Have you ever found yourself reading books about team building and beginning to wonder if every team has a rain forest in their backyard or an extra two hundred feet of rope just sitting around? This team builder is designed to help build teams that don’t do well getting out of their seat.

This would best be done over a five-day training or in-service time. Write each person’s name on a sheet of paper and post it on the wall of the room where you’ll be doing most of your sessions. Each time you meet together, give each team member a full sheet of paper and have him write a word that he would like to describe himself. Attach it to the wall under his name. After everyone has put his first word up, take some time to define how each word would be applied to various areas.

For example, we had twenty-four staff members when we did this exercise, and we used a spreadsheet to list everyone’s name. Our first round included the words willing, faithful, effective, discerning, consistent, thankful, dependable, teachable, real, caring, selfless, and kind. We had several people that used the
same word; faithful was the most popular one. During the second round we had the words organized, hopeful, steadfast, and compassionate.

After each round, talk about the words and what they mean to each work area. For instance, what does it means to be organized in your area? Practical things like what your desk looks like at the end of the day and daily removing the mail from your inbox comes out as a characteristic of being organized. As a group, you begin to set the bar of expectation fairly high for all members of the group. Your team will list words that you as a manager hope to see them follow through on.

After everyone has chosen his five words and shared them with the group, have each person come up with a memory tool for remembering his five words. For my words, I created the acrostic CORE which stands for consistent, organized, reverent, and enthusiastic. Bring these words back up later in the year and ask your team which word they need to work on the most and which word they believe they have best evidenced.

After going through this exercise, you will notice that you have quietly set goals for the year—goals that are ambitious and hard to reach, goals that will build your team.