Leadership And Management
View our latest blogs, videos and insight about leadership and management courses, leadership skills and training. See how you can become a team leader with our online learning courses and follow us for the latest info and insight along with upcoming management courses / training courses.
by Ming Wei | Sep 2, 2022 | Agile Coaching, Leadership And Management
What is a team leader — and what makes a great team leader?
Before asking these questions let’s take a look at the leadership skills employed by successful leaders who focus, motivate, and mentor team members working toward a targeted outcome:
- Qualities of a good team leader include emotional intelligence, effective communication and team management skills, a good understanding of team dynamics and team building, and fluency in the business language of the company culture. A great team leader will turn a group of people with talent and strong skill sets into a successful team.
- Responsible for team management and time management, the best leaders have an eye always on the team’s common goal. Their engaged style of leadership focuses on maintaining a positive working environment: It encourages constant communication and feedback that enable the team leader to manage performance effectively and solve problems quickly and decisively.
Now that many workplaces include remote development teams, especially in the healthcare and tech industries, effective project management favours evolving leadership techniques and tools that rely upon online communication. Remote or onsite, leadership skills hold it all together, often called upon to coordinate communication and teamwork on a multi-time zone schedule.
Respect starts at the top
Respect starts with the actions and example of a strong leader. Employee engagement — both with management and other team members —relies upon communication skill, a vital management skill rooted in active listening. Knowing the team and the quality of the strengths they bring to the table clarifies vision, focuses team commitment, and helps the team leader shape their management message with objectivity and integrity.
Great leaders:
Act objectively
A successful team leader is objective, able to understand various points of an argument or discussion, and open to goal-oriented solutions. Objective leaders weigh external factors in order to reach fair decisions that are clear to the team. Open leadership lets team members know that the decisions made are fair and just, and not based upon unclear preferences or presumptions.
Act with integrity
Leaders with integrity are clear about right and wrong, for a start. They communicate openly and directly, keep promises, and are consistent in their expectations and decisions. In return for this good leadership, team members will invest their own work with respect, confidence, and loyalty.
Make the hard decisions
When confronted with a difficult decision — often with limited information — an effective team leader first determines the common goal, the big picture. Effective problem-solving is the team leader’s expertise and responsibility. They weigh the possible consequences of their decision, consider any useful alternatives, evaluate opportunities that may be in play, then decide with the confidence that earns the respect of their team.
Lead by example
Great leaders demonstrate how to succeed, then establish that success as a benchmark for their team. The example of their own expertise earns respect and builds the team’s confidence. Great leaders inspire.
The best leaders are transparent about expectations and objectives, and they demonstrate how to achieve them. Their teams know what the team leader is doing, and how they’re doing it. These realtime learning opportunities often inspire team members to new levels of excellence.
Motivate and empower
Great leaders understand the key to successful teamwork: People give their best when they have a sense of ownership over their work and know that their work is meaningful. To guide this process successful leaders set clear goals and deadlines, then give their teams the autonomy and authority to decide how the work gets done. The best leaders set expectations high and encourage creativity and innovation, and include their teams in the decision-making process.
Embrace failure
Failure is an inevitable part of every success, and a great leader doesn’t shy away from it – they use failure as an opportunity for growth. As Robert Kiyasaki observed: “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” Point taken.
Leadership by example is a quality of the best leaders. They encourage team members to acknowledge and learn from failure, to acknowledge performance setbacks, and to share their solutions and improvements with the full team.
Whether they result from team leadership miscalculation or a disruption within a team, points of failure can also be points of clarification: Is the team’s skill set adequate to the tasks required? Might it be helpful to re-delegate tasks? To refine a job description? At pivot points like this an able team leader encourages and leads the team to challenge the status quo, to improve performance, and to innovate.
Leadership development and the big picture
Leadership skills are learned most effectively — let’s say only — when combined with experience. Being part of a development team, honing new skills and putting what you already know and have learned into your best work, makes the progress to a common goal vital to leadership development.
