Cornicabra, Abracadabra - It's Team Building Time!

I want you to join me. Look at all the things that people built. You might see a mess. What I see are people inspired by each other, and by you. People take things from what you have and are making something new out of it.

-Emmet, The Lego Movie

Team building. Just let the word sit there for a few minutes. Say it aloud if you'd like. Maybe it's too painful to say out loud because you've just remembered every team building event you've ever attended in your professional life. Did you have to make something out cardboard or maybe produce? How about making it through a ropes or obstacle course with co-workers you don't quite trust? I know, you had to go on a boat in the middle of a river for an entire day and there was no alcohol. Or snacks. I know how you feel; I've experienced my share of painful team buildings myself over the years. I always challenge myself to think of two things during team building activities:

1. The intention is positive. My boss is not doing this to torture us.
2. I will get something out of the experience. Now that thing might be something small like I didn't tell a co-worker they were lazy when not helping with the task at hand but that's still something.

Back in October, I moved into a new role at work. I've been with this company for almost nine years (which is a long time these days) and have had a variety of jobs and roles over that time. For the last three years, I've been managing learning and development programs for a specific division of the company. My focus was very product and client/industry driven with some soft skills training and other development opportunities thrown in when I had time. I admit that was coming to a point where burnout was inevitable and I was becoming more dissatisfied with my work. While I love the product I was helping support, I didn't love the mechanical feeling of my job. It felt rote, like reciting a multiplication table. I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere with anyone despite evidence that proved otherwise. I know those feelings are related to my personality; I want everyone to be happy and get what they need. That is almost impossible when your job is to train people. In general, people are very passive when it comes to learning. I've experienced the attitude from many people that training is done to people and that makes it challenging.

My new role is still in learning and development but now I'm less product training focused (in theory) and more focused on actual learning and development. I'm working on creating learning programs that I believe will help foster a culture of learning at my company...once they get rolled out to the workforce. I work with some wonderful people and like Corky in Waiting for Guffman, I have a vision. I feel more energized about work these days despite some of the frustrations and the slow movement I've been experiencing on some fronts. Our small team has accomplished a lot since October and I'm proud of that.

Which brings me back to team building. This week I participated in a full team offsite meeting complete with brainstorming, discussions of synergy, and you guessed it, team building! My actual team is rather small but we belong to a larger team in the grander picture of our organization and this is the group that I would be team building with. I don't know all of them well; we're spread out across two offices. Despite being part of the same group within the organization, not all of jobs intersect all that frequently. Getting to know what people actually do at work was very exciting. 

What I was most looking forward to was the team building activity. I knew what was going to happen because I was involved in the conversations around planning it. We were going on a scavenger hunt at Jungle Jim's. What could be more fun than a team building scavenger hunt at the most unique grocery store I've ever been to?

Our base camp before the scavenger hunt; sort of Medieval Times-y.

Hands down, this was one of the best team building activities I've ever participated in. It was fun, a little silly, and totally random. We got to walk around the entire store multiple times and find weird and wonderful things all around Jungle Jim's. I was part of Team Giraffe and spent the hunt with two co-workers I don't know very well strategizing on where to find Cornicabras (they're olives) and where we might locate penguins in the store (by the frozen food obviously). My sub-team (we broke up into smaller groups to cover the most ground) relied on me to navigate around Jungle Jim's because I had been there before (so I had purpose). I did surprisingly well for only having visited once and being incredibly directionally challenged. We finished in time and my team won the scavenger hunt (no prize just bragging rights). We ended day one with wine and beer tastings, a great dinner, and cake. It was fun, different, and included snacks. In my opinion, that is a perfect combination. It didn't feel forced like so many team buildings I've experienced in the past. To me, that forced bonding is the reason why so many of those events fail or at least are viewed negatively. Forcing people to bond isn't really bonding.

Jungle Jim's has an event center. You can get married there.

