Productivity – Alignment Exercise

[Anonymous]

Alignment Exercise: Team Vision and Identity (90 to 120 mins)

This exercise is very useful in enabling a team to creatively think of their purpose/vision and align to their team identity.

Summary: Individual team members choose from a variety of pictures that best describe their team vision and how they want to be as a team. Once they all choose, they present and explain their choices to the team. Their choices get posted on the walls and through discussion they align to one picture that best describes their team vision and how they want to be as a team. As an option you can have two pictures – one as team vision and one illustrating how they want to “be” as a team.

Materials:

1. Lots of random pictures from many various magazines. Full sheets are better. They can be anything from pictures of a race car, bowl of cereal, forest, pictures of houses etc. Suggestions: Home and Style, National Geographic, Travel, Car etc. The more pictures you have and the more random the better.

If you can, it is a good idea to get them laminated.

2. Colored post it notes

Process:

1. Scatter the pictures randomly all over the floor of the room, on tables, in the hall way or wherever you have space. If you have access to more then one room, utilize that space too.

2. Instructions to the team: You will see many pictures on the floor, on the tables, in the hallway depicting many different things. Your task is to walk around and find a picture that best describes your team vision and how you want to be together as a team.

This exercise is to be done individually and silently. Take your time, be curious. Once you have found the “one” go back and write a brief description explaining why you chose that picture, what it means to you and how it makes you feel. (15- 20 mins)

Note: Variation – Each person picks two pictures (one for the vision and one for how they want to be as a team). It is up for the coach to decide if they want to go that way or just use one picture. You can also leave it up to the team to decide or the individual person.

3. Each person will present their picture and explain why they choose it. (2-3 mins/person).

4. Once all team members have had a chance to speak, post everyone’s pictures on the walls around the room.

5. Give each person some post its to write on.

Note: The next step is to get a discussion going that allows the team to start choosing what they liked from each others vision and designing the team vision. The goal is to get them down to one or two pictures. Before beginning the discussion, the coach should emphasize any agreements the team has around judgment, defensiveness, openness or other behaviors that may get in the way of open feedback.

6. Coach starts off the discussion. Pick one of the pictures and ask the group what they liked about the description they heard – it could be the idea that was behind it, the words that were used or the feeling that it evoked. Instruct people to write it down on the post it and place it below the picture. A few words at most. If more then one person likes a particular aspect then each person should write it down and post it. (30 mins)

7. Coach moves on to the next picture and asks they team the same questions. What did you like, how did it make you feel etc. The coach keeps moving them through all the pictures.

8. Once the team has gone through all the pictures. Coach asks team to look at their comments. What do they notice is important to the team? What are the common themes of their visions? What are their common behaviors? (10 mins)

Note: Have a team member capture it on a flip chart paper.

9. Coach asks the team to choose a picture from the wall that best represents their aligned vision and how they want to be.

Note: Coach can make this as fluid and as open as they like. Teams have asked to merge a few pictures together or create a brand new one. They key is that they align to an image of their vision.

10. Once they have all aligned on their representation of their vision, have the team write a vision statement for the picture.

11. Accountability Action: Team must determine what they will do with their picture and vision statement. Will they post their picture on the wall? How will they communicate their vision to their stakeholders or the wider organization? What behaviors do they need to change to achieve their vision? How will they show up differently? When will they know they are successful? (20 mins)

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