“Should we put an end to ‘team building’?”
“Should we put an end to ‘team building’?”
Last November, I came across an article in Le Temps entitled “Should we put an end to ‘team building’?”
So... do we really need to put an end to these cohesion-building, performance-enhancing team-building seminars, which “bring several levels of staff together and provide a break from the daily grind”?
(All the quotes come from this article)
With my ART CLASSE by Stéphane Ducret project, I've been offering team-building sessions and seminars based on painting and contemporary art since 2016.
If my clients, to name some of the most prestigious, Bucherer, Ecole CREA, Henri Harsch HH SA, JTI, JUUL, Lotus Partners, m3 | groupe Abdallah Chatila, Audemars Piguet, Banque Pictet, Groupe Richemont, Unicef, call on my services, I imagine the answer is probably: let's continue with team building seminars!
In fact, as the article also points out, there are several levels of activity and several goals.
Let's take the goals: to welcome new employees, the approach makes perfect sense! And more importantly, I might add, it can probably be devoted to just about any group activity (from cooking classes to escape games, for example). But in the more complex case, where the aim is to solve real problems of understanding between employees, or team cohesion, it's best to choose your activities with discernment. I'll come back to the question of necessity later.
To begin with, the level of the proposed activity is fundamental, and even if you're not afraid of heights, taking a hot-air balloon ride “to get some height” will make some people smile at the naivety of the statement. Personally, I believe that if a company chooses its activity well, studies its characteristics in depth and goes beyond simple “fun” among the goals it seeks to achieve, it can hope to obtain real cohesion results. Before I give you some examples of how ART CLASSE has helped to find real solutions, I'd like to go back over the reasons that led me to create ART CLASSE by Stéphane Ducret in the first place :
First of all, I created ART CLASSE on a completely personal basis: in 2016, I had an artistic “burn out” after a career spanning more than 20 years as an artist and a somewhat harsh assessment of myself, that of having failed to be a good artist. It's true, I'm one of those people who strive every day to be better at what they do, and therefore have a particularly developed sense of self-criticism: I could have been a little more gentle with myself, especially since I've since rediscovered a genuine inspiration for my art and, what's more, thanks to my painting courses, which were nevertheless intended for others, I've improved and diversified my own technique.
So, during a lucid morning, a few days after I'd been to see a guidance counsellor at the Office cantonal de l'emploi in Geneva who, after listening to my story, told me there was nothing he could do for me (!!!), I went back over some of the things I'd told him, analyzed myself and came to the conclusion that :
I had a very great knowledge of art and its history, acquired on the benches of HEAD (then called ESAV) and continually developed through many years of activity as an artist and passionate visits to hundreds of exhibitions in museums, art centers, galleries and art fairs.
I loved sharing this knowledge with my friends and had already had the opportunity to do so twice professionally, by teaching visual arts at the Collège de Coppet and by holding a number of positions at l'écal, where I also directed the propaedeutic year and managed the art gallery, l’elac.
And finally, although I was critical of my work as an artist, I was nevertheless aware that I had a thorough knowledge of painting techniques and could in turn teach others to benefit from it.
... so I said to myself: let's set up a painting workshop. But not just any workshop!
You know me by now: with my high standards, I wanted my audience not only to learn how to paint, but also to improve their theoretical and historical knowledge of art, and especially of the art being made today: contemporary art!
What's more, I noticed a gap in Geneva: most painting courses were given by amateurs, with almost no knowledge of contemporary art and limited knowledge of past periods.
There were already a dozen or so workshops offering such classes in Geneva, but I noticed that none of them offered teaching at a level that could satisfy me, i.e., focused on two pedagogical points that I nevertheless consider fundamental: an in-depth knowledge of contemporary and post-modern art history, and learning the techniques and ways of painting of today (and therefore, obviously, not yesterday)... Turner, Matisse and Picasso were certainly great artists, but the paradigms have long since changed, since the periods of Romanticism (late 18th to mid-19th century) and Modernism (mid-19th century to 2nd World War), and I noticed, while analyzing their respective websites, that these classes didn't take this into account.
In fact, the painting courses we observed focused solely on teaching techniques, with no consideration for the artists' conceptual side. It's as if these teachers thought that simply wanting to paint a tree was enough to make it a work of art. This overlooks the fact that, for an artist to be interesting, he or she must tell a story, ask questions, set up a system, etc. (I'll refrain from saying more here: this could be part of a whole curriculum that Frédéric Elkaim conveys so well with his art-now.ch program).
Let me give you an example: nowadays, almost all of us carry a camera with us at all times, in our smartphone, and we never fail to use it. But that doesn't make us professional photographers, artists who develop an approach, or photographers who have mastered a sharp eye. For art, it's the same: technique is no guarantee of good art, and the absence of technique doesn't prevent good art, as long as the reflection is interesting!
