Team Building for the Self-Employed

I bet I’m wondering why I’ve called this meeting today. As CEO of this business, it is my responsibility to ensure that all of our employees are working efficiently in their day-to-day operations and finding their roles fulfilling. It has come to my attention, as I review the figures from our last profit-and-loss statement (which seems to be written on the back of a Wendy’s receipt? Come on, me in Accounting, can’t we at least try to make these things look professional?), that perhaps morale is a little low around here, which might be impacting the bottom line.

While I hate to pick on any one individual, I’ve noticed some patterns of behavior in a number of key areas. Our manager of operations (me) is not doing a great job motivating her direct reports (also me). To be frank, I am a pushover, and I allow myself to get away with a lot that might not fly at other, more professional organizations. For instance, while I’m impressed with my progress in Candy Crush Saga, when I took me on as administrative assistant, I was expecting some actual administrative work to get done, but I’m clearly not taking this role very seriously. I’m still waiting for me to get around to drafting those emails I promised to send out two weeks ago.

Not that I can blame me, of course, when not even our PR person (also me) seems to have much confidence in our brand. And don’t even get me started on the hospitality staff—do I not know how to make a proper pot of coffee? Not that that would be an easy task for anyone considering what a disaster this “break room” has become. Do we even have janitorial staff?

But I didn’t gather me here today to point blame at any one person or other (not that there are any others), but rather to build us up as a team. They say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link—and this is especially true of single-link chains. So we’re going to do some team building!

We’ll get to know ourselves a little better by playing that “two truths and a lie” game, where each participant (me) divulges two little known facts about herself and makes another one up, and then the others (me) try to guess which is the lie. We’ll also use this poster board and these markers to make a fun board game detailing our processes and the obstacles we frequently face in our daily work. Then we’ll play a few rounds to see if we can’t pinpoint some potential areas for improvement! I’ve also got some great collaborative activities that involve paper airplanes and thinking outside the box!

Oh, and of course, I should feel welcome to help myself to the several boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts I brought to kick off this fun-filled day of bonding and camaraderie.

Now, who’s going to volunteer to go first for the trust fall?