I recently wrote a blog post about workplace friendships and have a personal interest in relationships in the workplace. Most of us spend a lot of time at our jobs which means we spend a lot of our time with the people with whom we work. I don't believe that you have to like everyone (that sounds exhausting) but it's important to find connections with people when you can. As I wrote in my original post, these types of relationships help with productivity, connectedness, and ultimately create an environment where people feel pride in their work. Personally, I don't want to work at a place where I feel like no one cares about what we do or the people around them. That sounds horrifying and stressful. I want my work to have meaning and the relationships I have at work help drive that meaning. Taking time to build on those relationships in a fun way helps people bond while not forcing them to do so. It creates shared memories which help move relationships along.

As we moved into day two, we had already started down a path of thinking differently about the ways in which we interact individually, by teams, and across our department. I was responsible for some of the content during the second day. This made me both excited and a little tense as it would be my first presentation to my brand new team. It went well and several people have mentioned how it gave them something to think about related to how they do their jobs. I am not naive enough to believe that everyone enjoyed the event and the meetings as much as I did, but I do know that there were people who participated as active learners and came with an open mind and got something out of the event. Like Emmet tells President Business, people can be inspired by each other to do exciting and new things or to think differently about what we do now. Inspiration and possibility - wonderful ideas to move us forward.

Everything isn't always awesome but when you're part of team and know that others are there to help you it certainly makes everything feel awesome. (And now that song is in your head - my work here is done.)

Not my team but we could all use more Legos in our lives.

Coming soon to the Island: I'm doing everything wrong when it comes to summer and fun, we'll take a trip back to Dinosaur Land, and I discuss summer movies. 

Dioramas from my parents' basement

My parents have lived in their current house for twelve years. This is the longest either of them have lived in a house since they got married. We moved a lot when my dad was in the Army; there is no childhood bedroom awaiting my visits. Twelve years is a long time to live in one place and 43 years is a long time to be married. A person can amass a lot of stuff in that span of time. Two people can amass even more. And four people? It's scary to consider and then to witness the sheer amount of stuff that four people have. From the graveyard of televisions and old computer equipment to the wall of Christmas, our basement is the kind of place where time ceases to exist and you become overwhelmed by memories of the same wood salad bowl at dinner every night and a time when owning a set of encyclopedias was a big deal. If you wanted to remember what entertainment looked like in the 1980s or 1990s (or even the late 1970s), we've got you covered. I have ventured into my parents' basement and it is a box filled place of mystery and memory.

The basement has been a topic of discussion for years. We talk about cleaning out the basement like some families plan vacations. I'm sure that if it was a logical and safe option, one of my parents would take a torch to the basement and be done with it (I'll let you guess which one). Of course, this is neither logical nor safe so we're back to figuring out how to tackle the basement. Earlier this week my mom emailed me about my weekend plans and suggested that we spend some time working on the basement. I got unnecessarily excited about this and was all ready to start organizing and discarding years worth of I don't even know what. I was grossly under-prepared for the task at hand. This type of organization demands a plan and all I came with was a plucky can-do attitude. My attitude was no match for the sheer force of the basement.

I got distracted by all of things.

Do you remember the Care Bear Cousins? The Care Bear Cousins were introduced as the other animals (and a penguin) that were friends to the Care Bears. They appeared in the original Care Bear movie and the 1980s cartoon series (and I believe they've been brought back in more recent cartoons). I forgot all about the Care Bear Cousins until I stumbled upon Cozy Heart Penguin just hanging out over by some bed linens and old pillows. Not to be outdone, my yellow and white blanket (crocheted by my grandma) was just lying there waiting for me to wrap myself in it like I used to when I was younger. I may have wrapped it around my shoulders like a cape (no photo, no proof). Did I mention the hat my dad brought me from Puerto Rico? All of this occurred in the first five minutes of exploration. If I continued at this rate of discovery, I would probably have to spend every day in the basement from now until the end of the summer just to make a small dent.

And I hadn't even made it to a galaxy far, far away.