When the job description is Team Leader, it’s time to draw upon the active listening skills, project management expertise, and team member retention awareness learned from experience and training. The great team leader respects and encourages every individual team member’s career ambitions and knows how to channel them with initiative clarity and achievable team goals.
When looking at leadership, there are many ways to approach it. If you would like to practice your leadership and coaching skills with someone, you can contact Leadership Tribe and we are happy to get on call with you and discuss the best way to join our high performing Agile Training & Coaching Practice sessions.
by Krishna Chodipilli | Aug 23, 2022 | Agile Methodology, Leadership And Management, Leadership Tribe
“Thriving in today’s marketplace frequently depends on transforming to become more agile”- Scott M. Graffius
Most organizations are thriving and surviving in the digital era by transitioning towards agile methodology from traditional methods. By adopting agile transitions, they are gaining improvements and substantiative performance, leading to profitability, improved growth, employee engagement and ultimately customer satisfaction. However, many companies claim they are running an agile work environment, but many struggle to take the agile manifesto by heart.
If you’ve ever studied the agile manifesto or got the coaching of agile transitions, you probably will not be surprised that this working style can be a challenge. This manifesto is the disrupter of the traditional status quo which can be uncomfortable for many people. Therefore, many organizations fail to see the kind of results agile promises to deliver, only if properly implemented.
Agile transitioning: a case study
Let’s take an example of Agile transitioning in a well known organizational structure.
The Dutch banking group, ING in 2015, decided to shift from traditional methodology to the Agile Model inspired by the giant market leaders Netflix, Google and Spotify. Fortunately, ING’s new approach boosted their employee engagement, marketing and increased their work progress, clearing out backlogs of tasks and overdue initiatives.
To truly adopt an Agile environment, it takes willingness and commitment to let go of all the conventional method of doing things in the organization. The agile transformation is not just about some fancy jargons and new meeting styles; it’s a whole way of business transformation.
You may immediately want to know how Agile transition works and how the transition from waterfall to agile transformation can work. But before building that agile transformation roadmap, you must know what it is.
What is agile transition?
The agile transition is the transforming act of an organization’s nature or forms progressively to the one that can thrive and embrace a collaborative, self-motivated and flexible fast-paced environment. The agile manifesto principles and values can be exercised and taught in any organization, with agile teams whether small or large. However, the organization needs to understand the agile framework basics and values to get healthy and true agility rewards.
How does an agile transition work?
The agile transition process begins by setting goals, designing a leadership team, and forming an agile transformation roadmap for the team to meet business needs. Organizations create progress check-ins periodically contrary to the planned product roadmap. Then, crucial adjustments/changes are made to keep the project on track while keeping it realistic with these cross-functional teams.
How to transition from waterfall to agile
To make the agile methodology work, the organizations running on the bureaucracy, waterfall project development, or silo management system must embrace the agile transformation roadmap. Employees will need coaching in agile transitions to make the most out of it. They need to understand and embrace the core principles of agile. This requires empowering the employees to work autonomously, to be self-organizing and to be confident in independent decision-making while educating them on rewarding and evaluating the staff in this new business paradigm.
New procedures should be established. New tools must be adopted to facilitate the new work patterns, product management and development process. Each leadership team and employee may need training, ownership and distribution throughout the agile process.
Successful ways to facilitate the transition from waterfall to agile
· Communicate regularly
When you move to agile methods such as scrum training, sprint planning and workflow management methods like Kanban, the teams need to communicate daily. Daily stand-up meetings are a good way to do this. It remains a crucial part of the testing and development activities for agile coaches and teams. Leaders need to understand where the pain points are developing in the team and substitute an environment that makes the best solution to remedy to such issues. In such a growing environment, it’s also vital to be ready for any potential changes. By developing a clear line of knowledge, the development team will keep implementing iterative changes to achieve project deliverables.
