I'm designing teambuiling trainings. Lately I feel bored with the small range of exercises I can let the groups do. Who has some new exercises for me? Small ones and very complicates ones, everything is welcome!

-- Nienke Laan (laan@managementconsult.com), August 22, 2001

Answers

I come up with different problems and have them as a team figure out how to solve the problem. Everyone on the team must contribute. They go through the steps of problem solving so that everything is covered.

-- Celestia Ramm (CKRAMM@baptist-health.org), September 11, 2001.

We did a simple thing a few months back.

We were handed a tennis ball and told to pass it back and forth around the room, always remembering who had passed it to us and who we passed it to in turn. The ball had to pass through each of our hands.

Then the clock started and we were timed in how long it took us to repeat the maneuvers.

Then we were challenged to cut the time in half but still accomplish teh same thing. We were allowed 3 minutes, I believe, to come up with a solution. I don't know how many solutions there are out there to accomplish this, but someone came up with the idea to form a circle in the order we had passed the ball the first time, with the person who had passed you the ball on your left and the person you'd passed it to on the right. We then were able to pass the ball around the circle much faster than we had been able to across the table and in no particular order etc, and did in fact cut the time in half.

We then were challenged to cut this new time in half, I thought it couldn't be done. But someone else had us all place our hands in a circle palms up and then he rolled the ball around the circle through each of our palms, again, more than cutting the time in half.

This exercise is probably as old as the hills, but I was impressed.

It didn't take long, caused some great interaction, was challenging yet do-able, and really demonstrated how we let challenges stop us when some original thinking and teamwork can often lead us to easily beat the mark.

I am searching for something similar for a meeting I've been assigned to provide an exercise at... any ideas out there?

THanks,

Chris

-- Chris Osowski (chrisosowski@catholicexchange.com), March 12, 2002.