Introduction

With an average of 30% new hires within teams each year, it is critical that team members are able to build relationships quickly.

Trust is the foundation of any effective team. It is very difficult for relationships to grow and for trust to build if you don’t know each other.

1. Split team into small groups.
2. Each group should select a spokesperson to write their answers down and share the findings with the rest of the room.
3. Team leader will capture the findings from each group and share with the rest of the room.

This is intended to be a fun exercise building camaraderie within the team.

Ask the team to find out how many things you have in common. This cannot include what they are wearing, body parts or anything business related. The most creative/obscure answer, wins!

This is a race to see how many each group can find and who can find the most detailed answer. It often throws up all kinds of interesting results. We once had a team who, not only realised they liked to travel, but they had all been up the Empire State building at similar times!

This exercise never fails to get people interacting and buzzing, setting a great pace and energy for the workshop.

It genuinely accelerates the start of establishing trust.

When going into meetings with colleagues, it is just as important to prepare for the people you are meeting with as it is for the meeting itself. This is a powerful collaboration tool.

These Profilers can be used by your colleagues to understand who they will be meeting prior to arriving at internal meetings. Agree internally where these will be stored so they can be readily accessed by anyone in the team.

1. Download an example Working With Me Profiler to share with your team.
2. There is a blank version on slide 2 which they should complete prior to coming to the meeting.

Share everyone’s Working With Me Profiler so that team members can see what else they have in common (i.e. that wasn’t uncovered in Exercise 1). eg. Hobbies or particular styles of working.

Having a conversation around things in common is a natural, easy icebreaker and can build a good rapport very quickly not only in the meeting but afterwards too.

Ask the team to see how many things they have in common based on other team member’s Profiler.

We would recommend listening to the ‘Taking Leadership to Another Level‘ podcast.

None of us individually are as good as we all are collectively

by Scott Herren, CFO Cisco.