In-Person Team Development Sesssion Examples

Time:  40 minutes

Goals:  Develop empathy for different roles in organization and difficulty in communicating remotely

Exercise Description:  Divide group into three groups representing senior executives, middle management, and workers in the field.  The executives must communicate their vision to middle managers who then translate this to workers in the field.  The goal is to construct something.  The constraints are that executives cannot talk, middle managers cannot see behind them, and workers are blindfolded.

Reflection:  How did each group organize themselves?  How did instructions get communicated up and down the line?  Did teams share best practices or try to coordinate to minimize conflicts?

Time: 30 minutes

Goals: Work together and make good handoffs.  See how one persons actions affect others.

Exercise Description:  Team must cross an imaginary hazard by laying out and stepping on discs.  The catch?  At no time must the group lose contact with the discs or the group loses the discs.

Reflection:  How did the team keep members on track?  Who took a leadership role and who provided support?  How did having a set back affect the group?

Time: 25 minutes

Goals: Strategy & collaboration

Exercise Description:  Teams are created and each time is given an equal number of ping pong balls & popsicle sticks.  The balls represent different clients and having different values.  Working together with some constraints, each time sets a goal and tries to achieve it by transporting ping pong balls into funnel placed on post.  Some balls can be tried multiple times, others only once.  

Reflection:  Did any team try different methods before settling a preferred method? How were roles allocated?  How did consequences affect choices and strategy?  How did group negotiated different behaviors?

Time: 45 minutes

Goals: Strategy & collaboration

Exercise Description:  Teams are created and each time is given an equal number of ping pong balls & popsicle sticks.  The balls represent different clients and having different values.  Working together with some constraints, each time sets a goal and tries to achieve it by transporting ping pong balls into funnel placed on post.  Some balls can be tried multiple times, others only once.  

Reflection:  Did any team try different methods before settling a preferred method? How were roles allocated?  How did consequences affect choices and strategy?  How did group negotiated different behaviors?

Time: 5 minutes to take online test and then 20 minutes to explain.

Goals:  To understand the dynamics of personalities and how preferences affect behavior.

Exercise Description:  Using the simple Rainbow Leadership Personality Profile exercise, participants will learn what makes them tick. and how armed with this knowledge, groups can be formed to optimize strengths.

Reflection:  Participants gain knowledge an understanding of who their group members are.  Participants can use this knowledge to develop diverse teams and modify how they interact with each other for optimum results.

Time: 90 minutes

Goals:  To work on team roles, coordination of efforts, creativity

Exercise Description:  In order to secure funding, each team must design and build a boat/fort/catapault/float to sell their idea to the faciliator team who represents the source of funding.  Not only must a design be creative, but the model must meet certain criteria and the team must develop a presentation to wow the decision makers.

Reflection:  How did team member’s personality affect how they contributed?  How did team deal with constraints?