To say that my brother likes Star Wars would be understatement. He has toys, comic books, books, games, clothing, and multiple copies of the movies. He's also a really big John Williams fan. He was young enough when the original films came out that he has many toys from when they were first released. He also has a box full of the re-released figures from the mid-1990s (none of these are open). You can tell my brother really loved his Star Wars toys; they're worn down by love and adventures. One box included the Millennium Falcon, an Ewok village playset, the Cantina (this is the saddest looking of all the toys), and a land speeder. This was just what I could see without moving too much. It was like being back in our paneled basement in Wisconsin. I had Barbie and She-Ra; he had Star Wars and He-Man. We played in equal yet divided universes. One day we'd discover Legos and occasionally join forces. Such is childhood.

My experience proved two things to me:

1. This basement project needs a project manager.
2. I am way more sentimental and sappy than I thought I was.

I can address the first point. After discovering my Woodstock tackle box wedged between two ancient lawn chairs, I announced to my parents that we would need a plan to tame the basement. Everyone will have a role to play and responsibilities in this project plan. Now that I know that a can-do attitude will be broken by memories in the first five minutes, I can figure out how to best attack each section of the basement. We'll have to rent a truck to haul the electronics and other larger items to the dump. We'll have to make hard choices about furniture that we've had since forever. That wooden salad bowl has got to go. My brother will have to make some decisions about the Rebel Alliance and the Empire (and the box of comics I didn't even bother to open). There will be spreadsheets and calendar events and a need to invest in better allergy medication. If my family thinks I'm bossy now, they will know the full range of my bossiness by the end of this project. But they will have a clean and organized basement to enjoy. The two balance each other out if you ask me.

I don't think that I can really prepare for the second point. No matter how organized or prepared I am, memories are memories and they come with emotions and stuff and things (that is a technical term). No amount of spreadsheets and calendars and task assignments can erase sentimentality. I will balance my organizing with cleaning my Woodstock tackle box (it's going to make a storage container - probably for some of my sewing stuff) and wrapping myself in my yellow and white blanket. That should help in the short term.

Somewhere in the basement is a box of Cabbage Patch Kids wearing my baby clothes. I will be ready for them.

 

We are going to be friends

When I started this blog way back in 2011 (wow) I was in the process of adjusting to my move to California and the weird stage of adult life where making friends is challenging. The move was for my job and I knew no one in the area but jumped at the chance to try something new. It's hard to move somewhere and not have a support network. It took a long time for me to make friends, even at work, and I typically excel at making friends at work. When my beloved Ford Escape died, I had to deal with it on my own. When I got locked into my bathroom, I was afraid no one would come looking for me. I've always been very independent and have no problem doing things on my own but sometimes you just need people because being around other people is just funner (debate whether funner is a word on your own time).

I believe it looked something like this.

Adult friendships are difficult. When you're young you have no fear (or maybe just less fear) so friendship comes a bit easier. The structures of youth like school, clubs, and mom arranged play dates made friends easier to come by. Little things were much more important; I remember becoming friends with a girl in second grade just because we had the same Pound Puppies lunchbox. My family moved a lot when I was younger so making friends was something I got very good at because I did it so frequently.

In her book MWF Seeking BFF, Rachel Bertsche chronicles her yearlong quest to find a new best friend after moving to Chicago to be with her husband. She goes on 52 friend-dates and calls her year "the year of friending." I read the book not too long after moving to California and immediately started taking notes in the margins and plotting how I would make more of an effort to make friends. I had a plan and I began exploring Meet-Up groups and plotting to join book clubs despite horrible book selections.

Then something happened without me even trying: I made a friend at work.

I've always been the type of person who enjoyed getting to know my co-workers. People spend more time at work than they do at home these days so it makes sense that friendships would occur. This is in direct contrast to the traditional world of work where work and personal lives remained separate. I don't believe you have to like everyone you work with nor do you have to best friends with the people you do like but work is much more enjoyable when you have people to go to lunch with, commiserate with when you've had a bad day, and celebrate with whether it's something major or you know, Tuesday.

