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Getting Introverts to Unwind at Work X-Mas Party?
pongo asks: "My department has a large population of introverts, as confirmed by Meyers-Briggs testing. Somehow I was suckered into planning a holiday party with another department that suffers similiar symptoms. Any suggestions on ways (themes, decorations, food choices, games, etc) to encourage light banter and to get people meeting each other, which would make this party a big success? The party will be during business hours and alcohol is allowed." The key here is making a comfortable atmosphere where everyone can unwind and feel comfortable with meeting each other. What ways do you know of to encourage this kind of atmosphere?
1. Acquire keg of beer popular among your group of introverts. Declare a standing keg rule: No one pulls their own draft.
2. Nothing gets people together like a common enemy. Shove a couple at each other, and see how they bond by calling you names.
3. Utter "Boba Fett is lame." See premise of #2.
4. Slyly mention that the hot secretary is studying I/COBOL.
5. Instead of name tags, label people by their choice of editor. Let the ridicule begin.
6. Variant on #5: Label by choice of OS. Hand out Nerf Bats.
7. Indian Poker: #6, applied to foreheads without them knowing what the label says. The goal is now to really get someone's ass beat. (AOS/VS is the trump play.)
8. Set up a (Game Cube|XBox|PS2) or four. Have competitions.
9. Your favorite and mine, Spin the DIMM-Module!
10. Counter-Strike Counter-Strike Counter-Strike. (Silly rabbit, Quake is for kids!)
11. Vodka shots. Declare that first puker gets a weeks bonus PTO. (Deny requests to use it in the event of hangover, however. For suffering to be truly effective, it must be enjoyed by others.)
12. CP/M Trivial Pursuit!
13. Strippers. The aggressive kind. You know, Bambi the Leather Terminator.
14. Say "Vader could kick Gandalf's ass." See #3.
15. Anime Anime Anime!
- billn
You could do what i do in The Sims. Just put them all in a small room, and remove the door. They'll get to know eachother
"I hate people, but i love Gatherings. Isn't it ironic?" -- Randall Graves, Clerks
Speaking for myself as an introvert geek, the worst possible thing at a party/kick-off is to be bunched up with a group of morons to play a stupid social game the point of which is only to make an ass of yourself. Some (management) seem to love this after taking some 2 day team-building class at a spa last winter and they're aching to try it - Avoid this at all costs!
If these are your average geeks, Developers, Techs, Support personel etc, the most common factor that everyone shares has to be war stories, stupid users|clients|bosses|coding etc, it's the enemy that geeks world wide share and team up to battle. Worst(best?) tale of the eve wins a prize (no matter if it's made up, all to spur creativity and get a few laughs).
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
People who like these kind of social interactions always try to force others to do the same. It's like it's mandatory to have fun at these things. Make a xmas party for those who like this kind of stuff and let the others go home and play videogames or whatever they like to do. People are not all the same, so respect that.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
I'm off the chart when it comes to introversion, so I might be able to help you here (and help myself become a little more extroverted).
The biggest thing to remember with introverts is that we like small intimate parties with people we know. The maximum number of people you want to strive for is about 30 (varies with the introverts). If you can, try to run many small Christmas parties as opposed to one big blow out. If you have to do the big blow out celebration, try and seat people according to their co-workers (we hate having to sit next to people who we have no connection with).
Other than that, we aren't much different. We like music, food, beer, entertainment, belly dancers, etc. I saw one suggestion in the posts that was cool, 4-player party video games.
Good Luck!
Some of the things that make the party successful:
parties, wherever they are in the country.
One caveat is that you need to be prepared to spend a lot of money. You do these things and I guarantee you that everyone will open up and let their hair down.
GOBACK.
Why is it that "extroverts" (assuming that any of these personality models have any validity, which I think is quite open to question) feel that it is their duty to force others to be like them? And that doing so will make the lives of others better?
