Company retreats and team-building exercises often get a bad rap. I actually have quite a bit of experience doing team-building exercises at retreats, and the most important thing is to create a space where people feel safe. I never do pure “trust” exercises, such as having people fall backwards or the like. I generally start with having participants do activities where they learn new things about one another, and we work our way into role-playing activities that allow us to workshop some of the more common situations that we encounter in our jobs.

It certainly never would have occurred to me to use waterboarding:

PROVO, Utah – No one really disputes that Chad Hudgens was waterboarded outside a Provo office park last May 29, right before lunch, by his boss.

There is also general agreement that Hudgens volunteered for the “team-building exercise,” that he lay on his back with his head downhill, and that co-workers knelt on either side of him, pinning the young sales rep down while their supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over his nose and mouth.

And it’s widely acknowledged that the supervisor, Joshua Christopherson, then told the assembled sales team, whose numbers had been lagging: “You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales.”

Hudgens is filing a lawsuit, which has brought to light some of the other motivational practices of his supervisor.

Hudgens alleged that if the 10-person sales team went a day without a sale, members had to work the next day standing up; Christopherson took away their chairs. The team leader also threatened to draw a mustache in permanent marker on the face of sales people for ‘negativity,'” Hudgens said. Christopherson kept on his desk a piece of wood, ‘the 2-by-4 of motivation,’ he said.

Make no mistake – this is not about motivation. It’s about power, and the abuse of it.

“We don’t know what he was thinking, but we know that he wasn’t thinking waterboarding, or torture,” Brunt said. Christopherson, suspended for two weeks while the company investigated the incident, is back on the job. The company declined to allow interviews with him or other employees.

I’m glad the guy is filing a lawsuit, but this goes way beyond workplace harrassment. There really needs to be a criminal investigation, and the people involved should be held accountable. This goes not only for the wolf who poured the water on Hudgens, but also for the sheep who were holding him down.