· Strengthen the mutual vision for a successful agile transformation
Most organizations are good at making operational and financial goals, but such goals only motivate the upper management or product owners rather than the organization’s average worker. To boost the mutual vision and develop an agile organization, the company needs to reestablish the key performance indicator (KPI) metrics and connect everyone with a more profound sense of purpose. This goal and objective needs to flow top-down, from senior management to those implementing the projects.
Customers and employees are the heart of any business, so step away from the financial projections and charts and ask how your service/product contributes to the world? What would your company’s success mean for employees and customers? What will it mean to you in retrospective?
· Train staff on the agile rollout
Bringing new practices and ideas to the work members could be a disaster. Many professionals are likely to be accustomed to shifting and working to agile practices without guidance, which fails. To perfectly implement agile approaches in an organization, training sessions should be conducted. Also, organizations can look into the institutions that help the teams understand agile through different resources like blogs, seminars and books.
· Encourage collaboration amongst team members
There is no template overall, but agile transition’s essence is collaboration across each individual team. By communicating effectively and collaborating through different tools, the team becomes solid and buy-in towards agile development is encouraged. Companies can also engage agile approaches when testing to ensure that the functionality and requirements of the project/product developments are up to the standard.
· Give everyone time to adjust to the agile transformation strategy
Like Rome wasn’t made in a day, your company will not transition and make an agile transformation in one day either. Whether C-suite, stakeholders, project managers or support teams, when you move groups of people from a conventional project management based system to a result-based system, it always comes with a learning curve and a potential cultural shift in the company. As an organization, you have already few projects lined up, and it’s best to finish them before agile implementation. Don’t try to force buy-in right away, or try to convert every business project into an agile project overnight.
Wrapping-up the agile transformation journey
In a nutshell, agile adoption – converting from traditional waterfall methods to agile methodology is not an easy job as a manager or team. This is an essential aspect for any corporation to understand the core’s agile concept and then deliver it to their employees in order to develop an agile mindset. Managers/leaders can play their part by encouraging business agility, in turn motivating the entire organization and its teams to become adaptable to change. However, if implemented correctly with the proven tips and right coaching, this methodology can take the organization above the sky (like the Dutch banking group example) and increase business value in time.
Contact Leadership Tribe to find out more about preparing for Agile Transitions and build your agile transformation roadmap today
by Aarti Bhatt | Aug 16, 2022 | Leadership And Management
Handling Conflicts with Teams
Conflicts take place in all environments, be it personal or professional. Here we are going to investigate how we can see the signs of conflict and manage conflict in the workplace at a professional level when working in teams. I am sure we have all faced conflicts at our workplace and what’s important is – how did we manage it.
A lot of us tend to look at conflicts as a threat. The most important thing for us to acknowledge is that conflicts will occur, and we need to normalize it. It is OK to have conflicts. There is some level of effort that is needed to address conflicts in the best way possible without worsening the situation.
Another big question is “Who resolves the conflict?” Is there a particular person from the team who plays the role of a mediator and helps resolving it? However, the answer is, there is no single person who is solely responsible to resolving the conflicts in the teams. It is the entire team who should collaboratively come together to help resolve the conflicts and this is usually a key part of the ground rules for finding the causes of conflict.
However, in an agile team, the scrum master plays a vital role in coaching and mentoring the teams and supports in removing any impediments. He/she is the guardian of the scrum processes and ensures team adhere to it. If the teams can identify the origin of the conflict, usually they try to resolve it amongst themselves and look at each parties viewpoints. It however gets done under the supervision of the Scrum Master if the conflict is intensifying and becomes an impediment for the team.
Beyond Conflict Management, Let’s look at how conflict in the workplace can be resolved
Personal Coaching is one of the best ways to resolve conflict situations in any work environment. The Scrum Master plays a vital role here in the resolution process overall. They pay attention to the root cause and listen carefully to the challenge at hand. It is important in the first place for the Scrum Master to have good conflict management skills and be someone who’s decision making is trusted, as they will need a good relationship with the team members to be able to guide them through any impediments and simultaneously the teams should have a good relationship amongst themselves too.
