How to Build Team Unity and Encourage Trust and Help Each Other

Team Building Exercise

This is a great exercise to learn more about your team; to find out more about each other’s concerns and dreams and, importantly, what you can do to support them.

I attended a get together / workshop style event in which we discussed how we could support each other in our day to day lives. I'd like to share with you the exercise that we did. Its beauty is how simple it is and how it focuses on how we can help each other.

(Thank you to Jimmy Skowronski who brought this activity to my attention)

How to Do It

• We started off by listing our names horizontally across the top and then vertically on the left side.
• We thought about our strengths, our weaknesses and then our goals that we'd like to achieve.
• Along the top, above our names we listed our strengths (on a post-it)
• Down the side, next to our name we listed our weakness (on a post-it)
• In the grid, at the point of where our row and column intersected we put our goal (on a post-it)

As a group, but working individually, we looked at the items that our friends had written down and thought of ways we could support them.

When we thought of something, we put the action against our name and underneath the individual we were going to help.

You can discuss with the individual what they have written and why – all with the aim of working out how you can support them. The whole process took 30 minutes.

The only rule - you must write something down in everyone’s box

What did we have at the end of 30 minutes?

• What we came out with a set of actions for ourselves.
• A greater understand of our friends and their goals and what they perceive as their weaknesses. Importantly, we found out more about each other; what we're concerned about and what we're striving towards.

So, have we followed up on our actions? Some have and some are still working towards them; it’s a living document in which we can reflect on and think if we supporting our community and helping them achieve their dreams.

Our plan….

We hope that you like this technique, and have success in using it!

Thanks to Steve Trapps for publishing this

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