It is awesome when you can take a full day away from the office and do full-scale team building. What is as, or even more important, is being sure that team building is “baked in” to your culture by having quick ways to build trust and create meaningful and fun connections with team members on a regular basis.
- THUMB BALLS – These handy and inexpensive tools can help to break the ice for new team members or deepen relationships quickly with existing ones – even if they’ve known each other for years. Thumb balls are named that because you throw them to one another and the person catching it gets to choose from either question their thumb lands on. There are different types of thumb balls for different situations and they run about $24.75 each. With questions like: “Your proudest moment” or “I’ll be successful if…” or “My most creative contribution” team members can find connection quickly. Click here to find one on Amazon.
- CONVERSATION CARDS – TableTopics were designed for families and parties but are great for quick team building in the same way that the Thumb Balls are. With 135 different questions on cards team members can choose from a small stack to answer one in a round, or you can have each of the people in the group answer the same question. Click here to find a box of these on Amazon.
- ME MINGLE FOR MEETINGS – Want your meeting to be more productive? Do 1-minute rounds where people pair up with each other and finish the statement: In today’s meeting, I am going to contribute by: (fill in this blank). Do 3 rounds so each person has a chance to tell at least 3 people their answer.
- SHARE ARTIFACTS – Organizations are changing quickly. To help bring perspective and a touch of history into your next meeting, ask team members to bring an “artifact” from the past and describe how it became a fossil or how its use may have been repurposed. Perhaps someone brings in an old calculator or type of pen or a picture of an old logo or a picture of people at work 10-20 years ago.
- MEAL OF THE MONTH – There is something special about having a meal together. To introduce different cultures and tastes perhaps each team member can choose the meal of the month. They get to pick what type of food your team will eat together for one meal a month.
Here’s a quick video to demonstrate how one CEO used techniques for onboarding an existing team.
http://www.virginiafirst.com/news/local-news/virgnia-at-work-leading-an-existing-team/655226272
