We’ve all been there… Those team building days where you’re put through a series of activities in the hope that your team connects better by the end. The trust exercises, three-legged races, the list goes on. Oftentimes, though, the intention is purely to have fun together and, essentially, make friends. Friends communicate and cooperate better.
Many businesses hold facilitated group sessions to work on a number of potential topic areas: team building, innovation, strategy, planning for X, Y and Z initiatives. Training sessions are successful if they create a strong frame of reference that can be applied into future activity. After all, reflection on experience is a key factor in adult learning. The question that I often ask facilitators of L&D initiatives is: How relevant and impactful are your activities? How will they be debriefed? It’s the activities and their associated debrief that become important as they develop learning points, allowing clients to go back and implement the concepts into the workplace.
In my coaching and training sessions, I have found one particular activity is really powerful in helping people work better as teams for whatever their intended outcome. It involves spaghetti sticks, a marshmallow and a few other bits and pieces. No, you can’t eat the marshmallow. Someone always asks.
Now, logistics of the activity aside, the conversation that follows is where the gold can be found. It’s in the debrief that a number of team learning points can be generated. What follows is a session rich in group cooperation, action, idea generation and engagement.
And here are a few of the learning points which emerge from the activity that lead to such success:
1. Create a competitive environment
This is easy. Create groups and define the parameters of success such that a winning team can be identified. Are you building the tallest or strongest structure? Maybe it’s the funniest idea. Maybe it makes a ball roll the farthest. Or there is a time limit for completion. Competing against others or the clock in a facilitated activity encourages creative thinking and represses critical analysis in an effort to achieve optimum outcomes. You access the diversity of thinking of different people, allowing for distinct concepts to be developed and different challenges to be addressed which you can then grow into an ideal outcome for the business.
Create a competitive environment
2. Decide on roles and outcomes
Chaos ensues without direction. In the activity that I run, I find that each group fails to identify both the objective that they want to achieve as well as individual roles. I mean, in business, we all have defined roles and KPIs and that’s how the whole machine works. It starts to fall down when the lines between roles are blurred and the intended outcome isn’t clear. If too many people are doing the same thing, the old adage that too many cooks spoil the broth becomes apparent. Not to mention if nobody knows what we’re trying to achieve both individually and together! It’s important to know the intended outcome and assign people to the right tasks to get it done! What makes this even better is if you assign tasks to people who are talented or enjoy doing that particular thing! Then we’re having fun doing it too!
3. Assess your resources
When I present the materials that the participants will use in the activity and share what their objective is, they immediately dive in and grab things, attaching one thing to another. Moments later, something breaks, something falls, something doesn’t work the way it was intended. At the end of the activity, I hear phrases like “we didn’t realise that thing was so heavy/slippery/fiddly”. How are you assessing both your tangible and intangible resources? Time, people, materials and budget need to be considered. What’s available to you? What can it do? What can it not do? Do you need to bring in some different thinking by adding a person? With that in mind, a clearer strategy can be put in place.
Assess your resources
4. Make failing safe
This is easy in a facilitated activity because, well, it’s a facilitated activity. We’re playing. When applied to the workplace, there exists a pressure that we must not make mistakes. Meanwhile, entire innovation programs and budgets are being built on the concept of failing forward. What if an environment was set up in the workplace where ideas could be tested without negative repercussions on its contributor? Here’s what will happen – more ideas will be contributed because people will know it’s safe to do so. And with a bigger pool of ideas comes a higher chance that the amazing one will present itself.
5. Get started on the task sooner rather than later
Here’s the thing about adults (especially in business): We’re obsessed with planning and reluctant to get started! I’ve seen in my sessions people spending almost half of the allocated time orienting their thinking, drawing concepts on paper and gaining full consensus, leaving them barely enough time to execute. If time is of the essence, then initiating action should take priority over careful planning. Creating a safe failing environment as mentioned above will allow for issues to be ironed out as they pop up. Amazingly, the demographic that performs the best in group building activities such as my spaghetti task is young children! Why? Because they get started and fix it as they go!
6. Make jokes and have fun
Oh, but we’re in business and we must be serious. Oh, really? Recently, there is more and more evidence that positive experiences at work increase productivity. That’s right, making people feel good makes them think and work better together. It’s the original concept behind the team building days and continues to present itself again and again. In the group activity that I run, I find the best cooperation and the best thinking happens in the groups that are laughing and just enjoying the play time. That’s right. Play. The evidence suggests fun is great for business outcomes!
Humour opens the mind to possibility
You wouldn’t think that some spaghetti could help a bunch of teams, but there it is. Again and again I’ve heard how great the activity was for organisations. Hopefully the above points will help you get started on creating a great team for yourself!
For additional support in creating a great team, contact Inward Outward Coaching.