Team Building Exercise: Three Wishes to Change

Purpose

Sometimes you wish you could change something in your job, the organisation you work for or your work environment. However, sometimes you may not feel comfortable to voice your concern or the change you want.

This exercise helps delegate to express their wishes in anonymous way and select the most desired changes. This exercise is ideal for delegates who work in the same environment. You can also run this exercise for a large group.

Objective

Express three wishes to change your environment and based on everyone’s votes select the best set.

What You Need

• Three blank cards for each delegate.

Setup

• Explain that everyone might have a set of wishes to change something in their work environment. For example, they may wish to change their boss, their job, their role, their office furniture, work with a specific colleague, change their office location and so on.
• Ask delegates this is their chance to identify three wishes they desire the most.
• Explain that to improve the results, this exercise is run anonymously so they should feel free to write what they really wish.
• Ask them to write each wish on a separate card and when finished place them face down on the table.
• Once everyone has finished, pick up the stack of cards and shuffle them. Place them back on the table.
• Starting from one end, ask a delegate to pick up a card and on the back of it write a score from 1 to 5 on how interested they are in this change.
• Ask this person to pass it on to the person on his left and then pick another card.
• Repeat until all cards have been scored by every delegate.
• At the end, add up all the scores for each card and write the total on them.
• Select the top three wishes based on their scores and write them on the flip chart for everyone to see.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes

Activity: 15 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

Were you surprised with the results? Do you like to go ahead and propose these changes to the management? Do you collectively feel that these are the changes you wish the most?

When you were scoring other people’s wishes, did you come across wishes that you never thought of before but you found interesting? How about wishes that you did not expect at all? What are the next actions now that you know your group’s wishes?