I’m assuming you’re looking for something to do with your group. If that’s the case, you come to the right place. I am Chad. I used to teach team building facilitation at Penn State University. Now, I get to do it for some of the smartest, most innovative organizations and universities on the planet. I get to make connection and engagement easy. In this video, I’m not going to hold back. I’m going to share the best of what I know. Let’s dive into it.
In this video, I’m going to share a visual framework that’s going to help make any team building that you do much better. I’m also going to share 3 of my favorite exercises that I think get to the heart of connecting and building team and team work a sense of cohesion and camaraderie as quickly as possible. Better yet, I’m going to share a really clever way to access a database of 500 plus collaborative learning, interactive team building games that you can actually search based on how much time you have how many people are in your group and the exact purpose of what you want to accomplish.
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Whether you want to build trust and empathy or problem solve or just break the ice. Really phenomenal database. Let’s dive into it with a framework. One of the things that as I was teaching at Penn State partnering up with one of my teachers and mentors Rod Lee to write a book called the Pocket Guide of Facilitating Human Connections, the first third is like a master’s degree and team building facilitation in like 12 pages. And then the last half are 20 different team building exercises, etc. I’m going to share a sneak peek into some of those so you don’t have to buy the book but you can get lots of value.
The Comfort Zone Model
You see when we’re leading team building team development experiences, the most fun and impactful experiences Happen in that learning zone. We want to get people outside of their comfort zone but we don’t want them to stretch too far into a place of panic. The easiest way to do that is an age-old philosophy of challenge by choice. This age-old philosophy of challenge by choice can make a huge difference no matter what activity you’re leading. And the idea is pick your own poison, right? We know that team building connection exercise, etc are good for people but we also know that broccoli is good for people and we don’t want to just throw broccoli at people.
What’s a much better option, much more impactful option if you want to fill up your group is lay out a buffet and let them choose what they’re going to eat. Or in this case, let them choose to what level they’re going to engage or challenge. And that ensures that everybody’s able to stretch outside of their comfort zone but not get to panic zone. Kicking off right away, one of my favorite and most simple exercises to get start some really meaningful conversations in the team and parse out who’s in the room is to take that comfort zone’s model and use some sort of rope, chairs.
If you’re virtual, a white board for a digital whiteboard to actually create that model and invite people to stand and actually move to that space based on a series of prompts that you give. And you get to choose the prompts the ones that connect to your group and the purpose the best will be best.
But for example, I might say you got 20 people standing in a room. I’ll explain the comfort zone. Comfort zone is where we’re comfortable. Learning growth zone is where we’re stretched outside. Things are a little unfamiliar. Panic zone is where heart is racing. Heart is racing intensely and we can’t think, we can’t, learn we can’t grow.
I’m going to give you a series of prompts. And based on these prompts, move to where you would fall on that spectrum. Imagine a six-foot black rat snake came slithering through and brushed up against your ankle. Go ahead and move to where you are. Right? And what you get is some people jumping to the comfort zone… “Oh, I love snakes.” You got some people sprinting to the walls. And for me, I just use one piece of rope. One piece of rope to represent comfort zone then the rest of the floor is learning a growth zone and the walls are a panic zone.
Virtually you can do this very easily in a whiteboard like google jamboard or over zoom whatever whiteboard you prefer. And have people plot or draw circles or type their name on those places for each round. Now, the cool thing is is you can go with a prompt like that or you can go much more purpose focused with your prompts. If you work with low-income youth, Stand on the spectrum where you would be if you walked into a home and it looked not like your home? Things were really disorganized. You were stepping on things. There was a smell to it maybe. Whatever that is. Stand where you would fall on that spectrum. The most valuable prompts will be connected to your purpose.
The activities simply called comfort zones. Having people move around as round 1 or or phase 1. As you get into more real estate prompts, inviting people to pair up. Pair up with someone who you’re furthest away from and have a conversation about what lands you either in the comfort or panic zone. Allows for a lot of cross-collaborative sharing, cross-functionally and cross-comfort levels. You could also say… You know, if you’re trying to map out introverts versus extroverts. Stand where you would be on the spectrum walking into a room full of 100 strangers and nobody you know.
