You Want To Be On My Team

We have a group of managers and supervisors who meet monthly for training, discussion, support and projects. There are a few of us who are the leadership committee for that group and we meet every month to put together the agenda. That’s supposed to be a quick meeting but we always end up off point somehow. I blame one guy for that - the guy who started the whole group. Since I'm allegedly in charge of the committee, I should blame myself but that's how I roll.

In addition to that working meeting, we’ve had a few Happy Hours for the leadership committee. I scheduled one up for Tuesday night at Teakwoods. Nothing like beer and unshelled peanuts!

During the day on Tuesday, I sent out a proposed August agenda with the comment, “Anything else for the agenda? (Trying to save us a meeting but it's probably a futile attempt.)”

I got back a question. “So are we not meeting this afternoon?”

My reply: “We are still meeting but not to talk about the agenda!”

I appended an animated gif of beer mugs clinking to my message as well.

While I thought that made it pretty clear that it wasn’t going to be a working session, two of the overachievers showed up with copies of the agenda. Come on, people, relax!

I made sure the agenda was never discussed. What was discussed was gossip about past employees, how we would solve all of the world’s problems and a lot of verbal abusing of each other. Oh, and there was some not-safe-for-work discussion as well but don’t tell HR as it was nothing that could get us sued. (I still have the heebie-jeebies from the yogurt story.)

While we weren’t doing direct work, it was a really good and productive event. What we gained is a higher level of comfort and familiarity with each other. Going forward, that will help us communicate better and let us be critical while not offending. I think that sometimes it’s too easy to focus on tasks and less on camaraderie. That’s a mistake.

Oh, and we had a great time which can never be overrated.

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