Unique Suggestions For Team Building Activities
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Chad presents unconventional, effective team-building activities that work in various contexts—remote or in-person. He introduces 'past, present, and future' exercises, where participants use photos and reflective questions to build deeper connections. Chad also discusses using intentional reminders and questions as tools to foster teamwork, and suggests creating user manuals for better understanding within teams. He emphasizes sustainable, meaningful interactions over forced bonding. Chad invites viewers to attend the Connector Summit for personalized team-building solutions and offers more insights on how to manage up effectively.
Takeaways
- 🤝 Team building activities should feel natural and foster genuine connections, not forced bonding.
- 📸 Use the 'Past, Present, Future' method for team building: reflect on the past using photos, discuss the present, and plan for the future.
- 👥 Group activities work best in groups of three, providing more perspectives without the pressure of public speaking.
- 💭 A great present-focused question is 'What's been taking up lots of your brain space lately?' to connect teams through meaningful conversations.
- 📅 Future-focused questions like 'What is something you'd like to do more of?' help team members express aspirations and shape future interactions.
- 🔄 Conversations and powerful questions can materially change a team's direction by enabling meaningful reflections on individual goals and challenges.
- ⏲️ The 'Reminders Conversion' exercise can help teams sustain their values by setting shared calendar reminders based on team discussions.
- 📆 Simple, recurring reminders for team values, like checking in on each other, help maintain team connections during busy periods.
- 👨🏫 Personal stories and context (e.g., a team member's loss) can highlight the importance of empathy and understanding in team dynamics.
- 🌐 The Connector Summit is a live, virtual event where specific team building challenges can be addressed, offering personalized solutions for participants.
Q & A
What is the main purpose of the video?
-The main purpose of the video is to provide unconventional, unique, and universally applicable team-building exercises that can be used in various contexts, including remote and in-person settings.
What is the first team-building exercise mentioned in the video?
-The first team-building exercise is based on the 'past, present, and future' framework. Participants use their phone's photo app to reflect on a past moment, discuss what is currently taking up their brain space, and talk about something they'd like to do more of in the future.
How does the 'past, present, and future' exercise help teams connect?
-This exercise helps teams connect by encouraging participants to share personal stories, challenges, and aspirations in small groups. It creates meaningful conversations that build trust and understanding among team members.
Why are groups of three recommended for team-building exercises?
-Groups of three are recommended because they provide a balance between vulnerability and openness. They allow multiple perspectives while avoiding the pressure of public speaking, which occurs in larger groups.
What is a powerful question to access the present in team-building?
-A powerful question to access the present is: 'What has been taking up lots of your brain space lately?' This question invites participants to share what’s on their minds, fostering understanding and empathy within the team.
How did the CEO in the video change their mind about firing their right-hand person?
-The CEO realized that the person's recent poor performance was due to the loss of their mother, which had been taking up a lot of their brain space. After learning about this personal challenge, the CEO gained a deeper appreciation for the person and decided not to fire them.
What is the purpose of the 'future' part of the exercise?
-The 'future' part of the exercise allows team members to discuss something they’d like to do more of. It helps teams talk their way into future plans and build shared goals, which strengthens team cohesion.
What is the 'reminders conversion' exercise?
-The 'reminders conversion' exercise involves teams discussing what makes a great team and converting those values into shared calendar reminders. These reminders serve as prompts to stay intentional about team-building practices over time.
What is the Connector Summit mentioned in the video?
-The Connector Summit is an annual virtual gathering hosted by the speaker. It allows participants to engage in deeper, more specific team-building discussions tailored to their challenges and contexts.
Why does the speaker recommend creating a 'user manual' for team members?
-The speaker recommends creating a 'user manual' for team members because humans are complex and don’t come with instructions. A user manual can help team members understand how to best interact with one another, preventing misunderstandings and improving teamwork.
Outlines
💡 Unconventional Team Building Strategies
The speaker introduces the video, aiming to provide unique, useful, and brain-friendly team-building activities applicable in various contexts. He recounts a conversation with his friend Paul, a principal seeking effective team-building ideas for faculty meetings. The speaker proposes a concept called 'past, present, and future,' developed by Dan Sullivan. This approach uses time periods to facilitate meaningful group discussions. He suggests using photos from the participants' phones to teleport them back in time, allowing for personal story sharing in small groups of three to foster connection.
