Though in this case the victim was senior enough that I suspect he was playing the game to the best of his ability, trying to humanize himself to gain the upper hand in some other manipulation game and misplayed, kicking things into the legal arena, as one does)
> Adam Mendler, a workplace expert, told Inc. that this kind of exercise carries real risk when companies invite openness without ever clarifying how that vulnerability will be treated afterward.
I always felt that those trust exercises, "bring your whole self to work", "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better" are all ruses to find the most gullible people and then take advantage of them or get rid of them.
> "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better"
CliftonStrengths, home of the Corporate Autism Test. Just which of those 35 Signature Themes(tm) will be the ones that get pulled out that look like the giant autistic red flag?
laughs in Ideation, Connectedness, Belief, Intellection, and Input
I don't have any shocking story, but I also was once made to participate in a day long group bonding exercise.
one activity was for each member of our department to grade the overall "personality" of our department using several personality dimensions (e. g., kindness, competitiveness, etc.)
what I think i learned was that each of us projected our dominant personality traits onto the whole group.
eg, the hyper competitive climber said our department was cutthroat.
the guy who avoided conflict said it was a happy department with few disagreements.
Offsite retreats seem like a bad idea in general, I've never been to one where I felt the team or company worked together better afterwards, and I've seen some spectacularly bad results... like the time the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales (the classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"). The discussion quickly turned shockingly personal and within a month after the retreat both the CTO and head of sales quit. At least they called an end to the retreat early.
I had very positive experiences with some offsites, where the people 1) had fun 2) felt closer and able to interact more easily with each other (especially when working in a remote environment it's harder to grow closer)
But, like everything else, not all people enjoy them. I have seen people find obvious excuses to avoid them.
I think that ultimately it can help make a better company/team/etc, BUT you need a program / agenda and people that know what they're doing - can't just make it a bro fest.
Alcohol can be fine, but you will discover some people change when drunk, not always for the better. We had a few incidents at a previous company I worked for (involving people getting removed by bouncers or the whole company being banned from a venue - but tbf there was a lot of barf in the hallways and the like), but I gotta say, the people at the one I'm at now are all very conservative and mature when it comes to drinking and offsite behaviour. From what I know so far, anyway.
I'll offer another antidote. Every single place I have ever worked at that had such retreats had a big layoff within ~6 months.
It's like the CEO or execs see there are a lot of problems and think this will magically fix all the "issues". It doesn't, so they turn to the next solution. Just fire a bunch of staff and start over.
We have a "retreat" every other year or so at a certain resort across the country. What happens is that the company flies everyone there + including overseas employees) do 3 days of meeting plus 1 day of free time before flying everyone back. 2 employees share a room, no family or friends allowed even if you want to pay for your hotel rooms out of the pocket.
I don't see any point of this. Such a waste of time and jet fuel. I would rather have those meetings at worksite and get a nice discount for the resort and go there with my own schedule and on my own terms.
When I was younger and eager for retreats I saw one turn really bad. The facilitator suggested volunteers to sit in the middle and people to be open about their bad and good things.
Oh man, this went south quickly after a few beers, the retreat was shortened, some people never talked to others anymore and the whole team broke apart.
The thing is that nobody was nasty, the first volounteers did nit give a fuck about what was told about them, so others took the step, the people sitting around git bolder (but still telling the truth) and at some point it all collapsed.
Keep work life and personal life separate. No exceptions. If a company tries to encourage you to do otherwise I’d strongly suggest you find a new employer.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 18.1 ms ] threadAh, so sad :( Another story of a person who believed other people in the workplace too much.
These kinds of exercises are unfortunately a waste of time. If you’re honest, you’re walking into a minefield. But if you’re not being open, then no one is really getting to know anyone else in any meaningful way. In the end, a bunch of money and time is spent with zero value gained.
And given that this was about someone sharing their experience with a medical procedure to help them process the death of a parent, the company will probably lose the lawsuit, wasting even more money.
What a tragic waste of resources. Also, my heart goes out to this person. Loosing a parent is terrible.
Is this just splitting the G? If so, it's the most mundane thing in the history of alcohol related party tricks.
Hell, lie and make an embarrassing but completely legal story. Or something stupid like you were totally embarassed in HS or college.
