Team Building and Learning Core Skills

When you're designing and facilitating team building activities think in terms of teaching skills that bring people together like listening, awareness of one's own behaviors, conflict resolution and problem solving. When people learn these core skills they are more likely to work well together with fewer obstacles.

Take care,

Guy
Team Building

Team Building Activity: Your Talents

Your Talents is a brief team building activity that brings people together in a meaningful way. Gather your group in a circle and ask everyone to think for a moment about what their talents are. Ask them to focus on their real talents, the things that are meaningful to them and they love doing. After people think about it, ask everyone to share what their talents are. Have each person talk about their meaningful talents while everyone else listens. No commenting or follow-up questions or comments allowed when people are talking, just listening. Have each person talk once and remind the group to keep it brief but meaningful. When everyone's had a chance to share once then ask the group the following questions:

• What did you notice about this activity?
• What was the feeling in the room?
• What needed to happen to make this activity possible?
• How can you apply this experience to team building in your workplace?

The idea in this team building activity is to demonstrate the amazing gifts that people bring to the table and help people connect by learning about each other without the noise and interruptions that commonly happen in the workplace. It also suggest ways to use people's unique talents.

Take care,

Guy
Team Building

Power and Team Building

One of the biggest elements that gets in the way of effective team building is when people have different amounts of power and don't feel comfortable around each other. For example: you're trying to do some team building activities and the CEO is present so everyone bites his or her tongue and people don't speak or interact candidly. This sort of dynamic points to a workplace where people have been taught to view power in a certain way, with fear.

In an organization that values team building, no one is more powerful than the next person and everyone shares responsibility. People aren't afraid to speak up and trust that their point of view is valuable and important to those above them. Eliminating power differentials in the workplace allows people to shine on their own without worrying about what someone higher up may do to them. It's the sharing of power in all directions which leads to teams working well together.

Take care,

Guy
Team Building

Team Building Activity: House of Cards

In this team building activity you'll help people work together effectively and think about their roles. Divide your group into teams of three to five people and give each a deck of cards. Allow them fifteen minutes to build whatever they want as long as it's something that will benefit their workplace. When they're done, ask each group to describe what they built and how it benefits the workplace. Then ask the entire group the following questions and allow people to answer as they see fit:

• What was each person's role?
• What was the comfort level of each person with his or her role?
• How did you make decisions?
• How did you assign construction duties?
• Who ran the group?
• What worked in the group? 
• What needed some fine-tuning?
• How might their group dynamic be applied in the workplace?
• How is this activity about team building?

When people process these questions they'll think about their own roles and what needs to happen to build an effective team.

Take care,

Guy
Team Building

How Well Do You Know Your Team?

A big part of team building is helping people get to know each other on a deeper level. Most workplace interactions are superficial and related to completing tasks or acquiring information but effective team building goes below the surface to what people think and feel. Try doing things in your workplace like promoting activities and interactions where people can get to know each other. Find out what people's talents, abilities, interests, concerns, dreams and thoughts are. This doesn't mean prying into people's personal lives, it's a shift in focus to help people relate to each other more meaningfully.

Take care,

Guy
Team Building

Team Building Requires Hard Work

An article I wrote on how team building requires hard work to be successful.

Questions Leaders Can Ask Themselves about Team Building

A team building article I wrote with key questions leaders can ask themselves to evaluate their team building efforts.

Team Building Activity: The Telephone

This team building activity is a variation of the game where people get together and pass along a phone message by whispering it to the next person until it comes out the other end, often quite different than the way it started. Gather your group and have them do the following:

• Have people get in a line, sitting or standing.
• Have a person at one end whisper a message (give them a message that you've written on a piece of paper) it in the next person's ear.
• Have the next person whisper what he or she heard to the next person.
• Repeat until the message gets to the end of the line.
• Have the last person say what he or she heard out loud.
• Have the first person indicate how close to the original message the final message is.

Next, have the group repeat the activity but, this time, ask them to do it with total accuracy. In other words, the message needs to be exactly the same at the end of the line as the beginning. Give the group a couple of minutes to discuss with each other how they're going to do it and then repeat the activity. When they're done, ask the following questions.

• What needed to happen to ensure the message was accurate at the end of the line?
• What was each person's role?
• What worked?
• What might have been improved?
• How is this activity about team building?
• How can what they did in this activity be applied in the workplace?

The idea in this team building activity is for people to participate in a group where the members are all working toward a common goal. It demonstrates how people can get things done collaboratively by practicing positive behaviors. You can also have two groups do this activity, which gives you the opportunity to compare and contrast their approaches.

Take care,

Guy
Team Building

Your Role in Team Building

An article I wrote on how important your role is in the success of your team building efforts.

Leveling the Playing Field

A lot of workplace conflicts and challenges arise because of power differentials. An effective team building program helps you level the playing field by encouraging people to view each other as equals who all have something valuable to contribute. When people learn how to collaborate and value each other they focus less on issues around status and power.

Take care,

Guy
Team Building

Use Team Building to Create a Healthy Work Environment

A team building article I wrote on creating a healthy work environment.

The Elephant in the Team Building Room

There's often a large, seldom-mentioned elephant in the team building room: Top leadership isn't present. Employees notice when team building is only directed at them and they see the level of commitment leadership has by whether they are present in the room. When leaders are part of the team building activities, they become part of the group as well as the solution. If they're not there the employees think it's just another thing they have to do and leadership doesn't.