TPI – Communication – exercise “speed dating or cocktail walk”

[viviane.vereecken]

Team Positivity Indicator: Communication – exercise “speed dating or cocktail walk”

Introduction
The seven positivity team performance indicators are unique and interdependent at the same time. If you focus on building strength in one positivity indicator, it will influence one or more of the others. For this exercise the focus is on building strength in communication. However, in building communication strength, trust, camaraderie and diversity will also increase as well as respect, constructive interaction and optimism.
Communication is central to every aspect of team performance. The trouble with communication however is, that the effectiveness of communication depends on many things like timing, relevance, perspective, bias, background, culture, values, sender, receiver, roles, rules, etc …
If a team is well developed on communication, they will:
“Value clear and efficient communication. Team members make a priority of listening well. Effective communication processes satisfy the need for clarity, speed, and content. Teams practice direct communication over approaches such as politicizing, gossiping, or stonewalling”.
Building strength in communication will improve team performance. Due to the focus on the productivity indicators, there is very often little time to interact with team members on a personal level. The exercise below will give team members the opportunity to practice communication skills on a personal level by sharing personal experiences, values, strength, pitfalls, …
Resources: no resources needed.
Set up: Divide the team in pairs. A team of 8 pp gives 4 pairs. Every 5 minutes the pairs must rotate to the next team member.
A team of 8 people gives the opportunity to rotate the entire team so everybody can talk to each other. When the team is bigger, limit the rotation to 4 or 5 times. Challenge the team members to choose the colleagues they know the least.
 

After the pairs are made you give the instruction to:
• ask each other 2 questions (see below)
• discuss these questions during a walk preferably outside
• all pairs walk in the same direction and stay close together (5 to 10 m apart, so you can easily change partners)
• listen to the timekeeper
The team coach is the timekeeper. You will give a signal to rotate after 5 minutes. Without a timekeeper they will probably continue with the same partner.
Time: 5 minutes per pair. You can choose to give them more or less time, depending on the questions you will ask and the size of the group. Experience shows that 5 minutes to max 10 minutes is ideal. The total exercise takes in general about 30 tot 60 min (team of 8 pp). If you combine this with outdoor walking it will take about 90 minutes.
The best time of the day is just after lunch. Often people feel a bit tired and this exercise gives an energy boost, especially if you combine the exercise with outdoor walking.
Questions: The team coach selects 2 questions each person of the pair needs to answer.
Questions depend on the team (dynamics) and situation and can be for example:
• What do you appreciate in me?
• What do you expect from me?
• What do I not know about you?
• What gives you energy?
• What motivates you?
• What will you be proud of by the end of this year?
• …
 
Debrief:
Debrief the exercise together (plenary). Ask questions such as:
• On a scale from 1 to 10 how do you rate this exercise?
• What did you like?
• What has pleased you?
• What is your learning?
• …

A key take away of this exercise is that it does not take a lot of time to get to know each other better, to connect on a different level, to create camaraderie, trust,

Different set ups:
• When F2F team session and nice weather: do the exercise by outdoor walking
• When F2F team session and bad weather: indoor walking (be creative) or create some separate places in the same big room (seats / cocktail tables) and people go from one table to another
• With a virtual team session: use the breakout rooms – switch the participants each 5 min from room, debrief by poll, white sheet with remarks etc …

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