Having one on one coaching conversations with the team members helps everyone be an active listener and understand their concerns and challenges that are being faced. One needs to give the teams time to try and resolve it on their own and figure out a way. But when there is a situation that the basic conflict is not going anywhere and impacting the productivity of the team, the Scrum master steps in with his or her problem solving expertise.
Here are 4 steps to help resolve conflicts and mentor the teams
Scene Setting
One needs to start by understanding the root cause of the conflict before taking any actions. This know how is vital for all working relationships because acting on the conflict without understanding the root cause can worsen the situation and only suppress the problem even further – which in turn can reduce overall team performance. The Scrum Master uses an assertive approach to bring the team together to understand the root cause and improve the team or company culture overall, as clashes can often arise from something beyond the task and workflow overall.
Gathering information
Listening is an integral part here when gathering information about each type of conflict. Avoid going awry with your tone of voice, being judgmental of the people or situation at hand. Understand the challenges from the perspective of everyone involved, as everyone has different work styles and levels of teamwork historically in their experience. Remember to respect everyone’s point of view and create the safe environment where everyone feels heard and acknowledged.
The scrum master needs to help the team understand the conflict doesn’t just impact the people involved in the conflict but also the rest of the team. A common way to improve team building is making sure the team knows/understands each other, the skills, roles and tasks each person has and thus can pre-empt any task conflict.
Brainstorming to find common ground
In certain scenarios it might not be possible for the scrum master to provide the solution to the conflict. You can guide the team to come up with various solutions. This can happen with directing the conversation using various facilitation tools and techniques. You can ask powerful questions, having healthy debates, use hands on activities for brain storming which will help in hearing the quieter voices in the team too.
Deciding on the solution for employee conflict
Once you have brainstormed all the different ideas and inputs from the team, make a list of them which is visible to everyone. Have a discussion around those and ask the team which they would like to implement and come to a mutual understanding of moving forward. Encourage the teams to talk together and build trusts which would allow them to share openly and express themselves. Look out for potential sources of conflict and tones of voice that may raise issues.
The benefits of conflict resolution are that there is better understanding between the team members. They learn something new about each other as they move forward and learn to adapt and work better together. The trust level between team members improves which leads to better coordination. The teams become self-aware and also learn to respect each members way of functioning and learn to adapt to newer ways of working. Ultimately it leads to better productivity and happier teams.
Learn more about agile, scrum, teamwork and digital transformation with our Agile Training & Scrum Training with online courses from Leadership Tribe today.
by Aarti Bhatt | Aug 4, 2022 | Leadership And Management
As a member of any team, it is our goal to reach a level where all our team members across various skill sets, from team leaders to new staff attain the level of working as high-performance teams. However, this level of effective team dynamics sometimes can be a wish which seems far off… sounds familiar? In this article we are going to look at what exactly is a High Performing Team and what are the characteristics of these teams.
So, what exactly is a High Performing Team?
A group of people with specific knowledge who are goal focused and achieve high business results. Individuals in the team bring in their expert knowledge and skills and collaborate, innovate, and produce great results as a team. This helps whether with decision making or problem solving, down to the enjoyment of the project or task overall no matter what the team size.
Why should teams be High Performing?
All organizations are different, and the culture built within each organization varies for every business. It can be the values and beliefs and all the way to how organizations treat their employees. Having a strong organization and team culture is very important for the success of a company. All the areas in an organization will highly benefit if companies focus on performance and culture. By doing so, it will lead to:
- Better engagement within teams and with the clients
- A better retention of employees
- Higher productivity by employees across the organization.
- Happier employees and happier customers.
A collaborative and effective team goal can drive incentive for all involved.
What are the problems you solve by being a High Performing Team?
