Philosophy of Team Building Introduced

One of my favorite topics as this blog gets going will be facilitating team building activities. Now, I have been doing team building activities for over 12 years and I still am not sure if many people understand the fatal, and common, flaw when they try to lead one them selves. My argument goes something like this.

"If you run a team building activity where you set a problem for your classroom group to try and you sit back and watch as the do the activity, then the following will happen: the leaders will lead, the followers will follow and your group might be successful at completing an abstract task involving rope and hula-hopes. However, nothing changed about your classroom dynamics"

"So, what should you do?" I'm often asked

"The activity needs to be manipulated in real time to force the leaders to follow and to force the followers to lead"

Much more on that topic and these five main components to a team building activity coming soon.

1 – “Set Expectations” This component involves planning for and discussing both good and bad behaviors and what they look like.  

2 – “Frame the Activity” This component involves providing a fictional storyline to the activity.  

3 – “Facilitate the Activity” This component is just as it sounds.

4 – “Debrief the Activity” This component is perhaps the most important component because it is where the real learning occurs.  Debriefing is a group discussion about what took place, what was learned and what can be applied to real life from the activity.