When you see that parcel, right? You get to pair up and match up introverts. With extroverts, you have to have a conversation about that dynamic, how it affects your organization, etc. Just loads of debrief ideas there. Simply comfort zones. Number 2 comes from the very age-old game of rock paper scissors shoot. Some of you may have experienced that in varying degrees.
Culturally it’s different depending on where you’re at. You need to teach the group the basics of rock, paper, scissors shoot. But this activity is called rock-paper-scissor olympics. I’ve done this even with 250 health care professionals who are like a little bit stuffy to be honest. When we did this exercise, they just ignite it broke out of their shells. It’s like adults turn into little kids and little kids just have a blast. It’s a pretty universally appealing game. The idea is you play rock paper scissor, best out of three one on one. However the catch is when you beat that person, they are recruited to be on your team and now they’re cheering for you.
You’re inviting the person to go behind you and cheer you on as you go face your next opponent. Even in a room full of 250 people, after about 5 to 10 minutes, maybe even less, you get down to a final 2, you have this very loud cheering back and forth. Somebody from somebody’s team wins and it just creates this it’s a huge energy booster. Great to do after lunch in particular. If you want to debrief it, you can. But I typically use it as an energizer. It’s not for every group. But when it’s well timed, it can be really great. You can do it virtually in some creative ways. You got to be creative of how you do that over zoom breakouts and what not. But you can do it virtually if you apply a little creativity. Before we get into number 3 why don’t I just give you 500 different team building exercises?
I’ve got a friend named Mark Collard based in Australia. He’s created this phenomenal site called playmeo.com. If you go to playmeo, we, him and I linked up and partnered to give you all access to this giant database of 500 plus searchable group exercises. If you just go to playmeo.com/weandme, You can access this huge database and find the exact activity that is perfect for you. If you didn’t like 1 and 2, stick around for number 3. But I guarantee you there’s something on Playmeo for you. Phenomenal with video tutorials, virtual adaptations if you’re going to do it remotely. Phenomenal resource.
Question Swap
Third, last but not least is my all-time favorite exercise. I’ve led it with over 100,000 people at this point and I have yet to have it completely flop. It utilizes questions to spark meaningful conversations in a really fun, fluid, energetic way. The activity is called question swap. You can use…Depending on your group size, you can create your own questions on its 3×5 blank note cards if you want to. There’s this really lovely deck of We! Connect Cards that are designed for this exact purpose. I spent with a team of people 2 years boiling down and doing research on these 60 questions in particular. These questions in particular help accelerate trust but maintain that level of connection in a non-threatening way.
They’ve got questions on one side, actions on the other. The box comes with a link with 10 different video tutorials that you can do. But my favorite all-time favorite exercise is called question swap. Very simply, you give everybody a question, invite them to pair up with the person they know least in the room. Ask the question on their card to the person across from them. Listen to their response. That person asks them their question swap cards, toss your hand in the air signaling that you’re looking for somebody new. The reason that I love the mechanics of that so much is it creates so much choice for the types of conversations you wind up in because the cards are color coded as well. Even if you’re going to make your own, I’d invite you to create some color code so that people have choice in the types of questions that they have. Beyond that, it allows people to be in conversations for as long or as little as they want to. Whereas when you say, “Okay, everybody. Break out and answer the question.
“What are people usually surprised to find out about you?” And everybody is in those conversations. And then you say, “Okay. Okay, stop.” Pull everybody’s attention back. It’s a total energy killer. Because some people want to keep going. Some people already finished and are kind of awkwardly waiting around whereas with this question swap dynamic, it’s a really beautiful fluid swapping they can swap when they’re done not when you think they’re done. That question swap exercise, you can click somewhere around here is a video of me leading that with 800 people at a TedX event so that you can see that come alive. That might help make that sing for you.
You can also lead it virtually in creative ways on platforms like Zoom where you’ve got access to breakouts. Split people out into groups of 2 or 3. You can’t quite have them swap in the same way. You can create multiple rounds and choice around the questions that you have.
We make a ton of our resources even a digital version of the card deck I just shared, a printable version of the card deck available for free at weand.me/ideas. We don’t want to put a paywall behind people building really meaningful engaging group experiences. All we do offer all the tools in our Connection Toolkit from the We! Engage Cards to We! Connect Cards.