Team Offsite Activities for a small team?

June 8, 2024 2:19 PM

pretty much what it says on the tin-

Group is 6 people and our task is team building and finding alignment on the big goals for the year.

Looking for activities or facilitation guides or even guiding questions that people have gound useful in the context of a team offsite.

Thanks Metafilter!
have seen this question from 2013

posted by wowenthusiast to Human Relations (4 answers total)

This sounds awful, but this exercise where you look at many words that describe different things to value like 'humor' 'honesty' etc and then have to just choose two as your most important and talk about why you chose them. It has been interesting and a good way to get insight into how coworkers' minds work: Brene Brown core values exercise
posted by lizard music at 2:29 PM on June 8 [1 favorite]

My work did a Myers Briggs test and then had each person give a short presentation about how they like to work. We mentioned our Myers-Briggs types in these little blurbs but really it was a way for each person to writr a working manual for how to get the best out of them.

“I’m an ENTP, so I love solving problems. My intuition is strong. Many ENTPs don’t really like research, but I kind of enjoy it. Most of all I love working under pressure and adapting on the fly. Sometimes when I give feedback I forget to be tactful because I’m excited, sorry in advance and I’ll keep working on it! I like leaving things open-ended so I appreciate getting a nudge to finalize decisions. I thrive with excitement and love to socialize and bond as we work!”

It was a great way for people to explain their preferences and also tactfully explain ways that work sometimes drove them crazy. And because it was "related to the Myers Briggs test", nobody took it personally and it really smoothed out and optimized our workflow!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 6:15 PM on June 8 [1 favorite]

We did an icebreaker bingo thing that was then turned into two teams trying to help each other remember all the info we’d picked up during the bingo earlier. If your team remembered that Kate loved chicken rice faster than them remembering Yi Ling loves sushi then you got their team member on your side. It was very noisy and fun and drive in all those dumb icebreaker facts which are useful shorthand for work chats - you know where people like to travel and favourite foods and sports etc.

The other really good team activity has been competitive Lego building. We took turns with instructions and bricks and organising, so you had to cooperate a lot.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:37 PM on June 8

I do a lot of facilitation in my day job and keep coming back to various Liberating Structures facilitation exercises. Based on what you're trying to get out of the time, purpose to practice, TRIZ, what/so what/now what, appreciative interviews or critical uncertainties could all work. I use the structures as jumping off points rather than strict guides, often tweaking them to suit the needs of the group I'm working with. A lot of them are designed for bigger groups than yours but they work well with small groups too.
posted by terretu at 9:04 PM on June 8 [4 favorites]