Tag Archives: appreciation activity

Team Building Activity – The Appreciation Exercise

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Personally, I don’t think that team members in a team appreciate each other enough. It is important for managers and leaders to look for opportunities to let team members intentionally show appreciation to each other. The Appreciation Exercise is a simple team-building activity that teams in a short time can use to appreciate each other. I really used the activity with a team I was working for and here are my facilitation notes for the activity.

Disclosure: I got the idea from SessionLab so the notes below are not entirely my own.

INTRODUCTION

All successful teams are made up of individuals who each bring something to the group. Taking a moment to appreciate each team member and uplift one another can be a great way of creating connections and deepening trust. The aim of this activity is to allow the team to show some appreciation to each other. When people hear about their strengths from others it can help to build their self-confidence and motivation.

DURATION (ESTIMATED)

  • 10 – 20-minutes

ACTIVITY OBJECTIVES

  • The team will build their self-confidence and motivation by appreciating each other.

MATERIALS

  • Sheet of paper for each team member
  • Pen for each team member

INSTRUCTIONS

  • This version works best in groups of six to twelve; outside of these limits, you will probably want to adapt it, perhaps by breaking the team into smaller groups.
  • Have people sit in a close circle, including the facilitator(s).
  • Give everyone a sheet of A4 paper, including the facilitators.
  • Ask them to write their own name at the bottom of the paper CLEARLY.
  • Pass the paper to the person on the left.
  • That person writes a phrase or two or a few words, at the top of the page, to describe what she or he most values about the person whose name is on the bottom of the sheet.
  • Fold the paper neatly so the comments are covered.
  • Pass the paper on to the next person who will repeat what the previous person did until everyone has had a go and each person gets back the sheet of paper with their name on it.
  • Allow everyone to read their own comments quietly.
  • Ask each person to mark the one he or she likes the best or one they would like to share.
  • Ask people to stand up in a close circle, and ask everyone to say the strength she or he liked using positive words like “I am….” or “I have….”
  • Remind people to take their pieces of paper home and treasure them.

DEBRIEFING QUESTIONS

  • When you read the comments how did you feel?
  • What do all these comments tell us about our team?
  • What personal lesson will you take away from this exercise?

Team Building With The Appreciation Activity and Marshmallow Challenge

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Photo by Mark Basarab on Unsplash

Today, I had the opportunity to do a short team-building session with a team I had been working with for a while. I tend to show up at their team meeting and do a session with them because I don’t believe in one-off events. Working to support any team with team building requires a long-term commitment. I was initially going to do a session that had to do with one-to-one meetings but the manager asked whether I could do something on team building. I searched around for what to do and I came across SessionLab (sessionlab.com). SessionLab is an app for designing workshops. The app allows you to design workshop outlines with timing using a drag-and-drop interface. You can also print out the workshops you design on the app too. You should check them out if you have not already done so.

SessionLab also has a brilliant community of facilitators who share ideas and support each other. When I did a search on Google for team-building ideas (I looked at some books I have but they were pretty dry) SessionLab came up in the search with 58 team-building activities that people had contributed. I joined their community site and started looking through the activities. That’s when I came across the Appreciation Activity and Marshmallow Challenge.

I already knew about both of them and have used them before but the community site gives you full guidance and instructions for the activities. You can print and amend them to suit what you are doing. I took the information from the site and created my own resources (which I will share at some point when I tidy them up properly) and then headed out to do the activity.

The first part of the session was the Appreciation Activity. In this activity, I gave everyone a sheet of paper where they had to write down their name at the bottom of the page (that’s what the sheet looks like below).

After each person writes their name they will pass the sheet to the person on their left who will write a positive or appreciative comment about the person whose name is on the sheet and then fold over the place where they wrote the comment and pass it to the person on their left who will also do the same. Every member of the team did this till each person got back their sheet.

I then told them to unroll their sheet so they can read the comments and they were all told to share one of the comments. That exercise had a massive impact on the people in the room who were pleased by the comments they got from their teammates. I believe doing exercises like this can help to build trust and possibly increase psychological safety in a team.

Next, we moved on to the Marshmallow Challenge. I split them into two small groups (of five people per group) then gave each group, 20 sticks of spaghetti and a bag of mid-sized marshmallows and gave them the instruction to build a standalone tower with just those two items. I gave them the option of using sellotape as a third resource for their towers and if they ran out of spaghetti sticks they could purchase two from me in exchange for one of their marshmallows. I told them that their tower will be judged on its height, rigidity, and appearance. They can also get extra points if they demonstrate clear teamwork with a plan and designated roles. They were given 20-minutes for the activity.

The image below is a collage of what they did.

While they did not follow all the guidelines we learned some key lessons about teamwork. To debrief the activity I asked them the following questions:

  • What was your team’s strategy?
  • What were the roles in your team?
  • What worked well for your team?
  • If you did it again what would you change?
  • Ask each person what they learned from the activity.
  • Ask them what lessons they can transfer from the activity to their work.

The teams had different strategies. One team simply dived in after a brief sketch of what they wanted to do, created one tower that fell apart but because of their speed created another tower quickly and actually won. The strategy for this team was speed and risk-taking.

The other team was more cautious. They started out building a strong base for their tower and because they were really slow when their tower fell apart they had no time to rebuild it. We talked about the importance of balancing safety with risk and the fact that both approaches are needed. We also identified the importance of working together and recognising each person’s strengths.

I enjoyed the activity and learned a lot myself. I’m going to be doing more of these and looking out for ideas to use for such sessions. And again a big thank you to the guys at SessionLab.