Team Building 101: Kickball
August 20th, 2013 by
As our team was beaming from a 10 to 0 victory over a clearly superior opponent, I began to think about how good this absurd adult kickball league was for the relationships in our office. If you are not familiar with adult kickball leagues, you might be doing your organization a disservice by not looking into it.
I joined Search Influence only about a month or two before our kickball team got started, so I thought, “I can’t pass up this chance to get to know my new coworkers.” After all, no one wants to be known as “the new guy” any longer than they have to.
In it’s inaugural season, the Pay-Per-Kickers (that’s right–we are nerds) managed about a .500 season, but the friendships that were forged had immeasurable benefits. We would all get out to the field no earlier than we had to to have a beer before the game, and the conversations slowly shifted from office talk to congenial discussions about what we were doing that weekend.
Our first couple games were shaky. I think everyone was trying to find their comfort level hanging out with their colleagues on a much more personal basis. In the meantime, we were all trying not to look like fools while playing a child’s game. When we did look like fools, it was just something to laugh about the next day at work.
After the kickball games, all of the teams go to the same bar for trivia. I’ll say this, we were much better at trivia than kickball. With a slew of 1st and 2nd place trivia finishes throughout the season, we had built up an impressive bar tab by the time we lost our last playoff game.
PLAYNOLA’s kickball league became a topic of discussion and an event to look forward to each week. I think the word got around the office how much fun we were having, because for our second season, we had 23 people sign up!
