Reason 10 – Ideas to Try

They Involve You in Team Building Exercises

Some key questions to ask yourself and your team.

Basic, really important ones:

1. Will this exercise really do anything to help us perform better as a team?

2. What usable links and learning back to our work has this exercise surfaced?

3. How do we intend to transfer this learning into work performance?

4. How will we practice these new skills and learning?

5. Is the application of this learning a performance objective?

Interesting ones:

1. Do we have the capacity to skip the metaphorical exercise and jump right into a debrief of a real work experience and think differently or deeper about that experience?

2. Why do we need to think differently or deeper?

3. How can we push and surface honesty in the debrief of this exercise?

4. Is this exercise really more of a fun diversion from a design and potential perspective?

Key points of this reason to hate work teams:

1. The debrief of a team building exercise is ALWAYS the most important part of a potentially good exercise. Squeeze every ounce of learning out of it by asking for and giving honesty.

2. Activating the ‘potential’ of a good team building exercise depends on demanding the learning be applied back in the workplace in the form of changes in behavior. You need to design in lots of practice for this new behavior. The team should take accountability to sustain this practice.

Discussion and comment points for this post:

1. Why do you think so much emphasis is put on team building exercises/workshops to change behavior?

2. How do you bring honesty to a debrief?

3. How do you think behavior changes?

4. What’s your best transfer of learning story?

#teams #teameffectiveness #Teamwork #team #teamdevelopment