Teamwork Definition Activity

Creating you own teamwork definition is something that is too easily missed when forming teams or trying to build a team ethos in an organisation.

Yet teamwork is something that is often best defined by building a shared understanding in your team, and more widely in your organization of what teamwork means in your context. That's because words are not enough. To begin to build teamwork into what you do, then as individuals you need to share your understanding of teamwork and agree together what you value.

It is crucial that you and your team have thought through what you value about teamwork and the behaviours you would expect to see. This activity is designed to help you do that: define teamwork for yourselves.

Developing a Teamwork Definition

Here is an activity to run with your team either to refresh your emphasis on teamwork or more often, when you are starting up with a team, to think through what teamwork means to you.

To get the most out of this team activity you may want to read our articles on teamwork. Firstly to step back and get a picture of teamwork principles which can often be lost in the day-to-day busyness of work. Secondly and crucial to this activity in our article "define teamwork" we discuss some of the common understandings of teamwork. Thirdly you may want to read "why is teamwork important?" where we discuss the value of teamworking.

You can use this teamwork definition activity together with the activity on benefits of teamwork either as a separate session before the benefits session, or in one session with the benefits of teamwork activity following on from this activity on developing a teamwork definition.

The aims of this group activity tool are to:

Provide an initial definition of teamworking process in your orgnaisation/team

Explore the dynamic nature of teamworking

Clarify what might make for successful teamworking

You will need a large room, a flip chart, marker pens, writing pads, and several packs of post-it notes.

Before the session

Ask people to think about the following and make some notes. Ask them to:

Consider / Reflect on keywords and phrases that you would associate with teamworking - bring them with you to the session

Identify a Team you would consider to be effective.

Identify a "Team" you would consider to be ineffective.

Consider what makes one successful and the other not.

Activity - Define Teamwork

Start with a discussion of what makes a successful team.

Ask the group to discuss what they value about teamwork?

Note on a flip chart any points made by the group, to build a picture of what you all consider important.

Gather / generate keywords and phrases regarding teamworking in you organisation/team (based on the work done before the session) using post - it notes

Ask the group to write on post-it notes key words or phrases using the notes they made in answering the activity set before the session as a start point. Remind the group of the pre-work activity and questions. Encourage the group to think widely and to create lots of words and phrases.

Use several flip charts to allow space for the group to place their post-it notes.

Allow around 20 minutes for this part of the activity or until it looks like the group has naturally reached the end of the activity.

Cluster and name responses

Ask everyone to gather around the flip charts and group similar words and phrases ( by moving post-it notes together which seem to be saying a similar thing) and attempt to give the cluster a name which best describes the grouping (it may be one of the words from the post-it notes in the cluster, that you think best summarises the theme, or it may be a different word that is more appropriate)

Allow approximately 30 minutes for this activity

Produce an initial definition using the words and phrases as a start point.

Using the newly "named" clusters, ask the group to work in pairs to write a definition of teamwork using the words and phrases that everyone has agreed.

Write our each of the definitions on flip chart paper and discuss with the group which combination or version they think best represents their teamwork definition.

This definition can be polished for discussion at the next session when the team meets to check that it is still valid and aligned with current thinking.

Go to Site Map from Teamwork Definition

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