If the "introverts" among you decided to force the "extroverts" to sit facing the wall reading Slashdot for 12 hours "for their own good", would the "extroverts" find that acceptable? If not, then why do they think it is acceptable to force others to behave the way they think best in the name of "fun" or "loosening up"?
sPh
We're introverts! Get over it. We don't *want* to be artificial extroverts. Have your party and enjoy yourselves. We'll go home and have our own lives, thank you very much.
And besides that, you are co-workers, *not* friends. I don't want to be your friend. I don't want to know about your relationship problems or your bad back or how many miles you ran over the weekend. Just back the hell up and let me do my job, okay?
The unfortunate side-effect is that you might get locked up for dealing an illegal substance...
Don't get me wrong. I will kill myself trying to help any coworker overcome a technical problem where I have expertise. I don't even have to like them, and might even loathe them because of philosophical differences (I am an NRA-supporting libertarian and defend the ideals in the American Bill of Rights and Constitution) -- but I am paid to get a job done and I do it.
But, to relax, the last thing I want to do is hang out with the guy who took off for a vacation while I cleaned up his code.
I want to hang around with people who, if they weren't coding for a living, would do it for fun anyway. Like many geeks, I eat, sleep, and dream code. For fun, I design architectures to let me stream digital audio/video from a central server in the home to various media terminal set-top boxes (silent, of course). I networked my home myself (nothing like straddling ceiling joists in the attic above the family room with the cathedral ceiling). I freak out the telco people when they see my headend ("Really, it's done, I hooked the DSL pair to the demarc last night when I got the call it was live. Don't touch that -- it's the RJ-31x that lets the alarm system seize the POTS pair: you'll set the siren off if you break the connection.").
In short, what we geeks consider fun is the very thing non-geeks want to avoid.
I suppose you could try to arrange a LAN party, if a lot of your geeks are gamers, but don't try to get geeks to mix socially with non-geeks.
You could've hired me.
A big success in whose eyes? The people you're supposedly throwing the party for, or those in upper and middle management who want to see everyone "bonding" like they do. If you company is really full of introverts, then if they're anything like me, they won't enjoy the sort of party you're trying to set up. As others have pointed out, introverts have no desire to have others force them to be artificially extrovert. Let them be, and accept that the party won't be what you'd traditionally expect it to be. That doesn't mean the participants won't be enjoying themselves. Just that their idea of fun is probably different to yours.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
This question is a classic example of why many people strongly oppose letting the general public have access to psychological tests!
Being an "introvert" or "extrovert" on Briggs-Meyers indicates something very different than you seem to think. It does not mean that an "introvert" is shy, has poor social skills, can't get laid, whatever. Nor does it mean that an "extrovert" means is a slope-headed moron who can only bond with friends and coworkers with a beer in one hand and a football game on the TV.
Instead, it refers to the way the person relates to the world. IIRC, extroverts tend to look towards outside authority - the boss says we should we name tags and introduce ourselves to three strangers, so This Is Good. Extroverts tend to be uncomfortable in totally unstructured environments, so they "plan parties," etc. Sound familiar?
Introverts tend to look towards inside authority - the boss says we're too dumb to remember our own name and lack the social skills to say hello to strangers outside of this highly artificial environment. He thinks we're a bunch of losers, gee aren't we having fun here! I'm glad he forced us to come to this damn party... on the bright side, he's probably too dumb to realize that our animated conversations are discussions of writing effective resumes to get out of this Hellhole. This Is Bad. Introverts are comfortable in unstructured environments.
If your office is mostly introverts, respect that. Make some plans for the extroverts (who are less comfortable in totally unstructured environments), but leave the introverts alone. If you try to force them to participate, you'll just breed resentment. If you just provide food, alcohol and space the party will be considered a success because they'll all do whatever they think is fun.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Serve alcohol--not so much to get people wasted, but to take the edge off.
