Team²

Start your workshop off on the right foot with Team Navigator. This fun, easy, interactive exercise is the ideal introduction to a day of collaboration and hands-on learning.

Themes & Outcomes

Team Development: cooperating, communicating nonverbally, sharing responsibility

Project Management: drawing on resources, seeing a challenge through to completion, experiencing the need for individuals to contribute 

Systems Thinking: seeing the whole, sacrificing personal gain to achieve a  group goal, looking for patterns

Performance Improvement: focusing on goals, learning and retrying

How it Works

All participants form a circle around Team Navigator, each holding one or two ropes attached to a pen mounted to a moving plate in the center. The goal is to work together to draw a shape, write a word or trace along a path on a sheet of paper. This is not as easy as it looks!  

Variations

Name Compass
Symbolically, the team members draw their way through the seminar day, following the lines of a maze. They experience in advance both swift progress and  encounter potential bumps in the road. Instead of giving each other directions in the usual way (“up”, “down”, “left”, “right,” etc.), the participants are only allowed to use each other’s names (“A little more towards Julia and Tom!”). This is an unusual way of learning names that sets your seminar apart from anything the participants have seen before. The trainer may also prepare the paper sheet in advance with facilitation cards half hidden in slits. Whenever the pen lands on a card, the trainer reveals one of the day’s topics.

Guide Dog
4–6 participants put on blindfolds. The others take the lead and verbally coordinate the drawing activity. The ‘blind’ experience the importance of sharing essential information; the seeing discover just how much precise instructions help overall success.