This Teamworking Activity Pack contains a rich mixture of highly practical exercises including case studies, role-plays and team working activities. It’s a great source of ideas for developing teams, getting them to communicate better and understand other members’ needs and wants.
The activities are designed so that team members learn how they interact with each other when working under pressure. They encourage the use of planning and monitoring techniques and require participants to review their performance during debriefing sessions. The end result is a team that’s working better, more able to plan tasks and come up with creative solutions.
List of Activities:
FRAMEWORK
1. The Project
A case study to highlight some of the problems which can occur in a team and how they can be improved, it focuses on both teamwork and leadership as well as communication, especially in a project team where team members are enthusiastic. It helps team members to think about team problems and how to avoid them.
2. Characteristics of Effective Teams
Exercises to identify the key features of a team.
3. Team Roles
An exploration of the roles individual members take in a team in order to make the best possible use of each team member.
4. Functions of a Team Leader
A syndicate exercise on the key roles of a leader in relation to the team.
5. Shrivenham Services Ltd
Using a case study to give a clear understanding of what makes a good team leader, this activity helps participants to recognise the functions of a leader and how effectively these are carried out.
WORKING TOGETHER
6. The Train
A lively exercise on planning to build a train by designing, buying the components and building it, it gives experience of planning, seeing how plans work when put into operation, considering potential mishaps, and planning for the task to be carried out in a number of ways. It introduces basic costing and encourages members to plan before taking action, all aimed at making a profit! The exercise is also useful if a team is becoming over-confident.
7. The Folly
This is a more detailed and complex planning and teamwork exercise within budget and time restraints, where the team 'tenders' for building a structure and proves its ability by building a test model to its forecast budget and time. It also involves planning and actually working to that plan.
8. The Sun Temple
An exercise for two or three small teams in competition with each other, it gives participants an understanding not only of the need to plan but also to convince people, with an element of negotiating or bartering for scarce resources. It simulates a situation where a team may be in friendly competition with other teams in their own company or organisation, with whom they have frequent contact and may be competing for the same or similar resources.
9. The Station Garden
A planning exercise requiring communication, consensus and decision-making skills; this activity draws on the different ideas of team members about how to do a task and how these ideas can be brought together to arrive at a final solution to which all the members are committed.
VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN THE TEAM
10. The Post Office Robbery
This is a short exercise to help participants to recognise the shortcomings in their own listening. It is followed by discussion on active listening and a further exercise, Listening Trios, to improve listening skills.
11. What Was That Question?
This activity involves a short discussion on different types of questions typically used in teams, followed by an exercise to develop and practise questioning skills.
12. Lego Design
This a practical exercise in understanding the difficulties of giving clear, precise verbal instructions and providing clear instructions for team members to carry out. The instructions can be given by the team leader if concentrating on communication within the team, or by each of two teams if concentrating on communication between teams. It applies the learning from either or both of the two previous activities.
13. Pig-in-the-Box
A verbal communication exercise, this activity simulates the problems involved in giving information or instructions by telephone, where the speaker and listener cannot see each other.
14. The Team Weekend
This is a short consensus exercise to practise discussion, reaching consensus, listening and questioning as well as team decision-making.
15. The Meeting
A longer and more involved decision-making and consensus role-play/exercise where different members have their own views and opinions and are 'pushing' for their ideas to be accepted by the rest of the team. It also gives the opportunity to practise chairing a meeting and controlling a discussion as well as listening and questioning skills.
16. The Road Through the Business Park
Role-play helps participants to practise reaching consensus and decision-making on a fairly emotive topic where individual interests are (partly) at stake, as well as preparing a case for discussion. (It is useful for working on the interaction between members and where team members are having difficulty deciding on a course of action). It can also be used away from a training course, perhaps as an extension of a team meeting.
PROBLEM-SOLVING AND DECISION-MAKING
17. The Clock
A short exercise for small teams to identify some of the common difficulties of problem-solving, such as 'mind-set' ("It must be this way"), narrowing one's thinking and not using lateral thinking. It encourages participants to use a variety of approaches to problem-solving and it can also be used as an ice-breaker and a way of persuading members to change the way they are solving problems.
18. The Mobile
This is a practical exercise combining problem-solving, sharing of ideas/communication, planning and executing a task. It gives participants an opportunity to plan how they will approach a problem and work out the mechanics of how to do it, as well as giving an opportunity for creativity and thinking about the team identity.
19. Eggscape
A lively, fun exercise on solving a practical problem creatively that can be run for all the participants or two teams. It encourages them to take an initial idea and develop it by adding further ideas from other team members to arrive at a workable solution. There is a time-limit, so a sense of urgency is built in as well as seeing the consequences of good or poor design.
20. Don't Spill It!
This practical exercise asks the participants to use creativity to solve a problem that at first seems impossible! As well as creativity and problem-solving, the exercise also emphasises the need for good planning and has a variation concentrating on even further planning. It draws on the ideas and skills of members, requires good planning to complete on time, and encourages effective teamwork as well as good communication and evaluation of ideas.
21. Scrabble Plan
A 'thinking' exercise that uses creativity and lateral thinking more than practical skills, it also develops skills in teamwork and organising a team. It works best with two (or more) small teams and encourages members to think about the task before plunging in. A workable solution can be achieved in a conventional way, but with the use of creativity more unusual approaches can produce startling results.
CONSOLIDATION EXERCISES
22. The Team Dinner
A short and fast-moving exercise where participants complete a number of tasks within a tight time-limit.
23. Do It Yourself
This is an unstructured exercise where participants draw on all of their teamwork skills to design their own teamwork exercise.
271 pages, with 137 OK to copy pages