In the DC office and at my previous job, I made friends very quickly and it was mostly because of the same strategy that worked when I was younger: commonalities. Finding things in common with my co-workers was the way to go. Whether it was Project Runway, liking ranch dressing on french fries, or bowling, finding these small things helped my work friends and I move to actually being friends. It wasn't until one of my California co-workers (who shares my first name) and I started discussing baking that we started hanging out. She introduced me to some of her friends and I started to feel like I belonged. By the time I moved back to the East Coast I felt better about my friendships and not as alone way out west.

I've spent most of this week thinking and writing about workplace friendships. I volunteered to write a blog post for our wellness month at work and decided to focus on the benefits of workplace friendships. There's a lot of research now that suggests workplace friendships are good for employees and organizations. I'm sort of obsessed with this infographic right now. In an informal Facebook poll, I discovered most of my friends feel like they have a best or close friend and work. More importantly, most felt their employers supported friendships. What's most interesting to me is much of the research points to three elements that need to be present in order for workplace friendship to take hold: physical proximity, familiarity, and similarity. So really workplace friendships aren't all that different from making friends on the playground. We're a little bit more sophisticated (maybe) but we need the same things we did in the second grade.

As I sat with two friends from work (one I've knows for awhile now and enjoy hanging out with and one that is new; this was our first non-work social event) watching Pitch Perfect 2, I realized I've come a long way in the years since I started this blog. My friends, workplace and otherwise, have been a big part of that. I could wait until Friendship Day to say thank you but August seems so far away.


So enjoy one of my favorite White Stripes songs instead.

Mary Kay Minions

I've only been in three weddings: I was the flower girl in my aunt's wedding and a bridesmaid and maid of honor in the weddings of my college roommates. I admit that I lucked out in the bride/bridesmaid department; neither Heather nor Kelly were out of control brides and given that none of us lived in the same state at the time of either wedding, there weren't all the events and fittings and everything else that goes into weddings. I still have the skirt I wore in Heather's wedding and would have the one I wore in Kelly's but I donated it last year because it was too big. I love both of my friends dearly but the fact that neither became a wedding monster makes me adore them too. My only responsibilities in my aunt's wedding were to walk down the aisle and look adorable. I'm fairly certain I accomplished both.

My point in all of this is that I've basically been a fake bridesmaid my entire life. I've never really had to suffer for a bride and the glory of posing in wedding photos. I've never had to wear sea foam green dress that made me resemble a mermaid. I've never helped a bride go to the bathroom in her dress or played interference with a mother-in-law or annoying cousin. I can only hope that if I get married I will offer my bridesmaids the same courtesy and thoughtfulness.

Since I'm already a fake bridesmaid, it made sense for me to join two of my friends on a little adventure today that involved Mary Kay, Legos, a lot of pink, the perfect technique for taking a selfie, and the kind of enthusiasm that only a true performer can create. Let me set the stage for you:

The Cast
Lindsey - Bride to be, new to the area and one of the nicest people I know. Her wedding is in June and she won a Bridal Bash day of pampering for her and her bridesmaids from Mary Kay. Since her bridesmaids live elsewhere, she asked Jordana and I to fill in. Lindsey deserves a day of pampering and to have an amazing wedding.

Jordana - Regular Island readers will remember Jordana from our adventure at Jungle Jim's earlier this year. She is one of the funniest people I know and inspires everyone to follow the "Yes, And..." mentality of improv. Her enthusiasm knows no bounds.

Several Mary Kay consultants and other Bridal Bash attendees - None of these ladies will be named since I don't have permission to use their personal information. The age range for the attendees was about 8 to mid-50s. The consultants were all in their mid-40s and incredibly perky.

And of course, me.

The Scene
A Mary Kay studio somewhere in Crofton, MD. Since I'm not up on the world of Mary Kay I had no idea places like this exist. You know that part in Steel Magnolias where M'Lynn describes the church as looking like it's been hosed down in Pepto? That's what this place looked like except with pictures of Mary Kay (the founder) and incentives for Mary Kay consultants (pink Cadillacs and jewelry primarily).

