Help with team building!

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T Wever

11/13/20 at 3:43PM UTC

Management

Help with team building!

I've been asked to lead team building for a small 4 person department. I've looked at a good article from The Muse, but any other ideas out there?

10 Comments

Erica

11/13/20 at 4:47PM UTC

I work for a major healthcare institution in HR and one of the main team buildings we provide for our clients is a personality test called Real Colors. It is entertaining and allows your team to learn each persons communication style as well as learn some things about their own communication style that they may not be aware of. The Real Colors assessment gives you valuable insight into what is most important to them, why they may react to situations differently than others, and how you can best communicate with them. I would take a look and see if this is something that might be of interest. realcolors.org is the site.

1 Reply

T Wever

11/13/20 at 5:39PM UTC

Thank you, I"ll check it out!

Aly Brine

1.46k

a little corporate a little hippie alotta hustle

11/13/20 at 5:27PM UTC

I also used to facilitate team building sessions in big oil. We utilized an assessment DiSC and unpacked it during our session. My favorite part of the session, outside of the DiSC assessment, was doing a practice where the team was getting to know one another. I will say, it was in person, so if you're doing something virtual, you may have to get creative. The facilitator would put up a scenario such as "singing karaoke" or "giving hugs" or some work related ones too, then the team had to move around the room to a defined place that was either their Comfort Zone, Learning Zone or Panic Zone. Comfort was they were totally cool with the scenario. Panic was awwww hell naw, that's not happening. and Learning was that there maybe certain circumstances or they could learn to like the scenario. As the facilitator, I would then pick out people after they moved to their respective areas and ask them about it to help unpack it. It was a great way to get the team to better understand their team mates and what would make them freak out and what they were good with. Everyone always enjoyed this one.

Ellen

Lead with Head and Heart

11/13/20 at 5:47PM UTC

Full disclosure ... not in HR or Training, but have led and participated in a fair share of team building exercises over the year. In determining the team building exercise, a few questions ... Is there a particular goal of the team building you've been asked to lead (getting to know each other, building trust, working collaboratively, problem solving, etc?) Is this a newly formed group or a high performing, well knit group that have been working together for a while? Will the team building be remote or are you all coming together in person (masks on and maintaining social distance)? What's the allotted time for the activity and when will it occur, eg: at the beginning of the day/meeting, mid-day as a break in an multi-hour agenda, etc? I found having a clear objective of what you/the team would like to get out of the team building, helps tailor the activity. It can also help frame what's up next on the agenda ... energizing, thought provoking, etc. Hope this helps and remember to enjoy and have fun with it!

1 Reply

T Wever

11/13/20 at 6:20PM UTC

Great questions Ellen! We are mainly doing this for fun. I work in higher ed and we are "on break" until February. Though we will still be seeing students virtually, we wanted some fun things to do over break. We are a career services office, so we are very familiar with a lot of personality assessments. We will be working mainly remotely, but also in person a several times a month. I would like to do these activities in person mostly.

Angela Wnek Heppard

11/13/20 at 6:53PM UTC

I recently facilitated a virtual scavenger hunt for a group of 6 people. It was really fun to have people get competitive for 20 minutes virtually to find items in their homes and send photos so I could tally the scores. When the scores were announced, I shared the winning picture along with some items I found funny, and the team really enjoyed it! Not sure if your team is virtual or what your budget is, but for a virtual team with a budget of $0, this worked well.

1 Reply

T Wever

11/13/20 at 7:10PM UTC

Thank you. I actually put together a scavenger hunt recently and could reuse it!

Audrey CL Collins

11/13/20 at 10:06PM UTC

One element to add during the team session is to have an activity that allows team to support each other by rooting for the success of another team member, that may be a game, a contest, pairing up, etc. This gets the energy flowing.

Katrina Julia

229

Create, Transform & Inspire. You Are Born To.

11/17/20 at 10:42PM UTC

You def want to consider integrating visuals, self reflection & things to enhance the team individually & collectively. You could include "prework e.g. surveys" I often do, interactive activities with wellness & more, hands-on related to your work, & some sort of adventure - take a peek at this https://www.fitlifecreation.com/post/3-steps-to-host-events-and-retreats-behind-the-scenes-with-spain & some others on blog & show ;0