Your Team-Building Exercise Is Building Resentment
The bowling ball feels like a cold, dead thing in my hand. It’s a 6-pounder, slick with the ghost of someone else’s palm sweat, and I’m pretty sure the finger holes were drilled for a child. Across the lane, Brenda from accounting is mid-lunge, a picture of forced enthusiasm. Her celebratory shimmy after knocking down four pins is just a little too frantic. The sound of it all-the manufactured thunder of the ball, the clatter of pins, the strained laughter-it all blends into a low-grade headache behind my eyes. This is Mandatory Fun Night. The email promised camaraderie. What it delivered was fluorescent lighting and the simmering awkwardness of making small talk with the same person who denied your expense report just 6 hours ago.
We’re told these things build trust. We’re sold a narrative that if we can just navigate a ropes course together or collectively solve an escape room, some magical transfer of rapport will occur, smoothing over the very real, very structural problems back at the office. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what professional trust is. Trust isn’t born from seeing your manager get a gutter ball; it’s born from seeing them have your back in a tough meeting. It isn’t built by falling backward into the arms of a colleague; it’s built over months of them delivering their work on time, every time, without you having to chase them. It’s the quiet accumulation of reliability. Competence. Respect for boundaries.
