Team Building Activities Explained Simply

Day In the Life Of (DILO)

Work-life balance is a hot topic and can feel difficult to improve. But improve we must because those who identify as having a poor work-life balance are more likely to experience problems in their relationships, health and overall happiness. Before you can implement processes designed to improve work-life balance you need to know what the current situation is. This activity is brings you a visual way of analyzing the activities of an individual or group of individuals in an organization to help improve their efficiency, effectiveness and work-life balance.

Terrible Presents

When you interact with another person you are normally looking to influence them around to your way of thinking in some way. This activity helps your team or participants learn new powers of persuasion in a fun and creative environment.

Presentation Vision Sheet

Building a presentation as a group can be a tough challenge. If you’re not careful you can end up down rabbit holes discussing details that might, or might not, make it into the final deliverable. To avoid this you should agree the high level points first and leave discussing exactly what content you’re going to include until after. When you run this activity at the start of a presentation design process you save yourself a lot of time and energy by getting straight to the point of what matters most.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a structured process to capture a group’s ideas relating to a topic or issue. Having a structured approach to how you brainstorm increases the quality and efficiency of your efforts. The process below gives you that structured approach. If you use it you won’t waste your participant’s time and you’ll get a lot of great ideas.

Four squares with the words strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

SWOT Analysis

At the start of a project / program it’s important to get a handle on the current situation. Appreciating your strengths, studying opportunities, pinpointing weaknesses and identifying threats is a prudent way to kick you off in the right direction. Otherwise you may stop things that you shouldn’t or spend time, energy and money on stuff that you really should be avoiding at all costs. A great activity to run with your team to achieve this is a SWOT Analysis.

Clotheslines & Kite Strings

Are you a facilitator / manager who wants to build a strong multicultural team? Are you dealing with strong emotions within your team when decisions are being made, but don’t know how to help them recognize and understand each other’s differences? Clotheslines & Kite Strings helps your group see how complex decision making is, even if it is made quickly AND gives a step by step workshop process you can run with them.

Build a Bridge

Build a Bridge is a game you can use with teams of 4-6 people. You set them the task of building sturdy bridges from the materials you provide and then watch how they work together. You can use this in either a team building setting or as part of a recruitment and assessment process to see what kind of team behaviors each participant has.

A chart showing the different stages of a project.

Open Space Technology

Open Space Technology (OST) is an event format used in meetings of 5 to 2,000 people, invented by Harrison Owen in 1985. Participants create the agenda for themselves and facilitators lead and record the resulting discussions. There’s a twist in this version with the inclusion of a process that gives the organizers a little more control over the agenda. While keeping all the benefits the participants feel from ownership of the day itself.

RACI Matrix

A RACI matrix is a grid of activities mapped against the responsible, accountable, consulted and informed stakeholders. Its core purpose is to create clarity across roles.

Questioning the barriers to success - fact or belief?

Barriers and Beliefs

This team activity allows your group to surface project and operational barriers to success and deal with them as either Facts or Beliefs. Barriers and Beliefs should be dealt with in different ways. Use this activity to categorise them as one or the other then it’s much easier for your group to create an implementation or remediation plan.

A diagram illustrating group decision making.

Group Decision Making Analysis

Group Decision Making Analysis is a team building exercise providing an opportunity for team members to discuss and agree how they can improve decision making. Unlike a lot of the tools and techniques on WorkshopBank it focuses on improving only 1 key process – how to make decisions in a better way. Most groups and teams can improve that side of the way they work don’t you think? This process helps them get there quickly.

Fishbowl Discussion

Do you want all your key stakeholders pushing with, or against, you and your objectives? A Fishbowl Discussion is a technique used to help a large group of people reach a common understanding on a set of issues or proposal and increase their feeling of participation. In a relatively short amount of time.

Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is a workshop technique for establishing the most useful high level measures by which to monitor your company’s / unit’s progress and performance against its strategic goals. It’s a great team building activity, process management tool and, when you do it properly, you end up with an action plan that’s fully aligned the company’s strategic plan.

A world cafe style table setting captured in a classic black and white photograph.

The World Cafe

The World Cafe is a 20 year old workshop activity that draws on 7 design principles to create a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group discussions for between 12 to 200 participants. The format is flexible and adapts to many different circumstances limited only by your imagination.

A diagram illustrating the roles and responsibilities of a project management plan.

Team Roles and Responsibilities Template

Team Roles & Responsibilities is an activity using a simple template to document roles and responsibilities of those involved in a project. Use this process to assign roles and responsibilities to members of your change / project team and to ensure that the team as a whole can proceed on a firm footing.

A quadrant showcasing creative problem solving through red, yellow, blue, and green elements.

9 Creative Problem Solving Tools For Your Next Breakthrough Idea

This is a suite of creative problem solving tools from Erik op ten Berg – an expert in creative thinking from the Netherlands. His creative problem solving process takes a challenge and finds ideas that are new, useful and meaningful. I guarantee you these activities will help you mobilise your group’s creative thinking skills.

A project plan template visualizing the phases of a project.

Brown Paper Planning (Project Plan Template)

Have you ever seen or created an action plan for a project that failed during delivery? This Brown Paper Planning process is a project plan template that will dramatically increase your chance of success.

What are we excelling at during our team review workshop?

Team Review Workshop & Dotmocracy

Team Review Workshop is an activity ready-made for any team meeting. It helps you build a shared understanding within a team about what is working well, areas in need of improvement and areas of opportunity. There is very little facilitation involved as it is easy for people to grasp what they have to do and why they are doing it. A great stimulator of conversation within the group.

A cost table for a construction project, showcasing various options within the framework.

The Options Framework

The Options Framework is a structured brainstorming technique you can use with groups of up to 7 people to get a preferred solution to a difficult problem.

Stakeholder Mapping

Stakeholder Mapping is a graphical illustration of how your stakeholders feel towards your change project or program. It helps you to identify who you need to influence and what action you need to take. It’s one of the most powerful change management processes on WorkshopBank and a must-do activity for any project manager.

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