The purpose of this activity is for a currently functioning team to evaluate its performance and develop team norms of behavior to improve the quality of their relationships and task accomplishments. On a flip chart, list the following essential ingredients to make a team of people work together effectively:
The Essential Ingredients of a Team
Explain each concept as follows:
Participation — Each team member demonstrating leadership and knowing when to follow.
Communication — Effectively expressing and actively listening to achieve mutual understanding.
Negotiation — Transforming disagreement into something beneficial to the team and exploring agreement for the diversity of ideas.
Appreciation — Consciously admiring team member differences as well as similarities.
Evaluation — Being able to appropriately question what the team is doing and being able to accept what is happening on the team when necessary.
Celebration — Acknowledging on a regular and intermittent basis the big and small accomplishments both in task and process.
Give each team member two different colored sticker dots. Designate one color to represent the team's strength, and the other color the team's weakness. Invite the participants to come up to the flip chart and place their stickers next to the one ingredient they feel is the strength and the other the weakness of this team. Once everyone has "voted," ask the group to make distinctions about the outcome. Notice which ingredients are the team's strengths, and which are its weaknesses. Ask the group to develop a list of four to six norms of behavior (ways they agree to be together and raise the standards on the team) based upon what they discussed. Ask the group to make a commitment to these norms of behavior, and for a volunteer to type them up for inclusion on the agenda for each team meeting.
The purpose of this activity is for team members to get to know each other on a deeper level, building trust and understanding in an informal way. If the group is large break it up into smaller teams of four to eight people. Give the teams five to ten minutes to find things that they all have in common on the following three levels:
Allow enough time for each group to discover their "common grounds." Then ask them to report out to the larger group. Discuss what they learned about each other that will help them trust each other more as they work together on the team to accomplish common goals.
The purpose of this activity is to get team members focused on the importance of teamwork. Share with the participants that we are going to think about how working on a team is like a cup of cappuccino. Say, "If teamwork were like a cup of cappuccino, which is the most essential part; the cup, the coffee, the milk, or the steam?" Designate a corner of the room for each of the four parts of a cappuccino, and ask the participants to stand in the corner designated for each part of the metaphor (cup, coffee, milk, steam) that makes the most sense to them. Let each group discuss the meaning of the metaphor as it relates to teamwork. Have each group report out to the larger group. After each group has reported out, let the groups discuss how the current team can improve their ability to achieve common goals based on what they learned about the importance of working together as a team.
We hope you find these Team Building Expresso processes helpful. Please write and tell us how you have used and improved these. Consider using a facilitator to gain objectivity — we are always here to serve your needs.
Wishing you and your team improved and productive relationships!