So, who are the Picassos of today? Nina Chanel Abney, Rita Ackermann, Katherine Bernhardt, Mark Grotjahn, Sterling Ruby, Christopher Wool, Gerhard Richter, Rudolf Stingel, George Condo, Banksy or Sam Falls, to name just a few of the most famous contemporary artists... do you know them? In fact, they're the ones I talk about in my Ateliers REAL/FAKE. Ateliers…? Yes, “real” and “fake”. Because they're based on real, authentic artists, most of them living, and where my courses, with a balance between theory and practice, enable participants to learn to master various painting techniques while painting their “real fake” painting in the manner of these artists.
Which is why the name sounded perfect to me.
And for those of you who think that using the work of existing or former artists doesn't allow you to create something new, you're wrong. In my classes, I talk about this, and in another past blog post, “ARTISTS INSPIRING OTHER ARTISTS” (click here), I gave a few examples.
Team building, those cohesive seminars
Naturally, my team-building sessions are based on these REAL/FAKE Workshops for painting like recognized contemporary and post-modern artists, and they achieve 5 objectives in a single session (2 ½ - 3 hours):
Objective 1: Intellectual satisfaction: Participants improve their notions of art, and therefore of what makes an artist's “practice, or approach” interesting, even fundamental to contemporary history (thanks to my prior, in-depth presentation of the artists who will be the subjects of the workshop, linking photos, videos, sound and anecdotes).
Objective 2: The satisfaction of discovering one's own talents: Participants not only discover contemporary techniques and ways of painting, but above all, discover the ability to really paint (thanks to my step-by-step teaching method).
Objective 3: Team cohesion, promoting proactive work within the company: In the context of team building, the development, or improvement over time, of collaboration between employees, regardless of value or professional structure.
Objective 4: Personal incorporation of the company's values: A stronger sense of working for and with a company that shows its attachment to its employees, and that has consideration for the value of their work and their respective personalities.
Objective 5: Fun! Yes, these sessions are fun, and everyone enjoys them. Better still, the positive memories of these sessions will stay with you for a long time to come, as some of you will take home the “goodies” from them. tableaux réalisés chez eux, ou ils les verront accrochés dans leurs bureaux.
So, should we really put an end to team building?
The psychologists and professors quoted in the Le Temps article, who devoted a qualitative study to the subject in France, say more or less the same thing: “Playful moments (...) But you mustn't tie other objectives to them, or make them an end in themselves.”
I can't help but disagree, at least on a personal level. Because in the context of my activities, I've noticed that other objectives, not just playful ones, but team-building ones, and much more besides, are also met.
Indeed, my experiences and the feedback I get from employees and employers are more than positive, and often go beyond this.
I think we need to start by sorting out the team-building activities that are sometimes even offered by companies specializing in the field (the article quotes one such company), because not all of these activities are suited to the goal of team-building, even if they all certainly provide at least a moment of fun.
Indeed, in my humble opinion, some of them make sense when we're talking about collaboration linked to learning, but others, if they're just about collaboration, contain a gap. What's more, some of the activities sometimes favor a single gender (masculine, feminine...) and are therefore not inclusive enough. In the context of my ART CLASS, there is sometimes a tendency to think that women are favored over men. Let's check it out with an example...
In a very large session for a major watch brand and for over 70 participants, I saw men start the session by telling me they wouldn't be able to paint and, after two hours of activity, with smiles on their faces, they all insisted on taking their work home with them!
Despite this particular example, men and women alike are generally enthusiastic about the adventure right from the start, and are equally happy to take part!
Let's get back to the value of team-building activities: in the majority of cases, companies go looking for distraction, in reality. With ART CLASSE, the distraction has a huge plus: it's “intelligent” because it's combined with the acquisition of knowledge.
I could also cite several examples where companies have used ART CLASSE to achieve goals other than just fun. Here are just a few:
At the end of a confinement period, a small international company was having trouble getting its employees to return to the offices: our proposal not only brought the 50 or so employees together around a cohesive activity, but also resulted in works of art for them to hang in their offices and admire daily, with the satisfaction of having created them themselves.
The new leader of a team, assisted by the HR of a large Geneva bank, called on me to set up a team-building workshop, as this small structure was devoid of any when he was appointed: it was therefore necessary to find a way of reviving a team and corporate spirit. The manager and HR lady were personally involved in the preparation of the event: the former prepared grilled meats to be cooked on site, while the latter cooked and selected some excellent wines, as she had a diploma in oenology, which she was able to use to select the vintages. The workshop took place in an extraordinary atmosphere and was followed by a wonderful evening around the fire. Several months later, I was told that cohesion had been restored within the team, and that it was lasting.
In a very large commercial company, the Team Building workshop for 30 or so participants was aimed at developing the marketing of their products to partners all over the world.
And I could go on giving examples of successful operations...
In conclusion
Here are just some of the reasons to organize a team building activity with ART CLASSE:
Welcoming a new member of staff to a team enables him or her to bond more quickly with the “old hands”.
The need to create cohesion within a team.
Brainstorming on the company's development potential.
And, of course, fun.