Team Building Exercise: More of, Less of and the Same

Purpose

You can use this teambuilding exercise to help delegates discover the strengths and weaknesses of their team. The exercise encourages individual thinking without pressure while at the same time helps the team to work together to address potential issues. The exercise focuses on both positive and negative aspects of the team so it is well-balanced. It also allows the team to see if any particular area is considered problematic by many team members which then indicates the scale of the issue. This in turn can lead the team to address the issue with high priority.

Objective

Place your ideas about the strength or weakness of your team on a flipchart and then discuss them with other team members.

What You Need

• Post-it notes.
• Flipcharts (or three areas on a whiteboard or a wall)

Setup

• Prepare three flipcharts (or areas) by writing the following headings on each:
  • What would you like to see more of in your team?
  • What would you like to see less of in your team?
  • What is working well in your team?

Stage 1:

• Distribute the Post-it notes to all delegates so they can use as many as they want during the exercise.
• Explain that each person must think of the question in each flipchart, write a single idea on a Post-it note and then stick it on the corresponding flipchart. Delegates can place one or more Post-it notes on each flipchart.
• Allocate 15 minutes for this part.

Stage 2:

• After the allocated time, divide the delegates to three groups. Assign each group to a particular flipchart.
• Ask each group to go through the ideas and tidy up the notes placing similar notes (or duplicates) next to each other. This leads to clusters of notes capturing an idea. A large cluster therefore means an idea most people agree on which is worth examining in more detail.
• After about 15 minutes when the sorting is finished, bring back everyone together so they can explore the results together.

Stage 3:

• Go through each flipchart and get the delegates examine the results starting from the largest clusters of ideas. Ask them to record their conclusions on any changes they need to make the team more productive and functional. Get them to acknowledge strength areas so the activities leading to them are reinforced. Get the delegates to think of solutions to any identified problems.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes

Activity: 15 min Stage 1 + 15 min Stage 2 + 15 min Stage 3 = 45 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

Where there any surprising ideas? Was there an idea that most people voted on? What does this suggest? Where there ideas that only a single person identified? What does this represent? What did you think of the process you went through in this exercise in examining your team?