- Lack of Trust
- Lack of Leadership
- Poor communication within teams and with Leadership
- Unclear goals / visions
- Poor feedback mechanisms/ frameworks
- Acceptance to change
- Managing and resolving conflicts
Now let’s look at what are the different Characteristics of High Performing teams
1) Having a clear and aligned purpose
All team members understand the vision, mission, and goals. They need to understand and come to a common understanding of “why” they are doing what they are doing. This helps create a strong work environment for all and enables strong team development.
2) Clear Roles and Responsibilities
Everyone in the team knows what their roles & responsibilities are and know what they need to contribute to those goals. They know how to leverage each team members skills and make the best from it. From project management to use of leadership skills, the team needs come first.
3) Trust and Mutual Respect
For Teams to be able to collaborate and work together, Trust and respect is very important. Great teams value each other and trust that each members knows what they are doing or how they will execute their tasks. Having this element of trust allows members to:
- Commit fully to what they are doing
- Take risks without having to wait for approval/ permissions
- Share ideas openly (you never know what brilliant ideas can be generated when teams have that space to share their thoughts and ideas)
- Innovate products and create new methods and new ways of working
4) Proper Planning
Whether a new team or revising an existing structure, the teams develop a structure that works for them to plan their work in advance. They create guidelines or operating procedures for planning and execution which help even out the process and make it simpler for the team. This allows a space for everyone’s voice to be heard.
5) Self-Managing Teams
Self-Managing teams take full responsibility to ensure the work they have committed to is delivered through collaboration without having a manager or leader telling them what to do. The teams know what next to work on and/or have the decision to pull in their work. It is a pull system and not a push system.
6) Managing conflicts within the team
Conflicts will arise irrespective of which team you are in. However, it is “How” these teams manage conflicts that matters. Different opinions will take place and encouraging the teams to have an open dialogue and effective communication creates a space to share each ones opinion and let the best teams be heard.
7) Celebrating Successes and Failures
As High performing teams it is important to ensure you celebrate with your teams. It is always nice to acknowledge the effort and work that goes behind each project or deliverable. Roles should offer complementary skills such as employee development so that all members feel a sense of purpose, and positive about the team composition and open communication.
8) Continuous Learning
Teams learn continuously when they collaborate and solve problems together. Encourage your teams to up-skill themselves and create a space for them to practice their existing skills.
We have looked at some of the characteristics of high performing teams. You know where your teams excel and where they can make improvements now that you are aware of the qualities of High performing Teams. So what can you do to take one step closer to getting outstanding results from being part of a High Performing Team.
Learn more about agile, scrum, teamwork and digital transformation with our Agile Training & Scrum Training with online courses from Leadership Tribe today.
by Krishna Chodipilli | Jun 6, 2022 | Leadership And Management
The Agile Manifesto points out that “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is by means of face-to-face conversation.” In constant conversation, using program backlogs, the scrum and scrum master, tech talent and all stakeholders, we commit to the agile planning process. The goal is to produce tested and timely iterations that enhance business value.
Now, step back a bit for a view of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) set up to manage larger projects with intricate hierarchies. Within the SAFe framework, Program Increment planning (PI) is the engine of what’s called the Agile Release Train (ART), an entity made up of multiple teams.
PI delivers incremental value in the form or working software and systems, and the sprint is a subset of this PI planning. PI sounds like a sprint but, as those train metaphors hint, the difference is one of scale: In effect, PI is to an Agile Release Train (ART) as an Iteration is to the Agile Team.
Five to 12 teams work together on the ART, compared to a single agile team conducting a sprint. Face-to-face conversation — including remote PI planning in this time of Covid — ensures that all team members share the product owner’s goals. In the sprint, each one- to four-week session engages one highly-committed team. Compare this to the PI planning which maps four sprints for completion in eight to 12 weeks.
Within the PI SAFe project management divides the development timeline into a series of iterations. The SAFe will identify dependencies, clarify and strengthen organizational readiness, and foster cross-team and ART collaborations.
Like a scrum master, in pre-PI planning the release train engineer (RTE) outlines the PI planning process and how it works, what input is expected from the teams and what they are expected to produce, and overall PI objectives.
