Initiative Games

I spent one year in college as an Resident Assistant. The picture that most people have of an RA (living in a single on a long hall in a dorm room, holding social events for residents, building "team spirit," enforcing anti-alcohol rules, resolving roommate disputes, etc.) is not at all what my job involved. I was one of three RA's in an off-campus apartment building in which CMU leased rooms. Our apartments were interspersed among other residents, from other students to senior citizens.

Most of my residents were upperclassmen who wanted to get away from the typical dorm experience. They did not want to attend social events, they had more privacy in their apartments than a resident of a dorm would have, and they chose their roommates.

All of us RA's for the various off-campus apartments were a bit of a breed apart. We had a different approach to the cheerleading, rah-rah style that typified Residence Life. But one of the biggest differences was our attitude towards "team-building" or "initiative" games.

We hated them.

Whether it was RA training, or Freshmen orientation, or just a normal staff meeting, ResLife could not seem to do anything doing some kind relay race or a trust fall or untying a human knot. Now, I understand that those games have some value the first dozen or so times one plays them, but I had more than my share of those before finishing high school. The off-campus apartment RA's never made our residents play a game to help them bond with each other.

So it was amusing to see a group come into the kitchen today and do some of those same team-building games, and enjoy them.

We got a phone call at about 1:00 from the president of TeamSynergy, a consulting company that does team building events for businesses. They had planned to bring the staff of a local church to one of our competitors for a cooking event, but they just found out that the other kitchen did not have enough food (I don't know how you schedule an event and first, don't order the food to be able to hold the event, and second, why they could not walk across their parking lot to buy what they lacked at the grocery store) He was wondering if there was any way they we could host their event 30 minutes later.

"Of course," the owner said. So we did. It was a little bit like our own team-building game to try to prepare for this event with only 30 minutes notice.

The timing was actually good for us, as we had finished most of our major prep work for week and the kitchen was well stocked. Because it was our major prep day, the owner and I had two other employees in the kitchen to help us clean and set-up three stations for the groups to use making their entrees. We used every bit of those 30 minutes to get ready, but it did all come together. The biggest problem with this impromptu event was that I didn't get a chance to have lunch until around 4pm.

So there I was, being reminded of my days as an RA, watching team building games being combined with cooking. In one team, only one person was allowed to read the recipe and she had to use charades to communicate to the rest of the group how to make the entree. In another, the four team member had to tie their arms and hands together before starting to work on their entree. There were blindfolds, that old initiative game standby, involved in another group.

It sure seemed like these ladies had never played these kinds of games before. They fell into all of the usual traps (the quiet member had the right answer but was ignored, impatience led the group to overlook the simple directions, one person on the team would just start out on their own without regard to the rest of the team, etc.) but sure had fun doing it! The day was a good reminder to me that these things have value, even if they seem old and tired to me.