⏳ Exploring the Present in Team Building
The speaker shifts to the present, recommending the question 'What has been taking up lots of your brain space lately?' as a tool to understand what matters to team members. He shares a story about a CEO who was planning to fire his right-hand person, but after a retreat, realized he valued them. The revelation came from understanding what was occupying her mind—her mother's recent death. This demonstrates the importance of checking in with teammates and knowing what's happening in their lives.
🌟 Future-Oriented Team Conversations
In this section, the speaker suggests focusing on the future by asking team members, 'What is something you'd like to do more of?' He recounts a personal story about how answering this question led him back to scuba diving after years of not practicing. The speaker emphasizes that future-oriented conversations help teams envision and shape their collective path forward. Thoughtful questions act as an 'edit button' for the future, allowing teams to shape the direction they want to head.
🧠 Using Time and Intentional Reminders for Team Success
The speaker introduces an idea from his friend Chris Danilo, who discovered the power of recurring reminders. Instead of rigidly scheduling tasks, Chris uses reminders that prompt him to think about his goals, which increases intentionality. The speaker suggests that teams could adopt a similar practice by discussing what makes a great team and converting those ideas into shared calendar reminders. These reminders would act as sustainable touchpoints for ongoing team building, going beyond typical activities like bowling.
🔧 The Power of a User Manual for Teams
The speaker wraps up the video by promoting his upcoming Connector Summit, where he offers more personalized team-building advice. He concludes with a teaser for his next video, which will cover the concept of creating a 'user manual' for individuals in a team. This manual would guide teammates on how to interact with each other effectively, similar to how a vacuum comes with a user guide, but for humans. This approach can help prevent misunderstandings and strengthen team dynamics.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Team Building
💡Past, Present, Future
💡Timeline Teleportation
💡Groups of Three
💡Brain Space
💡Connection Before Content
💡Intentional Reminders
💡Sustainable Team Building
💡User Guide for Humans
💡Questions as Edit Buttons for the Future
Highlights
Unique and brain-friendly team-building exercises that are industry-agnostic and work in both remote and in-person settings.
Team-building should focus on connecting to the purpose of why people are there, rather than feeling like forced bonding.
The 'Past, Present, Future' tool involves using three time periods as instruments for conversation: 10 minutes for past, 10 minutes for present, and 10 minutes for future.
Using 'Timeline Teleportation' by inviting participants to look at old photos on their phones and share stories from the past.
Small groups of three are ideal for team-building as they reduce vulnerability and provide more perspectives without feeling like public speaking.
A present-focused question like 'What has been taking up lots of your brain space lately?' helps to build awareness of team members’ current challenges or interests.
Sharing personal experiences during team-building can shift perspectives, as demonstrated by the story of a CEO who changed his mind about firing an employee after understanding her personal struggles.
Future-focused questions like 'What is something you'd like to do more of?' can help individuals visualize and work toward their future goals.
Asking meaningful, powerful questions fosters connection over important topics, which is essential for building a strong team.
A practice called 'Reminders Conversion' helps teams create shared calendar invites based on what they value to ensure consistent team-building practices.
A simple reminder on a calendar can be a profound tool for staying intentional and focused, such as a reminder about fitness goals or a countdown to the end of the year.
Instead of a one-time team-building event, making it a sustainable practice by scattering team values across the calendar can help build better teams.
The Connector Summit offers live, virtual opportunities to dive deeper into team-building challenges specific to attendees’ contexts.
The 'User Manual' concept suggests creating a guide for how each person in a team operates, improving communication and reducing misunderstandings.
Powerful team-building tools come from thoughtful questions and shared experiences that bring people closer together over what truly matters to them.
Transcripts
I'm thinking you landed here because you'd like some good suggestions for team building activities. And in this video,
I'm going to give you some unconventional, unique, yet wildly useful and universally applicable
team building exercises. If you choose to invest your time in this video, you will walk away
with some really clever, smart, sustainable tools to build your team, no matter what the context is.
