Games Teams Play: Dynamic Activities for Tapping Work Team Potential

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Creating teams is easy; making them effective is incredibly difficult.
The challenge comes from identifying the characteristics of an effective
team, measuring the team’s present status against those benchmarks,
and finding a way to move from what we’ve got to what we need.

Bendaly’s work helps with all three stages in the process, with
emphasis on the critical third step. She presents and explains the
benchmarks and provides a “team fitness test” that diagnoses the
extent of the work to be done. This preliminary pulse-taking is a task
attempted by many but succeeded at by few. The structure and
step-by-step process provided by Bendaly’s test will be
enthusiastically welcomed by trainers—as will the array of 50
team-building exercises that constitutes the bulk of the work. Ranging
in length from a few minutes to a day, these are designed to develop
cohesiveness, nurture shared leadership, and generate group synergy and
similar traits that are needed if teams are to be effective.

Bendaly calls these exercises “workouts.” Whatever the label,
they’re what trainers need most—ways to make learning at least
interesting and maybe even fun. Every exercise is rated by difficulty
level, and an index in chart form identifies which elements of an
effective team are addressed by each exercise. For all exercises,
Bendaly gives objectives, background, time required, materials needed,
and step-by-step directions for the facilitator. A feature trainers will
love is that she also supplies repro-ready masters for all overheads and
handouts needed. Purchase of the book includes limited reproduction
rights to these.

This is a well-organized, creative resource for trainers of all types:
managers, team leaders, in-house trainers, consultant/trainers, and
college instructors. If team development is on the training menu, reach
for this work.