Activities For Team Building
This section will offer you several free team building exercises for you to build a strong and effective team. There are various activities such as vision setting or creating a team mission statement that will help your team in specific areas of need.
Team building exercises are created to help a team touch base. They are usually more interesting and engaging than a normal discussion. However, they are not just icebreakers to make everyone feel good and have fun; they usually have a focused objective to achieve through the exercise, whether it is goal setting, vision casting or conflict management.
(Nonetheless, I do recommend you start your meetings sometimes with icebreakers; they often lighten the mood and get everyone relaxed and opened for more serious discussions)
To facilitate an effective team exercise, you need to keep an open mind as a leader. Never dictate right or wrong answers, but always enter a team exercise with an open mind. See yourself as their fellow team member; don’t feel the need to direct the discussion in your way.
Also, ensure that everyone gets a chance to speak. Usually, it is the ones that speak more that influence the final outcomes. Attempt to balance this by giving everyone a chance to speak.
Another important point to note: if you can, give your members the topic of exercise a day or two before the meeting. It will give them some time to think and reflect about it before bringing something more valuable to the table.
In this section, I offer you several free team building exercises as a resource for you to use for your team or organization. In each of the exercises, I have created unique team exercise sheets for you to download, print and use. Make good use of them to bring your team to the next level!
Free Team Building Activities
Exercise #1: Building a Team Mission Statement
Create a team mission statement together with your team, and evaluate it together.
Exercise #2: Vision Setting
Set long term visions with your team.
Exercise #3: Values Definition
Create a set of organizational values that everyone in your team believes in.
Exercise #4: Goal Setting
Set SMART Goals to be achieved in the period ahead with the team.
Exercise #5: Expectation Management
Set standards and expectations together with your team.
Exercise #6: Problem Solving
Understand the problem solving methods of your team and how you can improve on them.
Exercise #7: Team Self-Evaluation
Evaluate the team’s progress together and see how you can work together to become better.
Exercise #8: Understanding the Team
A free DISC personality test for the team to understand each other’s working style.