It's remotely, in person, industry agnostic. These tools just work because they're brain
friendly and they allow people to connect to the purpose of why they're there and
not just feel like they're doing this team forced bonding thing.
So, the first one actually came to me when one of my friends Paul, who's a principal in
at a school in Pennsylvania reached out and said, hey, I got these faculty meetings happening every
month, and I want to do something for about a half hour dedicated toward team building. But I don't
want it to feel forced and I ideally want it to be something that kind of uncrosses people's arms
that is easy to get by into. Please no animal sounds or any other weird
team building kind of stuff. And before he even finished, I said,
I got it. All you need are my three absolute favorite tools. They are called the past,
present, and future. Dan Sullivan, the founder of strategic coach was the first person
that framed them as tools to me. But I was like, whoa! Past, present, future.
I've never thought about using those times, time periods as instruments or tools to help a group
teleport to useful conversations. And so, what I said to Paul is if you've got a half hour,
you take three questions. 10 minutes with the past, 10 minutes with the present,
and 10 minutes in the future. The easiest way to do this in the most fun,
personalized format is to invite everybody to take out the supercomputers that live in their pocket.
Open up the Photos app, and on most photo apps, most phones,
when you click the top of the screen, whoa! It jumps all the way to some of your oldest photos.
And so, you can invite people to, I call this timeline teleportation. You can invite people
to teleport into some distant or recent period of their past and choose a photo that... And this
is where you apply your intelligence and your knowledge of your own group and your own context.
And invite people to choose a photo that represents a story they'd love to share,
or choose a photo of a memory that they totally lost sight of,
but would love to share with somebody else, or choose a memory from March of 2020 as
a way of reflecting on how far we've come, right? So, 10 minutes living in the past, sharing photos,
pairing up. Ideally for me, team building happens in groups of three. Change happens,
I would suggest in small groups. And groups of three are really nice because it allows for
not the vulnerability of a pair, but opens up for a couple more perspectives.
But you're not public speaking if you're in a group of three. You get seven people together
and that's public speaking. And so, you don't go around in a circle and have everybody share.
Do it in small groups, it lowers the risk, which is what you want when you're building a
team. The present, my current favorite question to access the present is this one right here.
What has been taking up lots of your brain space lately? This question is like a teleportation
device right to the heart of what matters for somebody. What is something taking up lots of your
brain space lately? This could be something they're excited about, a challenge, anything
else. But if you want to build a team. Teams got to know what's going on in each other's lives.
My late co-founder and co-author, Will, who we wrote Ask Powerful
Questions together was on his way to facilitate a retreat for a company. And he
was jumped in the car with the CEO of this company. And the CEO opened up and said,
I'm not going to lie, I am planning on firing my right hand person
after this retreat and possibly during or even at the beginning of this retreat.
Whoa! Hahahaha. Team breaking, not team building. And he ended the retreat.
I'll kind of skip the middle. He ended the retreat by saying, wow!
I thought that I was going to fire. His exact language was I thought that I
hated this person, or I'd grown to hate this person. And I realized I loved this person.
Not in a romantic sense. But he realized, he really,
really appreciated who this person was. And what he found out was that their Mother had
passed away recently. And somehow he had been so busy and caught up with the doing
of work that he failed to recognize what was taking up lots of her brain space lately.
And so, her performance was suffering. Duh. Her Mother had passed away, right? So, for
most people, most of the time, something that heavy isn't going to be on people's
mind. It's just going to be something that's present for someone. And so, it's just like a
really good check in question. What has taken up lots of your brain space lately?
And you spend 10 minutes in the present. That's it. And then you want to build the
team. You got to be talking about where you're going to go.
You got to have conversations that actually allow people to talk their way into tomorrow,
that talk their way into the future. My current favorite question for that
is what is something you'd like to do more of? And the reason this is one of
my favorite questions is a mentor about a year and a half ago asked
me this question. What is something you'd like to do more of, Chad? And I said,
scuba diving. Haven't gone in four years really, really love scuba diving. I just got certified
when I was 12 grew up pulling lobsters out from underneath rocks in New England.
