Asked: I am looking for a team-building activity for 15 people at the end of a two-day meeting. We are a virtual team of trainers, managers and supervisors having a face-to-face meeting. Do you have any suggestions?
Answered: I think you are looking for a quality closing activity that is energizing and helps synthesize information from your conference. I originally read that you wanted a team-building activity, but since this is the end of the two days, it sounds like a networking opportunity that combines elements from throughout your session would be most effective.
First, I would suggest clarifying what message you want to end with. Do you need them to take some sort of new action? Are you hoping to better hone the relationships of this virtual team? You could likely do so many things, but here are a couple of ideas that you may find helpful depending on what you are looking for:
1) Graduation: Taking the concepts in the PDF, you may want to think about what ideas you would want people to walk out of the room with. This connects people in a chain as they find one another, and then you could even take this a bit further and have a closing celebration with people as they are now standing and possibly in a circle. Adapt, adopt and apply this to your own context as useful.
2) CTT Quilt: The instructions on this are really as important as the end product. With a virtual team, it is nice to know what each person is bringing to the table and how they are going to engage and support one another. Tailor this activity to achieve the goal you set for the end of this session.
There are a lot of other resources out in the world that you may want to explore for more ideas too.
I took the above ideas from one of our books called 50 Creative Training Closers. For this and other book resources visit our online store here.
I popped on to the Trainers’ Warehouse website and found a page that is all about teambuilding activities. There are expensive and less-expensive ideas, but they may help spark for you another idea of what you might like to accomplish.
Good luck with your creation! I hope that you find some value in these ideas. Please let us know if we can be of service to you in the future.
Scott Enebo is a training consultant at The Bob Pike Group.