The PI planning process addresses 3 major considerations:
- Organizational readiness: Do the teams, trains, and business owners agree on the PI priorities?
- Content readiness: Is each agile team organised around a scrum master and product owner?
- Logistics readiness: Are real time audio and video channels available to support all attendees and ensure a successful PI planning event?
During the PI planning event the RTE may uncover barriers to project completion that can only be resolved by renegotiating with management, stakeholders, and the business owner. The scope and features of the product may change in this process.
A program board will be set up on site to highlight any new delivery dates, feature dependencies between teams, and targeted milestones. Once program risks on the board are assessed and addressed, teams are ready to hold a confidence vote to affirm their capacity to meet PI objectives.
5 notable differences between the PI release and the sprint iteration:
- The plan for the development team: Sprint planning involves one agile team; PI planning shapes the work for an entire 5- to twelve-team agile release train (ART).
- Outputs: The sprint and scrum development process targets delivery of a working product iteration at 1 to 4 weeks; PI development and the ART aim to meet business goals in 8 to twelve weeks. At completion, both sprint and the PI teams hold retrospective events to review and evaluate what they have accomplished and how well targets have been met.
- Inputs and the road map: A sprint development team responds to daily input from business owners and all team members to produce iterations as quickly as possible; PI value is delivered by multiple teams and requires high-level roadmap planning to sustain the work over a longer period of time. The business context in the PI may be more broad than in the sprint.
- Commitment levels: The sprint is intensive and requires a high level of commitment from team members, stakeholders, and business owners; PI is an emergent plan that requires a fluid level of commitment from the development team, product management, the systems architect (IT expert), and the release train engineer.
- Making the development plan: Sprint planning takes 2 to 4 hours; PI planning involves more teams and team members, and takes 2 days.
PI management review and problem-solving
- Planning events: Pre-PI planning will describe the context and inputs sought for individual ART planning events. Post-PI planning points out the results of the ART that best contributed to project goal fulfilment — the solution.
- The draft plan review describes the project’s scope, the teams in place, and the resources available to complete team tasks. The Solution Train Engineer (STE) makes sure the results of each management review and problem-solving meeting are implemented.
- The retrospective: PI planning session team members may rework their plans in order to achieve high confidence in what the teams have accomplished. The RTE leads the retrospective for the PI planning event, as at the finish of a sprint, to evaluate what went well, what did not, and what post-PI planning should inform the next PI.
Benefits of PI planning
Agile development practices in PI planning are always responsive to variations and changes in cross-team decision making, the introduction of new features, draft plan and final plan review, and business goals.
Benefits arise from successful PI planning in the architecture vision of the agenda: Each team in the ART is committed to their collective PI objectives and to producing the business value as identified by the business owners.
A useful tool in PI planning is the program board. This visual compilation of data makes clear to all team members the working relationships in the ART. The program board may be used as a template for team plans, including team breakouts, and to advise the ART of new PI planning meeting or upcoming PI. The board will mark progress, new feature delivery dates, dependencies, and any issues of product functionality.
Leadership Tribe will help clients design and set in motion their business planning journey from start to finish. Innovation with minimal disruption is our specialty. Learn more about digital transformation, planning and executive leadership with our Agile training online courses from Leadership Tribe today.
by Ming Wei | Apr 27, 2022 | Leadership And Management
An ‘icebreaker’ can be a very useful and powerful tool on many occasions. For instance, to help members to bond in a newly formed team, to understand your team members better, to acquaint participants from different backgrounds in training, etc.
I can still recollect how surprised I was when I heard some of my colleagues addressing the icebreaker ‘tell us about one fact that we don’t know about you. After years of working with the people in the same team, it is amazing to get to know the real people and how smart, talented, and unique everyone is.
Now after transforming from a project management consultant to an Agile Trainer, icebreakers helped me to build rapport with all kinds of participants, instigate a safe and fun learning environment, and encourage engagement and teamwork within days of training.