Hadn't gone diving in about four or five years.
He asked me this question. And the profound part for me was that six months. Almost the
day after he asked me that question. I was underwater scuba diving, hunting for shark
fossils before giving a keynote to a bunch of learning and development professionals in Florida.
If you want to build a team, ask questions that allow them to talk their way into the
future. Because the conversations we have together materially change what happens next. Questions
are like the edit button for the future. And and you can see that literally. Because if I ask
you right now, watching this YouTube video. Hey, what's taken up lots of your brain space lately?
Or what is something you want to do more of? I am quite literally editing the words
that come out of your mouth. And I think that really thoughtful team building that respects
people, asks powerful questions. And I say powerful because it gives
people the power to answer with something that is meaningful and important to them.
And when humans, whole groups of them connect over what's meaningful and important to them.
It turns out that is actually what builds teams. Second concept, super clever came from my friend
Chris Danilo, who is a nerd about the brain. And he just kind of stumbled upon
this practice for himself that has been extremely effective.
What he noticed is, when he time blocks stuff like, hey, work on this project at this time.
And I related to this. Like notoriously rebellious. You time block something on my
calendar. I will do anything except for that thing on that time block. And what
he realizes all he needed was was a reminder to be thinking about that.
And so, he would put reminders on his calendar that were recurring every year. And one of
the examples was, are you. So, he put this on his own calendar. Chris,
are you making progress toward your fitness goals? Or a hundred days before the end of the year, he
just has a recurring calendar invite that just says there's only a hundred days left this year.
What are you going to do with it? And so, it's just these little reminders,
little prompts to make you more intentional throughout your day. I think this
concept is really quite profound. There's probably a book that Chris is
going to write on it one day. How the heck are you going to use this to build your team?
I would suggest getting together, having a discussion about what actually makes a
good team. What's a team that they want to be a part of? So, you talk about that and you list out
a bunch of characteristics of a team that they want to be a part of and what would help build
their team. And then I would just go through. I would call this like reminders conversion.
This exercise can be called reminders conversion. Where you take what makes a great team for you,
and then you convert those into calendar reminders that actually become shared calendar invites on
everybody's calendar. So, you agree to say, oh, we really value the concept of connection
before content. But we know we get really busy around tax season because we're accountants.
And so, you just put maybe April 1st. You put a shared calendar invite that just says,
do you have two minutes to text somebody just to check in with them to see how they're doing,
right? Just simple reminder like that. But if you get together and in a two hour period, you
convert all these things that build a team into reminders, plot them on your calendar.
What you've done in a team building session isn't just had a nice time bowling for two hours.
But what you've done is taken what builds a good team and scattered it all across your
calendar to make team building a much more sustainable practice. Really the
most ideal thing that could happen right now on YouTube is I say, hey,
comment below and tell me what specific context and purpose you're gathering for.
And I'll offer some team building suggestions. Now, that might be unrealistic for me to offer in full,
which is why this December I'm hosting the connector summit. Which is this
annual gathering that I'm hosting for the first time happens live virtually.
I facilitate it. You may live on Zoom where I'm actually asking for your challenges,
problems, questions, etcetera, and speaking specific to your context.
And I created the Connector Summit because ideally I'd love to just
have coffee with every single person that watches any one of my videos.
But that would probably ruin my marriage and make me a bad Dad because I would just
be getting a lot of coffee with people. And so, this is the our chance to meet live,
go deeper than the YouTube videos, go more specific, more applied in your content.
And there is a link below. summit. And frankly,
it's going to be pretty awesome. If you want one more really clever idea, watch this next
video on how to manage up. Where I describe this concept of a user guide. Where you actually,
as a team get together and write a user manual for yourself. Like vacuums come with a user manual,
but humans don't. Humans are way more complex to operate and work with in a team,
but we come with no user manual. And so, one of the reasons teams break down is because we have
no flippin clue on how to interact with given people. But if you create a user manual,
in this video, how to manage up walks you through that process. And I think you'll really enjoy it.
I'm Chad. Have an awesome day.
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