Mutual Trust for Fun and Profit

Close your eyes and slowly lean backwards until you fall. If no one is there to catch you, you're attending the wrong team building exercise. There is one of two lessons to be learned here. First, be sure to confirm the correct meeting room, especially if you use Outlook as your scheduler. It is widely suspected that the Cult of Cthulhu initially spec'ed the design of this to drive their members insane. Probably the last time this product met its design goals.

Secondly, you could become a martial artist and learn how to fall correctly. It's amazing how experience in the martial arts can be applied to the business world. Here's just a few of the ways it can be applied.

But first, I want to mention a basic tenet in the style I study, train and teach in:

"Respect for yourself, your family, the school, and it's students."

If you broaden the definitions here, you can apply it to any hierarchy you choose.

Now to that list!

1. Falling - learning how to kiss the pavement without injury is an important skill useful when you receive an unexpected compliment and may lose consciousness.
2. Locks, Arm Bars and other types of immobilization - useful in various negotiation situations, either internal or external. Remember, when reversing the vice grip of an over-enthusiastic colleague out to impress you with their firm handshake, it may be excessive to reverse the grip into a lock and slam their face into the nearest wall while muttering, "Kiss plaster, Tinkerbell!" This is not recommended during Performance Reviews.
3. The ability to grab a fly out of mid-air with chopsticks - This technique is often used to impress your boss with your patience and perseverance but is not recommended because once you catch the fly you will then be expected to eat it. Offering to share will only make matters worse.
4. The ability to kick a person in the head, either with good control or full force - This is akin to owning a sports car and can be used in the same way. When the person you directly report to tells you that the work you painstakingly do is going to be outsourced to a vendor better suited to septic design you can console yourself with the thought, "I could put my foot so close to his ear he would mistake it for an ear ring." Of course, remembering the tenet above you would never do such a thing. Really, never.

There are many more possibilities and I may post as seems necessary. Suggestions are also welcome.

Serious foot note: The above is meant in the spirit of humor, satire and eye opening. I have trained for many years and believe the biggest lesson I have learned is how NOT to fight.