Backstabbing For Team Building

Our experience with weekly Jackbox games every Friday

So I know I promised more on the skills gap but for the next two weeks there’s a Humble Bundle for Jackbox games (almost the entire catalog for 20$) that I am doing a bit of a change in pace. Those who don’t know what Jackbox Games are, check out the links, you won’t be disappointed.

Teambuilding with games except fewer scratches and less human contact // Photo by Anna Samoylova on Unsplash

So the most amazing HR person I’ve ever worked with, Abigail Caldwell (LinkedIn) had set us up with OfficeVibe a few years back. One of the most amazing tools for checking in on the engagement of the team. Man, I just realized the amount of shilling I’m doing in this article I should have arranged for some kickbacks but I promise I haven’t. Next time, maybe. We were going through an integration as a part of an acquisition so the team was adjusting to a lot of changes. And then the pandemic started to break loose. Stay at home orders, lockdowns. And that started to get to the team. I saw an anonymous comment in OfficeVibe saying the stress of not being able to socialize was getting to them.

Being the visionary leader, empathetic to the needs of their team members, unafraid to break conventions that I am, I thought maybe we can play Jackbox games for spending some social time together (read I wanted to play Jackbox games and always struggled to get a group together and am pretending it’s for the team). So I reached out to Abigail, and recruited her as an accomplice. Mostly showing her some of the games, trying to make sure we can keep them SFW

We decided every Friday at 7:30AM we will host games. The decision for the time went something like, “Let’s make it on a Friday, make it a light start to the weekend. Now we both know I’m a visionary but I am also a penny pincher so I want this to not be an official activity and not in work hours so let’s make it 7AM” “a. Very humble of you. b. Ali, are you sure you want to do 7AM”, “Yeah 7AM will be fine. It’s games I can get up for that.”, “Ali, I’ve been in meetings with you at 7AM. Let’s do 7:30, that way you still get to be a penny pincher and I don’t have to deal with 7AM you” “Wow, you really understand how everyone in the team ticks. See this is why I call you the most amazing HR person in the country”. And that is the story of how we started our Friday Games. So what did we learn from them?

Me before I have my morning coffee. Also I don’t have coffee // According to Know Your Meme Grumpy Cat’s images were first shared by the owner’s brother on Reddit https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grumpy-cat

Sharpen Our Creativity Muscle

The game we played for our first games was “Patently Stupid”. That way we could pretend we were actually doing something work related. In this game you create random problems and you create inventions that solve the problem. This is the only part of this post that relates to my general theme of education needs to change. But it really allows us to flex our creativity.

Surprisingly the recreation is poorer quality than what I drew in the game

For example, all that training in agile has really paid off. Because it teaches you to take an approach of a smaller batch size and rejig things that already exist. E.g., behold my recreation of today’s game when asked for something along the lines of “I have too many things to do”

Of course the best entry award probably goes to the best HR person in the world, Abigail whose solution to “There are too many people at sporting events” was to create a hoop skirt that will push everyone out of the way. Of course when she suggested that a year ago we had the epiphany that if everyone wears hoop skirt with a 3 foot radius we would have solved the problem of getting people to separate by 6 feet.

Cinderella was wearing a pandemic appropriate dress to the ball. Someone should have gotten her a mask though // From Disney’s Cinderella

Realize You Actually Work Well Together

So I mean yeah we’ve worked together for years. But it was still a shock when we played Bomb Corp together to see how well we worked. We got further in this game than when I’ve played with friends and family. So Yay us.

I Promised Backstabbing

One of our frequent games is Trivia Murder Party. We were able to convince the best HR person in the galaxy, Abigail, to let us try it out despite the clear notice that it is definitely not family friendly. But we decided it was just gore and violence and not something that can actually get us into trouble.

Throwing A Bigger Party

So another company doing something similar but with more of a corporate focus is Brightful. When arranging an official team building event, the greatest HR person in the universe, Abigail thought it would be easier to use Brightful. Many of the games have the same concept although Jackbox has done a far better job in game-fying the games. But it made it easier to run with a larger group. Plus you have to worry a lot less about making sure the filters are in place to keep the content workplace appropriate. So it can be a more safe way to try with your team.

Tips

1. It’s supposed to be fun. Invite a lot of people and let the people choose if they want to join.
2. Make sure the person taking the initiative is ready to commit. Most likely they’ll be the one hosting the games. I hosted for almost half a year until I decided to get people Christmas presents to offload the responsibility.
3. Make sure the technology is working. Zoom is pretty good with sharing audio.
4. At least in the beginning, while the group is forming, and storming vet out the games for people’s interests and appropriateness.
5. I’ve been shilling so many products but I’ll throw in an anti-shill. Some organizations that use ZScaler or similar tools may realize Jackbox Games does not work for them. Fortunately they can still stream from some other computer in the house using Steam.

Outcomes

We’ve been doing it weekly for more than a year. We have our small steady group that likes to attend. What did we gain from it:

1. Joking, coming up with crazy ideas, backstabbing definitely builds a level of comfort in the team and helps establish psychological safety.
2. Especially helpful with newer hires, still trying to gauge the culture of the team it helps them be more comfortable.
3. Allows practicing joint problem solving and flexing your creative muscles.
4. Gives you the opportunity to kill your boss (well a ragdoll representation but close enough).
5. I get to write this article, and promise applause for first person to post a video of the Arrested Development reference made throughout this article.