Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Turning over a new leaf - an interesting team building activity to deal with change

When I worked with the Ministry of Government Services, I had the opportunity to attend a team building event. This event was designed to answer Ontario government employees’ perception that little or no change was taking place in the Ministry. The team building game is called “Turning over a new leaf”!  The concept was to demonstrate to team members that change is happening although you may not recognize it as such.



Here is how it plays: 8-10 people stood on a plastic cloth. The cloth can be of any material as long as it is large enough to provide each person with just enough space to stand up but it shouldn't be too big to make this game too easy to complete.  One person starts to turn the cloth upside down from one angle and ask another person next to him/her to step on the opposite side of the cloth. Gradually, each person moves to stand on the opposite side of the cloth until the cloth is completely turned over and everyone is standing on the opposite site of the cloth.

While turning over the cloth, some team members won’t be able to see what’s happening but they have to hold tightly on to other team members and trust that their peers are actually working on turning over the cloth and make sure everybody is standing on the opposite side one by one. If any team member steps off the cloth, the team is eliminated from the competition.




Almost every organization is experiencing some sort of changes generated either by internally initiated actions or external influences. It is crucial to build team confidence through explicit innovative change management and also in less directive cycles that slowly we are making changes but we need patience. Leadership, buy-in, trust and fully support are required to make the change happen and ensure competitive superiority!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting blog.
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  2. Team building is an important process for the continuous growth of the organization. That's why the corporate office organizes employee engagement events for their employees. In these days, when many employees are working remotely, organizes employee engagement events for team building is quite difficult. Here we creative ideas for virtual team building exercises, that help remote employees to stronger their bonds with other employees.

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