Results
This tutorial helps you in getting the most out of team building exercises.
You'll become calmer and more confident in driving your team building forward.
Choose exercises
Own your team building. Trust your gut. It'll tell you what you should work on next. No expert will ever have as much insight into your crew as you have.
Start by deciding whether to work on relationships or workflow. Invite everyone to share their perspective on which direction to take the next step in.
To pick the specific exercise, give everybody three votes to allocate as they see fit. The exercise with the most votes shall be your next.
All in all this should only take 10-15 minutes.
Assign roles
It helps to assign roles for each team meeting, including those you invest in exercises.
These role are not comprehensive but a minimum we'd recommend to start with. Feel free to experiment with other roles in your team as you see fit.
Also these roles must not be tied to specific crewmembers. You are very welcome to switch roles over time, say every exercise, every month, or every quarter.
Facilitator
The facilitator makes sure that everyone gets heard. Facilitators are mindful of each crewmember and their valuable contributions to the team's progress.
As a facilitator you'd want to prepare some nudges to give crewmembers a voice, who'd otherwise stay quiet. You can also contribute yourself by regularly summarizing the meeting so far.
Timekeeper
The timekeeper ensures that everything stays within the allotted timebox. Timekeepers are keen to keep things focused on the core of the meeting.
Having a clock or a time timer visible and in your field of vision makes timekeeping easy. You can also contribute by reminding everyone of the objective and where you're currently on the agenda.
Prepare well
Every exercise requires a little bit of preparation. Make sure, you have:
- read the exercise completely
- prepared the required materials
- confirmation fo your crew to participate
Reflect together
Each exercise includes question for reflection. These questions are starting points for your reflection. You are very welcome to ask different questions, e.g. in connection to your crews history.
Reflection works best in two phases:
- Quiet reflection for everyone by themselves for 5 minutes.
- Sharing of the ideas and takeaways summarized to a small commitment for improving your teamwork.
Make sure to document specific actions or takeaways you agree to implement.