Remember what “trust-building” in corporate culture used to look like? Two-day retreats where team members in event-themed shirts were “encouraged” to walk on hot coals and fall backward into a crowd of co-workers. Now, as someone who is a certified fire-walker (as is the lovely Christy), I can attest to how these exercises do bring participants out of their comfort zone and into a circle of trust. However, at these big corporate retreats, the risk/trust onus was always on the team members. Other than a potentially large bar tab (or medical bills), the company itself took no risk. And worse, the remaining 363 days of the year were business as usual.
Though I’ve never been part of corporate America, I imagine that those practices still go on somewhere. Thankfully, however, our collective mindset has evolved to now understand that trust-building isn't an occasional spectacle, it's a daily, positive and intentional effort that should be woven into the fabric of our workplaces.
