Team Building and Focus Groups

by Ret David North

You don’t have to be the only one behind the scenes. No matter what you’re tackling, having a team, a committee, or even just a partner to help strategize and get the job done is a total lifesaver. As you may have seen, recently we talked about gathering members for a communications committee by hosting focus groups on specific issues. (If you haven’t seen this post yet, you can go check it out here.) But one of the biggest issues we often run into, as always, is stepping outside of the job description and getting to know our teammates (or better yet, ourselves) as people.

Many of us are still remote, or at least a great deal of what we do is online from home. In many cases, this can be emotionally and socially draining. Aside from the blurry line between relaxation space and work space, we do not often see those we work with face-to-face, which eliminates much room for casual social interaction or relationship development. Focus groups can also be a bit difficult this way if you are working together for longer than one meeting.

Team-building or ice-breaker activities can be a great way to start a new group off right, to take a break from the grind, or to celebrate an achievement. Below you can find some activities that can be done both virtually and in-person to help your group step away from your job descriptions and come closer together as human beings.

1. Book Club
   Having your group come together as a book club, even reading a book somehow related to your work, enables you to come together over time by learning about each other through discussion of perspectives, jokes about characters and story arcs, and even time reading the book aloud together. This activity can take place over a much longer period, in some cases longer than the actual lifetime of your group. You can factor Book Club into your regular meetings or into separate meetings solely for that purpose. While reading the book itself can take some additional time to your existing commitments to group work, if done well, Book Club can be a very rewarding activity for your whole group and for each individual member as well.

2. Game Night
   Game Night is a great way to celebrate achievements or to start groups off as an ice-breaker. If you are the organizer of the group, watching how your teammates interact with one another playing various games can also give you some insight as to how your group may interact in work mode. Game Night can also become a regular occurrence separated into themes based on game type, such as card games, improv/social games, and even video games. Playing games of any kind is also a casual, relaxing, and fun way to interact with members of your group while taking your minds fully off your work and job descriptions.

3. Show and Tell
   Equally impactful between young children or adults, Show and Tell can be a brief, but effective break in your group’s regular meetings that enables group members to get to know each other personally. Over Zoom, Show and Tell is commonly done (if unintentionally) with pets who often wander into frame asking for attention. You can suggest a theme for group members to go by, or choose specific group members to do one Show and Tell per meeting.

4. Dance Break
   A dance break or a “silly break” can also be an effective break in the middle of your group’s regular meetings. Sometimes, the work we do is mentally exhausting, and working with each other trying to accomplish goals can be equally aggravating on complex issues. Embracing silliness and dancing, even for one or two minutes, requires that you and your teammates relax, smile, and bring down social and emotional boundaries around each other. This can also be a great trust-building exercise—if you can trust your teammates with your ridiculous moves, you can trust them with important work.

5. Mad Libs/Improv Exercises
   This is an activity that can take any amount of time and can be equally effective for your group’s work, beginning-middle-end. In activities like Mad Libs or other improv exercises (for ideas, watch scenes from Whose Line Is It Anyway?) guide you and your teammates through the creative process without any pressure to create an absolute masterpiece. Thus, this activity is a great team-building exercise and, given the right amount of comedy, can be a relaxing break from work.

Another important (while sometimes less fun) team-building activity is periodic reflection on how well you and your group work together. This can be written down and conducted anonymously, done in partnerships or small groups, or you could even broaden this activity out into a group retreat. Overall, your group should be well in touch with the goals and ambitions of the whole group but also with each individual member’s goals for, needs from, and contributions to the group.

And as always, remember to bring enough coffee for everyone!