Sharing stories and getting to know people humanizes them. It's much easier to hate "that team in another country" you've never met than that person you've had a meal together with and learned about their hobbies.
Your workplace is a community, not a friendship circle, and not a family. Community life has always had a certain level of formality to help paper over the differences between people in the community while still fostering a positive, inclusive environment.
People in the past had stronger community institutions, and I think a part of that was that nobody expected to bring their whole self to bowling club or the neighborhood potluck.
But that doesn't mean those relationships originally started at the bowling club need to stay purely about bowling, a big part of community is to then open up when the context is right and when the other person is open to the sharing. It's how you grow your community, how you grow your circle. Don't expect every person in your bowling league wants to become your best friend ever, but it's also not healthy to assume that everyone there only ever wants to just bowl and only cares about bowling.
I've had a lot of people from work relationships that stayed purely work relationships. I've had some become friends. I've had several become important people in my life. If I forced myself to silo off work contacts are only ever work contacts, I don't think I'd be nearly as happy as I am today. I know I'd be a lot more lonely and probably a good bit less successful.
We talk about this huge loneliness epidemic and yet so many people are like "I would never talk to my fellow coworkers about anything personal, ever." Huh I wonder why we're so lonely. We're all convinced we shouldn't be personal with the people we spend a massive amount of our lives with.
I definitely talk to my coworkers about what I did this weekend, or travel, or the weather (I'm halfway around the world from my home country, so comparing the weather is a constant topic of conversation). I have a coworker I carpool with and we talk some about how I'm settling in to life here. But, I will never discuss my history of mental illness with any of these people. At best I will make a vague allusion to seasonal blues.
Not related to the thread but your comment just reminded me of that.
The latter sounds good (if you could have that with your colleagues, then it can only help, right?), but then again, the linked article is literally about someone violating that and firing the subject of the article. It is simply not possible to build emotional intimacy with every coworker, let alone under forced circumstances, so attempts to do so are more or less predictably going to lead to pain.
Yeah, but if you make a point of never shooting the shit with your coworkers how will you ever really come across this kind of info?
I do ultimately agree forcing this kind of thing isn't usually good, and it definitely sounds like this retreat went sideways due to poor management. People probably shouldn't be doing things like keg stands at a company retreat, management should have stopped things well before people were pressured into such activities. And yeah, a company-wide forced "tell everyone your darkest secrets for trust" thing, forget that you're only going to get a watered down example. Management shouldn't be putting people in that kind of position.
Goes back to my point, things need to be balanced. It's good and healthy for a workplace to help people form these kinds of friendships in small nudges, but overly forcing connections that aren't forming naturally just isn't good. And excessive drinking at company events just leads to issues, that's for sure.
Asking coworkers about their hobbies is well within the domain of small talk that serves as the exploration for what you have in common with someone else. Small talk is universally acceptable, not only in the context of communities that you're already a part of, but even as part of striking up a conversation with strangers.
Again - private grief is not small talk, and even if you have expert-level small talk skills, that doesn't mean that you will build friendship with everyone.