Team Building Exercise: Design Your Coat of Arms

Purpose

In this exercise, delegates get to define their group or personality and formulate their mission statement. Groups get to design a “coat of arms” which represents their value and mission. They can then use this deign much like a logo to remind themselves of what they want and what they stand for. They can decorate their environment with this and show their “coat of arms” to visitors as a way to show what they stand for and commit themselves as much they can to it. Continuously seeing the mission statement can have a significant psychological effect on the team and motivate them to choose wisely when making decisions so they can fulfil their mission.

You can run this exercise for teams who work closely together or get individuals to create a “coat of arms” for themselves.

Objective

Create a “coat of arms” that best represents your mission and what you stand for.

What You Need

• Small and large sheets of paper
• Colour pens

Setup

• Depending on your delegates you have the following choices:
  • If all delegates are from the same organisation, divide the delegates into teams of 4 or 5. Ask those who work closely to form a team together.
  • If all delegates are from the same team or department, divide them into two groups. Each will be designing a coat of arms for their department and at the end they can compare their results and vote for the best design.
  • If delegates don’t know each other, divide them into groups of 3. Each person would be creating a coat of arms for himself, though get them to work together in teams of 3 so they can get ideas from each other.
• Ask groups to create a coat of arms that captures their mission, values and what they want to achieve. Explain that this is a symbol that they want to show to the world and they must be able to feel proud of it while feeling the sense of unity with others in their team.
• If delegates are working on an individual level, ask them to create a coat of arms for their own personality and ambitions.
• Ask delegates to be as artistic as they desire.
• Allocate 15 minutes for this part.
• Get back everyone together and ask each group to present their coat of arms to others.
• The designer group is not allowed to explain. Others should see the coat of arms and analyse it and state what they think of it. This forms their first impression which can be very valuable to the designer group.
• The designer group can then answer potential questions or misunderstandings. They should record this feedback, so they can create a new version based on the feedback they have received from others.
• Ask all groups to present one by one and receive feedback.
• Optionally, you can allocate another 10 minutes for all groups to implement the feedback they have received or use other teams’ designs as inspiration for their new version of the coat of arms.
• Bring back all together again and let them quickly share their designs with each other.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes

Activity: 15 min first design + 10 min presenting and getting feedback + 10 min second design = 35 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

What do you think of your design? How well does it represent what you stand for? Do you feel proud of your creation and would you like to show it to the world as something that represents you? How useful is this design? Does it capture your mission statement well? How useful is it to have a mission statement? What are the benefits of reminding yourself and others constantly about your mission statement and what your ultimate goals are?

Can you think of famous mission statements of large successful corporations? How much effect do you think these statements had on the success of these companies?