Creative Workshop Exercises: Easy and Engaging Workshop Activities #17 Identifying team strengths with one pack of strengths cards
Impact: Fun, engaging way to gain an overview of perceived team strengths.
Materials Needed: One pack of any strengths card pack, such as Positran Strengths, At My Best Strengths, BeTalent Strengths or VIA strengths.
In this example we use the BeTalent Strengths Card Pack
See more about the differences between these tools in our ‘Choose your product’ guidance sheet.
Small post-its. Pens
Remember, should you decide to buy one or more packs of cards, you can get 10% off your first shop order with a newsletter subscription
Professional Use:
Who is Identifying Team Strengths for?
This exercise is for facilitators, team leaders, trainers and others who want to help a team show appreciation to each other and understand the overview of the perceived strengths of the team.
How does it help with creating a Quick Overview of Perceived Team Strengths?
It is not always possible to use a strengths psychometric in team development work, yet helping a team identify its member’s strengths not only leads to greater understanding, it also boosts positivity and can be the gateway to conversations about working together better, mutual appreciation and future recruitment priorities.
Preparation
Take a pack of strengths cards and spread them out on a table that people can easily move around.
How to run the exercise
Explain to the team the basic nature of strengths, that is, our well-developed predispositions to behave in certain morally admirable ways when circumstances offer the opportunity. Emphasis the life-enhancing, motivating, enjoyable, energizing impact of using our strengths. Contrast this with the exercise of skills, which may be more effortful and less rewarding. Emphasise that you want people to be thinking of the strengths of others.
Ask the group to come and look at the strengths cards, encourage them to ask about any they don’t understand.
Send them back to a table and ask them to write each other team member’s name once each time on four post-its.
Explain that they are going to stick the post-its on the strength that believe they that person possesses. So for each of their team mates they will identify four different strengths.
Explain that they can do one person at a time, or they can come with all their post-its and allocated names strength-by-strength.
This is normally a lively buzzy activity where people not only get to distribute the names of others, but they also see their own name being allocated to strengths.
A number of discussions can be triggered from this activity.
One, the visibility of a strength is indicated by how many people selected to put a particular individual’s name on that card. As the facilitator you can inquire into that visibility, how the strength shows itself.
If the relationships and trust in the group are strong enough, you can also ask if it ever moves into ‘overdrive’, that is, becomes unhelpful or counterproductive in situations.
Another possible discussion is to ask people how they feel having done the exercise. This usually stimulates discussion of the pleasure of having one’s strengths identified, and named by colleagues.
A third possible discussion is to look at the distribution of names over strengths. Which strengths seem to have many names attached and which few? What does that tell the team about the pattern of strengths in the group? How, if at all, does this show up in group functioning?
Finally, you can initiate a discussion about how the team can more pro-actively call on each other’s strengths to get the team tasks done.
The BeTalent Strengths Cards packs featured here are all available at the Positive Psychology Shop. A discount of 10% is available to new newsletter subscribers
If you have any queries about the exercises as described, please contact Sarahlewis@acukltd.com. We will publish any queries and answers in the next newsletter to the benefit of all.
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