Feed forward
An engaging variation on a feedback activity that focuses on future changes and positive action, rather than dwelling on what went wrong.
Library of facilitation techniques
Teamwork Activities and Games
Facilitation techniques and activities to support team work and create better aligned and more effective teams. Foster trust and openness, improve collaboration and manage team dynamics effectively with over 150 activities to improve team work.
87 results
Methods (85)
Shift and Share
You can quickly and effectively share several innovations or useful programs that may lie hidden within a group, organization, or community. Shift & Share gets rid of long large-group presentations and replaces them with several concise descriptions made simultaneously to multiple small groups. A few individuals set up “stations” where they share in ten minutes the essence of their innovations that may be of value to others. As small groups move from one innovator’s station to another, their size makes it easy for people to connect with the innovator. They can quickly learn where and how new ideas are being used and how they might be adapted to their own situations. Innovators learn from the repetition, and groups can easily spot opportunities for creative mash-ups of ideas.
The Secret Profession
The art of questioning to better listen. 2 rounds for the same team to discover the secret profession of the facilitator (or one of the participants).
The 4 Soils - Sprint Retrospective
Scrum is like a house, where the team can be safe and self-organize. They will build trust and continuous improvement. Respect Scrum team as an ecosystem will help the team evolve and build up teamwork, and the values will come Day by Day, Sprint by Sprint.
In every Sprint, Sprint Retrospective is an excellent chance to inspect and adapt the way of working. There are many formats to help Scrum Master facilitates the Sprint Retrospective. But I always think about the format that can focus on the team environment, the ecosystem. I keep thinking and uphold that idea, and I found the inspiration from the "Parable of the Soils”. Borrow that parable; I create the Sprint Retrospective format “The 4 Soils”. The meaning of this format is to focus on how to help the Scrum team define what is the good/ bad impact to the house o of Scrum. From that, team will have the action or change to improve/ maintain the ecosystem.
Team Canvas Session
The Team Canvas is Business Model Canvas for teamwork. It is an effective technique to facilitate getting teams aligned about their goals, values and purposes, and help team members find their role on the team.
Special Olympics
Practice team-work in a small groups.
Collage Our Progress
Individuals or groups prepare a collage of photos, icons, or quick art that reviews the concepts and skills previously learned in the program. Others interpret what the art and images mean based on their own learning.
Design StoryBoards – Basic
The most common causes of dysfunctional meetings can be eliminated: unclear purpose or lack of a common one, time wasters, restrictive participation, absent voices, groupthink, and frustrated participants. The process of designing a storyboard draws out a purpose that becomes clearer as it is matched with congruent microstructures. It reveals who needs to be included for successful implementation. Storyboards invite design participants to carefully define all the micro-organizing elements needed to achieve their purpose: a structuring invitation, space, materials, participation, group configurations, and facilitation and time allocations. Storyboards prevent people from starting and running meetings without an explicit design. Good designs yield better-than-expected results by uncovering tacit and latent sources of innovation.
Screwdriver
This step-by-step method is intended to facilitate the co-creation of actual measures and steps towards change within a team or an organisation. All participants are involved and develop all the ideas together. You have idea owners but the content is created through a process where everyone is involved in all ideas.
Birds of a Feather
Participants naturally want to form groups with common characteristics. This exercise illustrates how diverse groups have access to more resources and provide a greater variety of solutions.
Each person is given an index card with a letter on it, and then asked to form a group of five people. Participants assume that they should get into groups with others who have the same letter. However, when the facilitator asks them to form the longest word possible with the letter cards, they realize that it would have been more beneficial to have created a diverse group.
Fun with Snowballs
This activity energizes the group. So use it when participants need a spurt of energy. The main element of this activity is the anonymous way in which participants provide their inputs. The facilitator can use the information gained through this activity to evaluate what the participants have learned or want to learn.
Tower of Power
This teamwork activity requires participants to work closely together to build a tower from a set of building blocks.
The players need to coordinate their actions in order to be able to move the wooden blocks with the crane they have, and this can only be solved by precise planning, good communication and well-organised teamwork.
You may use this exercise to emphasise the following themes and outcomes:
- In Leadership training: identifying interdependencies in systems, leadership communication, dealing with risk, giving feedback
- In Team building: communicating effectively, cooperating, being an active listener, maintaining the balance, working with values
- In Project management: simulating strategic planning, working under time pressure
- In Communication training: meta communication, facilitating, dealing with different perspectives