Why this matters
Teams tend to think they know each other really well if they have spent some time together. Unfortunately, due to how the workplace has been mired with unquestioned convention that we are to keep our private persona separated from our work persona, this isn’t always the case. High performing teams often report their team feels like a close-knit family. For teams to perform well together they need to have a tight emotional bond and that can not be accomplished in the absence of sharing emotionally significant details about their lives. The true meaning of “engagement” is whether or not people have the ability to relate to each other and empathise as they care about each other and that ability is predicated on how intimately they know each other. This exercise will help replace years of asking for details about each other that may have been stifled by impression management or how we thought being “professional” means being unemotional and not sharing human details with one’s team mates.
How to run it
- 1
Agree on firm Chatham House Rules - complete privacy, nothing shared in the session leaves the bubble obviously;
- 2
Set the tone by re-reading the why above and allowing 2-5 minutes to discuss;
- “Does ‘Professional’ mean non-emotional?”
- “One of the Impression Management behaviours is the fear of appearing ‘intrusive’ or prying - has that been holding us back?”
- 3
In a Miro board the facilitator to write pre-filled framing affirmations or questions and assign every team member a sticky colour in two main sections
- 4
Data About Me
- Kids (if applicable) - ages, names and a word to describe them
- Spouse (if applicable) - age, name, how we met, what do they do
- How many places I lived in
- Favourite music
- Favourite food
- Favourite movie genre
- What I do to decompress
- The main theme of my education is …
- My claim to fame is …
- Brothers and sisters? Parents around?
- 5
Things You May Not Know
- Something I really love is …
- Something you would never guess about me is …
- Something I could only admit over beers is …
- I hope to retire by …
- If I were to start a business of my own it would be… (And do I intend to one day?)
- What one word describes us as a team?
- Let’s choose a team name (or a new alternative team name is one exists already)
- 6
Have everyone fill in the post its and then read out loud the topic and let people read for themselves the answers and then ask each team member to say which answer they found most surprising/they didn’t have a clue about (replace this step with 5 minutes of silent reading for the Mini version)
What next
Keep an eye on improvement on Engagement then return any time you have new members of the team — ideally this becomes a super boring exercise for most team members as they know so much about each other they could fill in each other’s answers! For teams who have been together long - a variation of this is the couple’s game but for teams - write the other team mate’s answers for them to check how well you know them. The one who gets the most right answers gets their lunch covered next time you’re out together.
Related resources
- Mini-bag of Psychological Safety Tricks (article)
- How to Organise a Team B!tch Fest (video)