Creative Workshop Exercises: Easy and Engaging Workshop Activities #25 Outdoor Team Coaching for Team Development
Impact: This exercise should increase team cohesion and enhance understanding of the team context, opportunities and challenges.
Materials Needed: One pack of the Outdoor Coaching Cards
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You can download this guide here
Professional Use:
Who is Outdoor Team Coaching for?
This exercise will be useful for any team leader, facilitator or workshop leader who is interested in stimulating conversation through metaphor of important aspects of team functioning or performance.
How does it help with creating team cohesion?
By encouraging close observation of the natural world, this exercise is designed to stimulate team conversation about important things through the use of metaphor. Engaging with nature can also have a positive impact on wellbeing, and the exercise will also encourage focused attention.
Preparation
Select an area for the team walk.
If you want to team to be focused on a particular challenge or activity, then spend a few minutes bringing that to front of mind. For instance, ‘As you know, we have a big challenge ahead of us. I’d like you just to be thinking about that was we go on our walk.’
However, the exercise will be equally interesting and revealing if you just see what it brings up.
How to run the exercise
Before you start the walk, share the cards between the team members. Ideally you want each member to be holding no more than seven cards. If there are a few left over, don’t worry, just put them back in the pack.
Explain the game
As you walk along, each team member is actively looking out for the features or vistas they hold in their hand. When they spot one, they say something like, ‘I spy,’ or ‘I’ve got a match!’
The game
At this point the whole team stops to admire the spotted feature. As a skilled coach you can of course use your own questions to draw out parallels or team learning. At the same time, each card has a question on the back.
Be aware that as this is a team exercise you may need to adapt the questions slightly so that the singular becomes plural.
For example, the thistle picture asks: ‘How can what feels difficult be of service to you? ‘Which you might just want to adapt it slightly to become, ‘How can what feels difficult be of service to us?’ to encourage them to think as a team.
This is a great question.
In response, someone might say, ‘I’m really struggling with the way we’re having to cut services right now, I don’t see how that can be of service to me or anyone!’
Someone else might say, ‘Yes, it is horrible, but it does force us to prioritise amongst need. Does this help us identify what is really important to us? Perhaps we need to get pro-active about reminding ourselves about the core of our mission?’
Someone else might say, ‘Maybe we can think of it like pruning: cutting back now to ensure the healthy growth of the tree?’
While the blossom picture asks: ‘What options open up from here?’
For example, people might take the question literally in the present and say thinks like
‘We can smell it’
‘We can brush it and release scent’
‘We could pick it’
‘We could paint it, draw it’
Or at another level they might say
‘We could go forward or back from here’
‘We can step off the path to get closer’
Once you’ve explored the physical situation, explore how this works as a metaphor asking questions like:
‘What in our team life is delicate and beautiful like this blossom?’
‘Thinking about that as being like this blossom, what options open up for us about how we can engage with our challenge in a beautiful, opening up, way?’
And the Toadstool card asks: What story would you like to create?
Which is another great question, however, I find the toadstool a very interesting metaphor in its own right and I might ask questions like
‘The toadstool is both beautiful and toxic, what is does that remind you of in our organisational life?’
‘How can one appreciate the beauty while avoiding the poison? What does this tell us about to deal with the toadstools we come across in our work?’
‘Fairy rings are famously made up of a ring of toadstools. Who are the fairies and where is the toadstool ring?’
There is also the word toad-stool. So one could ask, ‘What toad squats on a stool in our work? What might be the kiss that turns it into a handsome prince?’
You can also ask people other myths, legends, facts they know about toadstools.
At the end of the walk, you can ask the team to reflect briefly on the experience:
What did they learn about themselves?
How has ‘looking out for things’ affected the energy of the walk, what they noticed, and what they didn’t?
How did it feel to ‘spot’ something and share their discovery?
How can they transfer this learning to their team work, and team working?
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If you have any queries about the exercises as described, please contact Sarahlewis@acukltd.com. We will publish any queries and answers in the next newsletter to the benefit of all.
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