Before I go any further I want to say one thing: None of the following is in any way about disrespecting female entrepreneurs. The founder of Mary Kay, Mary Kay Ash, founded the company because she was passed over for a promotion for a male co-worker she trained. You have to respect that and any woman who gets out there to support herself or her family whether it be through Mary Kay, Avon, Tupperware, jewelry, cooking items, or whatever else. 

Moving on.

None of us knew what we were walking into. We didn't know if this was the lady's basement or if we would be the only ones (thank goodness we were not). We toyed with the idea of creating an elaborate back story just in case it was just us and we had to provide details about our friendship and our role as "bridesmaids." No back story was needed since we were at our own table and didn't have that much time with the consultants where a back story was necessary.

The agenda for the Bridal Bash was to experience the anti-aging skincare line and to add a little easy glamour into our lives. I love skincare products (this is why I subscribe to Birchbox) but I'm not much of a makeup person and neither are Jordana and Lindsey. I wear a little pressed powder, Rose Salve lip balm, and a little lip gloss if I'm feeling adventurous. Eye makeup has always been problematic for me as I don't see well without my glasses. I have come very close to jabbing myself in the eye with an eyeliner pencil. Thankfully, we stuck to easy eye makeup today and there were no injuries.

Our bride was given a proper bride greeting with a sash and a little tiara. Our stations were set up with the skincare regime in order and there was even a little exfoliating hand treatment to get us started. It smelled like a Bellini, all peachy and sweet. It might have made us all want a drink badly. We all received door prize tickets (because it wouldn't be a room full of women doing something very feminine without door prizes). There was a lot of Taylor Swift (I admit she's growing on me) and a lot of woohoo-ing and enthusiasm (mostly genuine, some a little over the top from our table). The most disturbing part of this portion of the afternoon was when the Mary Kay consultant doing the skincare demo called the primer "Spanx for your face." Not an image I need. Ever.

The makeup portion of the program went better than expected. We all finally learned what a CC cream is (a color correcting cream - who knew?) and how to properly apply bronzer (start in the center of your cheek and then go to your temple and then all the way down your chin; like a 3 or an E on either side of your face). I can apply mascara without injuring myself. Lindsey and Jordana found excellent shades of lip gloss and we all learned to take a compliment. This was an interesting exercise; after our makeover was complete the lead consultant asked us each to turn to the woman on our right and pay them a compliment and we each had to simply say "thank you." Her lead-in was that women have a hard time taking compliments; I wholly agree and I'm glad she asked us to do this.

The lead lady also taught us probably the only thing we ever need to know: how to take the perfect selfie. The technique: hold your camera high at an angle but specifically at 10 o'clock and 4 o'clock. Lindsey has perfected this technique; I'm sure she'd be happy to give lessons. We ended our Bridal Bash with the sales pitch (of course). None of us are sure if it was a sales pitch for the products or to become a consultant. No purchases were made but we did leave with some of the Bellini scented lotion and some photos from a slightly over-hyped photo booth (which was really just an area to take a photo with silly props).

The weird office park where the studio was located also included an odd little store just across the parking lot that specialized in Legos. Jordana described it as an oasis in an office park. We spent a lot of time digging through mini-figures and acting like little kids seeing all of our Lego dreams come true. Jordana and I got Lindsey some figures to decorate her cube (like we have). If you think about it, Legos and makeovers are really just two different types of play.

More importantly, our bride felt exactly as she should; pampered and special. We had fun being her fake bridesmaids and enjoying an afternoon doing something out of the ordinary for us. While none of us have been using eye cream since we were 18 (apparently we should have been), we all left a little more glamourous on the outside to match our inner awesomeness.

This painting was in the bathroom - it's of Mary Kay Ash. In my humble opinion this needs to be moved out to where everyone can bask in her glamour and awesomeness. We probably all need to have this sort of portrait painted at some point in our lives.

 

Lindsey executives the perfect selfie.

Can you tell it's a pink Cadillac?