But, never ever share your actual personal lives in a corporate setting. Not one time.
1) Get invited to a trust exercise retreat.
2) Share that you have done ketamine in a controlled therapy environment.
3) Share a bunch of other things not in article <speculation>
4) Get fired for having a drug addiction.
We are to assume that #2 caused #4 ... but without all the facts it could have been something in #3 + #2 , again speculation.
Part of the purpose of these exercises is to train management, especially executives, to remain fully focused and make decisions solely on performance and the business, even when someone asks them to show emotion. Anyone who is in executive management position should understand that.
He failed the test.
This is probably the first time I've ever said that a NY Post article was a useful source of information on a story.
This goes moreso for work. I assume anything you do can and will be used against you. I have zero trust. You're being a sanitized version of yourself. Do people not know this?
It's part of the reason I hate these working bonding activities. Well, that and being neurodivergent. There are fiarly standard questions and I have prepared answers that may or may not be the truth. Just like with interview questions. Sorry, but none of you are my friends or can be trusted. You might be shocked how often confiding in a coworker is used against you.
The trick with coworkers is saying just enough so they think they can trust you without saying anything that might get you fired or have other consequences. You can't say nothing. That's almost worse. But you have to basically invent a persona, particularly if you're neurodivergent because the default position of neurotyhpical people is to not like you.
And at the end of the day so much of your work life is governed by whether or not people like you. And I hate it.
So for a trust exercise, I'd come up with something everybody has likely done or is at least sympathetic to. Like, nothing to do with stealing. That might get you fired. Here's an example: "when I was in high school, I lied to my parents and drove to another state for a party and got drunk with my friends".
It's better to base your sanitized answer on the truth but I'm not above wholesale lies. They're just harder to remember so you have to be light on details but not too light.
You must not allow them to fool you into thinking that these aren't the rules they're playing by. David Sirlin's "Playing to Win" is a good treatise on how to be good, and perhaps the most important lesson is to play the game by the rules as written, and not by some other set of rules that exists only in your head.
(Though in this case the victim was senior enough that I suspect he was playing the game to the best of his ability, trying to humanize himself to gain the upper hand in some other manipulation game and misplayed, kicking things into the legal arena, as one does)
I always felt that those trust exercises, "bring your whole self to work", "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better" are all ruses to find the most gullible people and then take advantage of them or get rid of them.
CliftonStrengths, home of the Corporate Autism Test. Just which of those 35 Signature Themes(tm) will be the ones that get pulled out that look like the giant autistic red flag?
laughs in Ideation, Connectedness, Belief, Intellection, and Input
one activity was for each member of our department to grade the overall "personality" of our department using several personality dimensions (e. g., kindness, competitiveness, etc.)
what I think i learned was that each of us projected our dominant personality traits onto the whole group.
eg, the hyper competitive climber said our department was cutthroat.
the guy who avoided conflict said it was a happy department with few disagreements.
etc.
beyond that insight, I didn't learn much.
That's not a problem, in the sense that there was never any possible debate: if I make a promise on your behalf, I am a di*k.
But, like everything else, not all people enjoy them. I have seen people find obvious excuses to avoid them.
Alcohol can be fine, but you will discover some people change when drunk, not always for the better. We had a few incidents at a previous company I worked for (involving people getting removed by bouncers or the whole company being banned from a venue - but tbf there was a lot of barf in the hallways and the like), but I gotta say, the people at the one I'm at now are all very conservative and mature when it comes to drinking and offsite behaviour. From what I know so far, anyway.
It's like the CEO or execs see there are a lot of problems and think this will magically fix all the "issues". It doesn't, so they turn to the next solution. Just fire a bunch of staff and start over.
I don't see any point of this. Such a waste of time and jet fuel. I would rather have those meetings at worksite and get a nice discount for the resort and go there with my own schedule and on my own terms.
Oh man, this went south quickly after a few beers, the retreat was shortened, some people never talked to others anymore and the whole team broke apart.
The thing is that nobody was nasty, the first volounteers did nit give a fuck about what was told about them, so others took the step, the people sitting around git bolder (but still telling the truth) and at some point it all collapsed.