1. Scan through the text below and find out why it has got such a title. Team-building for charity brings tears to my eyes

In the beginning there was Band Aid. Then there was Sport Aid, Farm Aid and Net Aid. And now, 20 years after Sir Bob Geldof and a bunch of big-haired pop stars urged us to "Feed the World", there is a music album released by Manager Aid.

The managers in question hail from John Lewis, the privately run retailer. The worthwhile cause in question is Whizz Kidz, a charity dedicated to helping "non-mobile children". And the record in question is entitled New Shop On the Block.

It makes for harrowing listening. Not because two of the 10 tracks are about disabled children. But because eight of them - from the desperately chirpyChelsea, to the mess of faux Caribbean music that is Smile - are atrocious corporate anthems.

What on earth, you may wonder, possessed 58 British managers to record, perform and release such an album? Answer: they were given the task of composing, arranging, producing and

recording the LP as part of a team-building exercise, the aim of which was to bond them in a "powerful collective experience".

I received my copy of New Shop On the Block while strolling around the World of Learning gathering at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, "the UK's key conference and exhibition for business learning". As he gave me the CD, the man from the training company that organised this "Face the Music" exercise for John Lewis remarked that the task had "created one of the most highly bonded teams" he had ever come across.

It was, he said, a brilliant way for them to commemorate the Pounds 100m revamp of their Peter Jones department store on London's Sloane Square. It was also "very deep" in terms of the changes it made in them. "The MD involved in the project was crying by the end," he explained.

A couple of hours later, when I played the CD for the first time, I understood exactly what he meant. The record made me want to weep too. And it wasn't just the awfulness of the music that upset me. It was also the fact that "Face the Music" marked a worrying trend in team-building exercises. Before I explain, some context.

Once upon a time, team-building exercises didn't exist. People just came to work and bonded by "working and getting along with each other". Sometimes they would "go for a drink after work", "play football on Saturday" or "go for dinner at the weekend". But, generally speaking, team-building was a casual, natural, informal thing.

Then, in the 1980s, the business world decided that the only way of establishing a rapport between colleagues was by getting them to do group activities together - preferably on weekends, preferably outdoors and preferably in the rain. Sometimes referred to as "experiential learning", the idea was that workers would become immersed in an activity, learn new skills together and become closer-knit as a result.

A search through the cuttings shows that, over time, businesses have asked employees to participate in every group activity under the sun in the name of team-building: paintballing, mountain climbing, Porsche racing, sailing, kendo, horse whispering, clowning, treasure hunting, potholing, go-karting, cookery, international folk dancing, chicken herding, belly dancing, totem pole carving, wine blending - and, my own favourite, motorised toilet-bowl racing.

Judging from what I saw at the NEC, such exercises are as popular as ever: exhibitors were offering team-building courses in everything from yachting to truffle-hunting. When I saw a sign for the "Adult Learning Inspectorate", I thought, for a brief but horrible moment, that even the porn industry was getting in on the act. (Incredibly, I have since discovered that this has actually happened: Hustler TV, a digital channel, is encouraging companies to make porn films as a team-building exercise.)

While such exercises are generally useless, as most take place behind closed doors or in the middle of nowhere, they are also mostly harmless (although a few do go disastrously wrong: who can forget the story of staff at Eagle Star life insurance who were sufficiently motivated by a day-long fire-walking course that they agreed to walk barefoot over hot coals and ended up in hospital as a result?).

However, exercises such as "Face the Music" and "Curtain Up!" - another team-building exercise offered by the same training company, in which colleagues perform in front of a live crowd -represent something new and ominous. Unlike paintballing and motorised toilet bowl racing, these "multi-sensory experiences", as they are described, require an audience.

And if there is one thing more excruciating than being involved in a team-building exercise, it is watching or enduring someone else's team-building exercise. I speak from experience, having listened to New Shop On the Block three times.

John Lewis may defend the release of its atrocious album by saying it will raise money for a good cause. And the charity element is certainly a mitigating factor. But I suspect that the people who have heard it would give even more generously if their donations meant they would never have to listen to New Shop on the Block ever again.

Sathnam Sanghera

The Financial Times. (Feb. 11, 2005)