Team building activities and games are usually a part of leadership workshops, retreats, and conferences. Following are some of my approaches and favorite interactives to help build teams such as student government, the programming board, residence hall leadership, and other clubs and organizations.
- Common Ground: It is necessary to know why you are trying to build the team and not just play games for the sake of games. The objective of team building is to create commonalities in different environments so people can work together. Teams come together in various ways: through election, selection (appointment), volunteering/joining, and gravitational pull. The last one is when a team assembles because they are pulled together by something such as a cause, an event, or because they like the people involved.
- A Process: Team building is a process, it does not happen overnight. Few games or interactives are going to affect the dynamics in a meaningful way immediately. However, they can begin or continue the process of bringing people together because they allow them to be vulnerable, get out of their comfort zones, and reveal who they are on the inside spiritually and intellectually.
- Be Purposeful: Make a sincere effort to bring your team together. Make them feel welcome by greeting them as they arrive to the session or meetings, have name tags to help them learn each other’s names, and get them to interact.One of my favorite get-to-know-you interactives is called Unusual Things in Common. Have team members get into groups of three (if you have an odd number, you can have one or two groups of four, but no more than that). Ask everyone to introduce themselves to each other and then give them two minutes to find as many unusual things as they can that they have in common. (Commonalities like being from the same state or fans of the school football team don’t count; instead, they should come up with different things that people do not normally talk about like instruments they play, broken bones they’ve had, places to which they traveled, tattoos, or strange pets.) After two minutes, depending upon the size of the team, ask several or all of the groups to share their unusual things. After sharing, have them mix up and get into new groups to try to come up with new things that have not been shared.
- Shared Experiences: Your team will need to get to know each other on a deeper level through shared experiences and social interactions. I love an activity called Buddy Charts in which team members pair up and interview each other and then draw their partner, incorporating their answers. For example, the eyes are something they dream of doing, so you could draw mine as little microphones.
- Vision: Have a vision for the team and work together to establish goals for the duration of your time together. People tend to support that which they help create. If they have a stake in the goals and vision of the group, then they are more likely to work together towards them.When I was the Circle K District Administrator for Georgia, we did an extensive vision planning and goal setting session during our board training each year. After an overall vision was created, goals were set to achieve that vision with each one assigned to board members to be responsible for achieving the goal. Each board member also worked with other board members in similar roles to set individual goals for their position.As a result of this intense goal planning, our district received an unprecedented number of awards of distinction during my tenure and our teams worked well together. You can have great success, too, if you make building your team a priority!
Let me know if you have any questions or need help in planning your team building session or if you would like to have me come to campus to help you build your team(s). You can email me at DaveKelly@GonzoSpeaks.com or call me at 770-552-6592. Booking me will not break the bank – check out my Affordable Pricing Model for a quote! I look forward to serving your students!