Trust is to teamwork what followers are to leadership. Without it teammates struggle in their relationships with one another and building effective teamwork.
In my years of developing teams, doing team activities where members of the team get to know one another outside of their work lives has paid the greatest dividends in terms of building trust. The following team building exercise will help you build that kind of trust. It is a powerful and easy activity that you can do face to face or remotely/virtually.
Team Building Activity – “Who Am I?”
Purpose: To strengthen relationships on the team and to increase trust by getting to know each other outside of work.
When: This team building activity is best at the beginning of a meeting, but can be inserted in the case of long meetings, at different points in the agenda. The activity can also be spread out over several meetings, or done in one meeting.
Materials: PowerPoint (or any presentation software) and a way to view the slides face to face or remotely/virtually (e.g., screen, monitors, meeting software like WebEx).
How:
- Have each member of the team put together 10 slides with photo(s) on each slide of who they are outside of work (no titles, descriptions etc… just photos).
- Instruct team members they will have 10 seconds per slide to talk about who they are. Note: Let them know them know they might want to rehearse previous to the activity because 10 seconds goes really quick.
- As the facilitator, collect the slides previous to the team activity and merge them into one slide show by copying and pasting each of the presentations.
- When starting the activity let the team know you will be stringent on time and every 10 seconds you will move to the next slide (you can also put a timer on the slides in PowerPoint to make it even easier (see here).
- Move through the slides until each team member has gone through their presentation.
Things To Note: If doing this with larger teams you might consider doing one-two per meeting or dedicating an entire meeting to the team building activity. Also, it is really important you stick to the 10 seconds. Some will want you to go back, but if you make an exception for one you run the risk of making it for all which will take away the flow of the activity not to mention how much time it will take you to get through.
I would love to hear experiences that you have with the activity and how it works for you. Please send any comments or questions you have to mike@teamworkleadership.com
Also, please feel free to share this activity with others by using one of the buttons below. Happy Teamwork my friends!
