Honest Agenda for Your Next Team Building Meeting
7:30 am — Pre-Event Networking
Welcome to Team Building Day! Meet us in the lobby of the most convenient hotel we could afford for an excruciating half-hour of mingling with people you have nothing in common with besides that you work with them 8 hours a day. Instant Coffee will be available at a discounted employee rate.
8:00 am — CEO Welcome
Listen to a high-energy five-minute welcome speech from your casually dressed CEO, Chad! Chad will outline with impeccable euphemisms why THIS meeting is mission critical, for the business going forward, and how THIS event is about each of YOU as leaders who manage and lead and thought-lead and how all of our lives depend on it.
8:05:01 am — CEO Unexpectedly Leaves
The CEO will leave the event immediately due to an unforeseen conflict (kiteboarding lessons).
8:05:02 am — Housekeeping Matters
Your Team Building Meeting planner, who spent the last 6 months organizing this event that no one even wanted to have (except the CEO, who just left) will explain with exasperation where the toilets are, they’re here somewhere, just go look, how hard can it be to find them. If there is a fire run to the nearest doorway, don’t get in the elevator, use the stairs, whatever, there’s not going to be a fire. Turn your phone off. Or, just put it on silent because you’re going to want to use your phone a lot over the next few hours — it’s not our fault this day will be so painfully boring.
8:15 am — Facilitator Check In
Your Team Building Meeting Facilitator will talk, loudly. “HOW ARE YOU DOING, GUYS!” “ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?” Don’t blame her though, if this doesn’t go well she might be out of a job.
8:30 am — A PowerPoint Presentation
There will be slides with words on them. You will not read the words. Your eyes will glaze over.
9:30 am — A Very, Very Long PowerPoint Presentation
Your eyes will continue to glaze over. Your coworker will tap you on the shoulder when she starts to see you nodding off.
10:30 am — Another Extremely Long PowerPoint Presentation
That will be so full of corporate euphemisms that you will be guaranteed to feel both comatose and anxiously out-of-touch at the same time. Thankfully by now you will have figured out how to prop your head up with your arm on the chair in a way that makes it look like you’re still listening.
11:30 am — Coffee Break
We are over time so this will be cancelled.
11:31 am — Brainstorming Session
We now invite you to get into groups of 4 with people you now realize you absolutely cannot stand, and sit in silence while they argue about ideas no one will every build.
12:31 pm — Lunch
Due to the PowerPoint Presentations, Brainstorming Session and the Coffee Break going long, lunch will be shortened to four minutes. Grab an egg sandwich (they are only two dollars each). Muffins are for Senior Managers only.
12:35 pm — Group Flip Chart Session
Lift your weary ass up off the seat and with a group of your similarly lethargic and slack-mouthed colleagues who did this exact same thing last year, answer the question: “What is Leadership?” by yelling out synonyms for the word Leadership.
1:30 pm — Another Group Flip Chat Session
Define Leadership but without using the word Management, or synonyms of the word Management, as synonyms for the word Leadership. Then define Management similarly.
2:00 pm — Networking Break-out Session
In which the main objective will be to caffeinate heavily so you don’t fall asleep in….
2:30 pm — Another PowerPoint Presentation
Very, very long. Extremely long and arduous. And this time with short, generic, and cheesy videos that are inserted actually in the Power Point slides by a millennial who knows what they are doing with technology.
3:30 pm — Group Presentations
Slink back in embarrassment as your group leader presents his ideas, instead of the ones the group came up with. But make yourself feel better by reminding yourself that all the ideas are bad.
5:30 pm — Final PowerPoint Presentation
In which the individual presenter, aware that he/she is all that stands between you and a few drinks, will spend most of their allotted time describing how much better this presentation would have been if it had been allotted an earlier time slot than the death-slot.
6.30pm — Just One More Thing!
Facilitator Farewell. Organizational Thank yous. Corporate song. National Anthem. Group walk while holding hands, and a team scavenger hunt!
8.00pm — “Free” Drinks
You finally made it! Enjoy a drink with your fellow warriors. Drinks will be partially subsidized, until 8.10pm, then unsubsidized. Do not even think about expensing them, we need to save our budget for team building.
