Building a team
Scenario
In a medium-sized tech company, leadership has created a new team of eight people, all existing employees from different teams. I was invited to facilitate the opening morning of their on-site.
Problem
Everyone knows each other somewhat but hasn’t worked together before; the team needs to establish core values and principles to establish a creative working relationship.
Desired outcomes
The team feels excited, focused, and ready to work together.
Core Elements of Dignity
Acceptance of identity; recognition; acknowledgment; inclusion; independence; understanding
Why this worked
It met the needs of the client and also the team. It made the team feel included in co-creating values and needs for them all.

“That was incredibly valuable, thank you for making this happen” – Client team leader
How I tackled this:
Pre-read
I worked with senior leadership to create a short, compulsory pre-read containing answers to the key questions:

  • Why does this team exist?
  • Who is on the team and what is each person's role?
  • What are its focus and goals?
  • How does this team interact with the other teams in the company?
I also include a link to an anonymous form that contains the following questions:

  • How confident you feel about this new team? (five-point Likert scale)
  • How confident do you feel about the work ahead? (five-point Likert scale)
  • What is your biggest concern about this new team?

Use the concerns to change / refocus any of the activities.
Arrival
The room is set with a large table that everyone sits around. Everyone has notepads, pens, sticky notes at their seats. There’s a huge dry erase board on the wall, a screen I can plug a laptop into, and a pad of giant sticky notes on an easel.

I play some upbeat music and place a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle on a side table with a few small areas already completed, to occupy new arrivals and get them collaborating immediately, as well as something to do together during breaks.

9am
15 mins
Icebreaker to build rapport
I ask everyone to take 2 minutes to think of something about themselves outside of work that might surprise everyone. It could be a hobby, something about their family, a skill, what they were like as a kid...

Invite people to share, popcorn-style, until everyone (including me) has spoken. Each person has a maximum of 60 seconds to share their surprising fact.
9.15am
15 mins
Setting the stage
The team leader briefly sets the stage for the project and clarifies the purpose of the meeting (which we have discussed and confirmed beforehand) – to come up with a shared set of values, workflow, and responsibilities.
9.30am
15 mins
Brainwrite working principles
  1. I ask them individually to answer the following prompt on their notepads: "Think of the best team you’ve been a part of, professional or in a hobby. Write some short sentences about what made it good." (4 mins)
  2. I now tell them to write down, one sticky note each, what they need from this team to be successful. (4 mins)
  3. I explain the 'four whys' principle then invite the participants, in pairs that I choose, to share their sticky notes and ask each other ‘four whys’ about each of the needs. If the questions lead either person to want to change or rewrite any of their own needs, they can do so. (15 mins)
  4. With the whole group, I invited each person to read out their needs then place their sticky notes on the dry erase board in the room. (7 mins)
9.45am
30 mins
Break
I use the break to arrange the sticky notes into common/overlapping themes or phrases that I then write up on the dry erase board.

If there are more than ten, I start the next activity with dot voting to establish the most essential principles, and keep others to one side for us to refer to or bring into the existing principles.
10.15am
10 mins
Clarify working principles
I read out each of the summary principles I created in the break. For each, I ask everyone to raise their hands if this phrase feels important and reflects something they’d like this team to embody/do.

I watch carefully and ask anyone who doesn’t raise their hand about a principle to talk about why, and if necessary adapt the wording and see if that is then acceptable to the group via hand raising again.
10.25am
20 mins
Design a workflow
  1. I ask the group to name all of the core tasks that will be undertaken by this group, and write them on the board. If I don't understand what a task means, or some seem to be overlapping, I ask for clarification until we can get a good list. (5 mins)
  2. I ask two people to help me by writing out the list of tasks on two sets of cards.
  3. I split everyone into two groups, then ask them to order the cards as a workflow – which tasks happen first, which happen at the same time. (10 mins)
  4. We come back together and each group takes a turn explaining their workflow and answering questions. We then compare the two orders and discuss any differences, and come up with an agreed flow. I photograph the result. (15 mins)
  5. I then ask what comes before the flow from other teams, and what happens after this team's workflow – where does their work go next. The group discusses the responses. Once we have an agreed set on the board, I write these down on cards and place them in the appropriate places in the flow, and photograph the result. (10 mins)
10.45am
45 mins
Design exercise
  1. I use slides to introduce the concept of RACI, ensure that they understand. (5 mins)
  2. First individually, I ask everyone to write down the tasks we have in the workflow, then to define their own RACI expectation for each one (i.e. where they think they should sit on the RACI table for each task, if at all.) If they aren't sure, they should put their name with an asterisk. (5 mins)
  3. Go through each task as a whole group and ask people to speak up if they feel they should be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed on every task. I call out the task, then the R, A, C, I, and they need to say "me". If it's multiple people, I write multiple names up. (5 mins)
  4. As an entire group, we look at the RACI tables for each task in turn. Where are the gaps? Where are there disagreement? Mark where the disagreements are, for them to circle back to after the meeting, to get to an agreed conclusion. (15 mins)

11.30am
30 mins
Restate our working principles
I bring up the working principles again, and remind everyone what they are. I point out that we have a first draft of a workflow, and a way to allocate tasks and responsibilities.
12pm
10 mins
Anonymous online response form
Ask everyone to pull out their phones to use a QR code that leads to an anonymous form asking the following questions:

  • How do you now feel about the team? (five-point Likert scale)
  • How confident do you feel about the work ahead? (five-point Likert scale)
  • What has been the most useful part of today for you? (free text)
  • What big questions do you still have about this team? (free text)
As they come in, I review the average Likert scores and compare them to the pre-meeting scores. If the score is higher, I point that out to everyone as a positive closing note.
12.10pm
5mins
Closing remarks
The team leader closes the gathering with positivity and excitement for the work ahead.
12.15pm
5 mins
Debrief
I compile and share with the team leader all the big questions that people wrote in the form, as well as writing up the principles, workflow order, and RACI tables.