I have summarised some of my top list of icebreaker questions, guidelines, and tips for using icebreakers, which I use while facilitating my training programs. And I hope they can provide some help to you. I have hand-picked icebreaker questions and categorize them into 5 groups vaguely. The reason why I said ‘vaguely’ is that most of the questions can fit in multiple categories, depending on the context, objective, the way they are used, and of course your perspectives.
So from “would you rather’s” to “if you could do anything,” hopes, fears, favorite foods and favorite things to everything in between, here we have the top 50 list of fun icebreaker questions!
Our first set is about getting to Know Your Team for the First Time: Good icebreakers here include –
- Tell us about your name and how did you get your name?
- If you are going to use an adjective to describe yourself, which word you are going to choose? (e.g. Mighty Ming)
- Tell us one fun fact about yourself.
- Name one thing that you are unbeatable at.
- If you were famous, what would you be famous for?
- What would the title of your autobiography be?
- What sport would you compete in if you were in the Olympics?
- As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
- If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be?
- What are your hopes, fears, and expectations (e.g. for this training program)?
These questions are introductory, relevant, and simple. They are great to get participants to know each other, having fun, creating connections, building confidence speaking in front of the group, and lay the foundation to bring individuals together to work in teams. Even in the days of remote teams and virtual meetings on Zoom, these work well as virtual icebreakers too!
Ming’s Top Tip: Don’t underestimate the introductory icebreaker. It sets the tone for the event. Let the fun begin!
Get to Know Your Team Better: Questions 11-20 look more at the rest of your life, bucket lists and other team building questions to help you know your team and all new employees better.
- If you could keep/change one part of your work/life routine, what would it be?
- What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?
- If you could do anything in the world as your career, what would you be? (You could also talk about a favorite place to visit for instance as an alternate too)
- If you were left on a deserted island or post-zombie apocalypse with either your worst enemy or no one, what would you choose and why?
- Which decade do you love the most (e.g. 60s, 70s, 80s, etc.), and what is the reason for your choice? Could be a pop culture reference such as a TV show or fashion trend, music, favorite movie, etc.
- What would you do with your time if you have won a million dollar / pound lottery jackpot?
- If you had to eat the same meal every day for the next year, what would you pick?
- What do you do to stay active / relieve stress?
- What’s something new you’ve learned about yourself in the last three months?
- Name one thing that you have completed recently that you are proud of. (Variation: Have you been pleasantly surprised by anything recently?)
These questions aim to ‘dig deeper and understand a bit more about your team members. They can be work-related or else, depending on your objectives. Bear in mind that it might take a bit more effort for some people to open up, so assure them of the safe environment, confirm that there is no right or wrong answer, and encourage participation and employee engagement.
Ming’s Top Tip: There are a lot of variations on the questions you can choose from. Be aware of your team’s context and readiness, and help people to build trust and establish rapport. Also, try to avoid culturally or politically sensitive topics in discussions as those can create distrust and awkward silences. Remember, the objective with a great icebreaker is to break the ‘ice’, not the ‘iceberg’. Keep things light, hence the use of funny icebreaker questions and gentler topics like pop culture, trivia and travel.
Understand / Evaluate the Current State with these additional icebreaker questions for work –
- What give you the unbounded happiness at work / in life? (Variation: When was the last time you felt unbounded optimism?)
- How would you describe your work/lifestyle in 3 words?
- Who has made a positive difference in your work/life recently? (Variation: What’s a time when someone did something you appreciated at work or in another context, but you didn’t let them know? What held you back?)
- What are some strategies that you’ve found to be helpful in your recent work? (Variation: Name one useful productivity hack you have learned recently.)
- If you had to give a lecture on one thing you are great at, what would it be? (Variation: If you could write a book that was guaranteed to be a best-seller, what would you write?)
- What would you change if you have a magic wand and can change absolutely anything in your current work/life? (Variation: If you could eliminate one thing from your daily routine, what would it be and why?)
