The “Other” Team

I work for a boutique research and consulting firm located in NYC with an offshore analystical team of 150 MBAs, PhDs, CPAs, and so on located in Gurgaon, India.   So when my managing director tells me that he’s arranged for a three-day team building workshop next week, it begs the question: Team building for whom – us or them? 

I can’t seem to hide my feelings on team building.  I think many team issues have to do with leadership and managerial skills, so I’m annoyed by team building exercises that are about personality types and tolerance and blah blah blah.  But it seems everyone else has to go through this stuff at some point so why should we be different?  I am a team player so I will cooperate and participate in next week’s exercises.  But I wonder how far we’ll get into the exercises before the team consultants we’ve hired bring up the fact that we’ve got two teams to consider in our equation.  I wonder what suggestions they’ll make or exercises they’ll have for my team building with the guys in India because the truth is that’s the team I’m more interested in.  And that’s where the opportunity is for some real building.