231–240 of 527 posts
I'm disappointed that this has none of the drama of the Plex retreat in Honduras.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe not your whole self, but I'd like the people I work with to feel safe talking about their family, their disabilities, their religion, their culture or subculture, the things they love doing, whatever makes them human.
Then I hope you have an extremely flat company structure, not just formally but in practice. Don't try to fast-talk people into opening up. They have a better idea than you what's safe to talk about, about their lives. If they think they can't open up, they're probably right.
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".
This is a recipe for a sad life. It's avoiding friendship for the fear of betrayal. You get a lot of benefits by being good friends with colleagues. There are, however important things to be aware of: 1- "Though shall not" limit their social life to their colleagues (or any single group that can disappear with a divorce, change of jobs, or hobby, maybe because of an incident). 2- "Though shall not" blindly help peopl…
Making friends at the workplace is fine until there is such conflict, then where will they stand? If they will turn they back on you (and most of them will), then how much is such relation worth in the first place?
I didn't know those trust/sharing exercises were real.
> 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 o…
There's a huge difference between being yourself and not having a filter. I absolutely think people should be themselves at work. In my mind this generally means not acting like a robot or treating other people like toasters. It is psychologically crushing to operate in a they're all workplace where people do that. The best managers I've ever had were those I could discuss my emotions or that of my team with. That sa…
I can work with them fine, I just don't want to share any part of myself with these people and invite commentary from people I do not respect.
> 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 o…
"Bring your whole self to work" was HR virtue signaling to the people favored by DEI, when it was still en vogue.
So, go outta there with complains about hr slogan and dei.
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…
We have one annually for my company. It's at a casino, with a few scheduled meals and some activities (video game room, trivia done by a professional company). It's voluntary and employees are allowed to bring their spouse. I think it helps a lot with communication, especially since we are a distributed team and most peoplr don't see each other. But it's hard for me to know for sure, no one tells the owners the truth…