Get one of the projectors from marketing, hook it up to a laptop with a serious 3d video card, and do the tunes with Winamp or some other player that has the ability for visual plug-ins like Geiss or something pretty that people can literally just stare at.
And get rid of the flourescent lights. Do some other lighting so people can see other people's faces, but aren't exposed to blaring light irritation.
Provide seating to. Most introverts I know are pretty non-excited about their bodies and feel awkward standing up which just causes them to be more shy than usual.
Don't run around telling people to have fun because it's a company party--that's just irritating.
What he said.
I loathe making small talk. I suspect I'd amuse myself at an animal-game party by saying "Senator?", "Marketing Guy?", "Spammer?", "The goat in goatse.cx?" or other some such quasi-geek humor until the annoying person talking to me went away.
I agree with the ones who say that if you wanna get the introverted techies talking, you gotta talk their language.
Read Slashdot for three days before the party. Pick the top five stories by number of comments. Ask the geeks about the subject matter. (Even if they don't read /., they're probably interested.)
As a non-sportswatching-geek, I'd much rather talk shop than talk about the latest reality TV series or sporting event. (My lust for tribalism is satisfied by watching matchups like Microsoft vs. Linux, or RIAA/MPAA vs. Everyone. YMMV.)
Of course, if you do this, don't expect to understand the conversation that follows. Don't try and bluff -- we'll spot that from a mile away. Just find two people interested in these things and get them in a conversation with each other, and then quietly go away. The rest of the geeks will gravitate towards that cluster and geek out amongst ourselves, leaving you alone to go do whatever sorts of things it is that extroverts like to do.
a.k.a. Junkyard Wars, a.k.a. The Ultimate Architect.
So, there were a few hundred geeks in Las Vegas last week for Windows Embedded DevCon. Thursday night was the XP Embedded launch party. The musical act was Credence Clearwater Revisited, with warm-up provided by the product manager's band. Sounds terrible, right?
Wrong. Because in one corner of the room, 10 teams of 4 geeks each were frantically collecting parts to build a device capable of transporting a full glass of beer across a flat 10 meter track. That was the most fun I've ever had at a work-related party.
Here's my recipe:
Pick your objective. It should be acheiveable, but challenging;
Give each team the absolute essentials (wheel, motors);
Put everything else (mix up Meccano, Lego, string, glue, bits of plumbing, stuff) on a big table in the middle, and keep it covered until the starting whistle blows;
Three hours seems about the right length of time. Adjust if your objective is particularly challenging;
Make sure someone is keeping the teams fed and watered;
Encourage strained interpretations of the rules (e.g. string can be used as a guidance system, but not as propulsion);
Award several prizes (fastest; best design; most colorful and so on)
--
E_NOSIG
I once worked at a small "mom-and-pop" style development house. Our office was situated in a small complex, on the second floor. The first floor of the complex was unused. For a couple of years while I was there, for Christmas we would open up that bottom floor (it was used for storage by the company), and have the party there.
Since there was no walls, etc inside, and a concrete floor - damn near anything could be done. We set up a dart board, food, etc - but the fun thing we would play was this funky little R/C car game.
At one time, these cars were made as a kit of four cars, but I would imagine enterprising geeks could build their own system. Essentially, each car was controlled by a person, goals were set up, and boundries were set, and there was a ball - the goal? Get the ball into a goal, and score a point. The cars ate batteries like popcorn, but simply buying a ton of batteries would keep everything going for a long time.
Today, I don't know if you can get cars, but you can get the cheap and cheesy retail "battlebots" sold at places like Walgreen's - these are radio controlled (or IR) that could be had fun with, too...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
DONTs
DOs
Better yet, forget the entire idea. If a company wants to wish employees a happy Christmas for example, use the money and give them an extra day off so they can spend it with people they really care about... And do it on Dec 26, not the 24th or 23rd, else we'll just spend it at the Mall. Many countries have Boxing Day, the U.S. needs it too!