I love simple team building activities. Some of my most popular have included this Surprising Valuable Team Activity For Increasing Teamwork (733 Facebook shares to date), A Quick Way to Help Those You Lead Feel Good (Team or Family) and My Favorite Team Builder – Perfect for Team Cohesion. Check them out. Each of them have proved to be popular with leaders who are looking for quick ways to create greater unity on their teams.
What about gratitude? Thankfulness is like many things for leaders and their teams; it needs a little facilitation from time to time. The following two team building activities can facilitate the attitude of gratitude on teams and improve morale and teamwork at the same time.
I Am Grateful For You… Team Activity
At your next team meeting bring paper and something to pin the paper to such as tape, thumb tacks etc… Hand out the paper and ask each team member to write the title “Gratitude List” at the top with their name and to pin the paper outside of their office, cubicle or anywhere in their work space that is easily visible to the team.
Challenge members of your team to find one thing for each member of the team, once a week, that they are genuinely grateful for and to write it on their team members Gratitude List.
A great time to start this activity is around Thanksgiving and continue it for two-four weeks. When the activity is complete each member of the team will have a long list of thoughtful gratitude’s the whole team will feel good about.
Note: If your team is virtual you can do the same thing on a shared drive. Just simply create a document for every person on your team and house it somewhere all team members have access to and challenge the team the same way as mentioned above.
End of The Day Gratitude’s Team Activity
The work day can create a lot of stress. While your team is commuting home for the night their thoughts may not be very positive. However, I have found that even with the worse day you can find something to be grateful for.
Instead of having people leave with a lot of negative thoughts, have them instead leave with feelings of gratefulness. At the end of each day have every member of the team record 2-3 things they are truly and genuinely grateful for that day relating to their work, co-workers, victories, etc… Have them send their 2-3 gratitude’s to someone assigned on your team on a rotational basis who will then distribute the next morning.
If your team all resides in the same office you can have team members submit their gratitude on a card and then read them before everyone starts their day. If that isn’t an option you can do the collection and distribution via email.
I hope these two quick and effective team activities will make a difference on your team. I would love to hear how it goes. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
And let me end by saying Thank You! Thank you to each of you that take the time to read my blog and find it to be of value. It’s because of you I do what I do 🙂
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