I’ve been in the organization and management development field for more years than I care to admit and I’m still amazed by what I see. For example, you would think that teams that have been together for a long time would know each other pretty well. Not necessarily! I was facilitating a team meeting awhile back when one of the members went on about how much he enjoyed seeing live theatre only to have another member who offices right next to this person say, “I didn’t know you liked the theatre; I had an extra ticket to Hamlet the other night and you could have gone with us!
So how well do you know the people that you work with – other than their area of expertise? At a team building session I facilitated last week, the team leader began the meeting by asking everyone to share the first live concert they attended. The responses ranged from Tom Jones with one’s parents to a first (and last) date at a Barry Manilow concert to the Rolling Stones to the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was a delightful icebreaker and it helped everyone to see each other as humans who had a life outside of work.
I like using exercises that help others get to know each other better. I’ll often ask people to provide a fun fact about themselves they are willing to share , with an emphasis on the willing to share part. Invariably someone in the group takes a risk to share something that really gives others an insight into who that person really is. What is amazing is that most of the time that person’s sharing will just open the door to others really being “real.
In writing about teams, William Schutz often said that a characteristic of high performing teams is that its members simply don’t want to let each other down , especially when members really know and care about each other.