- If you had to describe how you’re feeling right now as a weather pattern, what’s your forecast? (Variation: What emoji represents you today and why?)
- Are you aware of any aspects of your personality that hold you back? How do you adapt?
- Name one thing you’ve been procrastinating on and can’t finish. What are your next steps?
- What’s one of the biggest risks you’ve taken in your career/life? How do you feel about having taken it?
These icebreakers help to initiate an open discussion on ‘where we are. They are very useful for revealing insights and creating awareness for team members, but often require a certain level of team establishment and knowledge of the people and work.
Ming’s Top Tip: Evaluation is important for team members to understand where we are all standing and realign to our (common) goal. For the things we do well, encourage people to celebrate success and think about how we can create impactful results. For the things we don’t do so well, encourage people to think about what we can improve and the action plan.
Understand Team Member’s Desires with these icebreaker games and questions:
- What would your absolute dream job/life be like?
- If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be? (Variation: If you could learn one new professional/personal skill, what would it be?)
- If you could have one superpower today, what would it be, and for what purpose?
- Name one small thing that would improve your day today/job satisfaction?
- What’s something that puts you in a state of flow? (Variation: What are you doing when you feel most alive?)
- A genie appears and grants you a wish for someone else in the world. Who and what do you make a wish for?
- If you could rid the world of one last thing, what would it be? (Variation: What’s one thing that you could stop doing to give yourself more focus?)
- What’s something you would change if you run the world?
- If you had a magic button on your desk to bring you whatever you wanted, what would it summon?
- If you have the power of teleportation right now, where would you go and why?
These questions are very useful to initiate a discussion on ‘where we want to be’. They are fun and help you to tap into people’s desires, what motivates them, and what they want to do or change. They are simple to use yet powerful to instigate thinking and action at both individual and team levels.
Ming’s Top Tip: Everyone has inner desires that need to be fulfilled. Some of them are less obvious than others. These are the reason we work hard. If you are trying to build an effective and high-performing team, start by understanding their vision and motivation.
Funniest team questions that look at a fun way to explore your teams creativity:
- If aliens landed on earth and offered to take you with them, would you go?
- What would be the most surprising scientific discovery imaginable?
- What is your favorite magical or mythological animal? Alternate version could be about a cartoon character or movie star.
- What is one thing we would never guess about you?
- What current fact about your life would most impress your five-year-old self?
- According to you, what looks ‘easy peasy lemon squeezy’ but is actually ‘difficult difficult lemon difficult’?
- What’s your guilty pleasure right now? Maybe ice cream, talk shows or karaoke?
- What is one thing you do that gives you child-like joy?
- What would you do if you came home and found a penguin in your freezer?
- If you could choose any two to four famous people to have dinner with, who would they be?
These questions often take people by surprise and bring a smile to their faces. In my facilitation, I use laughter as the catalyst for team energy. When you observe the energy of the room is a bit low, it’s time to have some fun! Talk about favorite ways to go about ones day.
Ming’s Top Tip: Let your imagination go wild! There are a lot of questions you can use. The key here is to have fun! As Maya Angelou rightly said, ‘people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’. Plan and anchor them with happy emotions. Also, listen to people’s answers and be ready to be surprised by their creativity!
In summary, I have hand-picked some of the useful team meeting icebreaker questions which I use personally in training and facilitation and even virtual team building activities in recent years. You can use these for work, or simply build relationships with people around you. One thing I’d like to advise is, don’t wait for the best occasion to use these icebreakers, start applying them to facilitate the introduction, discussion, and team building in your events. See how that serves your purpose and adapt accordingly. If you are interested to learn more about how to design and facilitate events and learn more facilitation tools and techniques, join us in our flagship Agile Team Facilitation (ICP-ATF) virtual course!
I hope you find them useful. I’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions, success stories, or anything else you’d like to see in my blog.
Looking for some team-building activities in the virtual setting? Download the Virtual Team Building Exercise to learn simple and effective exercises you can conduct with your team straight away!
