Motivational Activities

Solution Projection is a group visualization technique that helps people feel what it is like to solve their biggest work problem so they get the energy to then go on and solve it.

Problems have a habit of being discussed to death. Everyone has an opinion. They all think they’re right. And they’re often unwilling to consider other options. Problem Solving Team Building (PSTB for short) is a 30-45 minute activity where the problem ‘owner’ will, with the help of their team, go through a structured process of brainstorming, issue analysis, and action planning to achieve a plausible solution to their issue.

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.

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.

Expectations Exchange is a team building activity that provides clarity over respective roles in a team. It can also easily be adapted to use between departments and with clients at the start of a project.

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.

Culture Triangle is a motivational activity that helps teams or organizations understand each other better in order to improve collaboration between their units. This team building activity achieves its objective by talking about, and getting behind, the stereotypes that professionals from different areas hold about each other.

5 Whys is a root cause analysis tool for helping teams quickly get to causes of an issue before developing solutions. It’s a great team-builder because the group buys-in to the *real* problems as they surface during the process.

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.

Have you ever been in a workshop and needed an activity to lift the mood and inject energy into the group? ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ is a quick icebreaker / energizer that requires attention, listening skills and quick responses from your Participants. It is also 100% guaranteed to get your group laughing together which will help your event achieve its objectives.

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.

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.

Customer Journey Mapping is a highly effective change management activity that helps you and your group reach a shared understanding on the key events, touch points, and activities that your customers receive. Once you have your map you can quickly and easily identify what’s working well (good practice) and not so well (areas for improvement).

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.

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.

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.

Team Evolution Curve is a facilitated discussion you can use with your team about where they are now and what they need to do to evolve. If your goal is to become a high performing team then this tool will help you get there by helping participants see what it is they need to improve.

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.

According to one study you’re going to waste 31 hours in unproductive meetings this month. This process will help you and your team run effective meetings every time. It helps your group reach a common understanding on what factors influence nightmare, good and brilliant meetings.

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 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.

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.

Equilateral Triangles Collaboration is an excellent conference icebreaker that highlights how large self-organizing groups can successfully collaborate without the need for stringent rules, regulations and leadership.

Prisoner’s Dilemma is a popular team building game which demonstrates whether people display win-win (co-operative) or win-lose orientation (selfish competitive) in a semi-serious environment.

The Fishbone Diagram (also known as the Ishikawa diagram) is used to identify all the factors that have an impact on your problem. It is primarily an issue analysis technique but it also has a motivational and team building effect on participants as they go through the process. There’s nothing like building a shared understanding of a tricky problem to unite a team.

Force-Field Analysis is a structured decision making technique to help you improve the chances your change project or program is successful. This process visualizes your current position and helps you and your group / team rebalance the forces in your favor so the change becomes much more likely to succeed.

The Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument is one of the most effective conflict management strategies I’ve seen. It is also known as the Conflict Resolution Inventory. It is based on a model of conflict modes, which enables an analysis of individual styles in particular situations. Individuals can identify their primary style, and assess the productiveness of that style in the various situations that they encounter. They then have the choice to continue with that style, or to adopt others if they are more appropriate.

The Trading Game is a team building workshop that simulates the negotiating activities that may need to take place between different departments or organisations in the setting up of joint ventures.

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.

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.

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.

The Relationship Triangle is a high-impact facilitated discussion that shows how critically important personal relationships are within the team before they can consistently achieve the results they desire. If you’re looking for team building activities this is a great one as most people believe their relationship within a team is stronger than it often is. Or they don’t view the quality of their relationships as important.

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.

The core aim of Team Role Development is to build relationships between team members of the same team or between multiple team units. The process achieves its objectives by identifying and building synergies between different role types to improve cohesion and efficiency.