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Tabs Container
titleTeam Exercises
directionvertical


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titlePsychological Safety Audit
Think of a time at work, at any point in your career, in which you held back on speaking up with a potentially important work-related idea, question, or concern. Think of who was present, what was being discussed. What did you momentarily consider saying?


•     What was the primary cause of your withholding?
•     What was the primary consequence of your holding back?

To what extent do these statements hold true in your workplace?


•     In my company, I feel empowered to take risks.
•     My organization has a healthy mindset around failure.
•     Hitting your targets is the only way to get ahead.

Think of a recent failure at work that you observed or helped create.


•     What was the context? (Where did it happen?/What was the goal?)
•     What were the primary causes of the failure?
•     Who knew about it?
•     How much was learned from the failure?

Recall the failure you identified earlier.


•     Consider the context and the primary causes of the failure.
•     How would you characterize the context?
•     Routine
•     Complex/Customized/Variable
•     Innovation/Discovery


What percent of failures in your organization are caused by blameworthy acts?

What percent of failures in your organization get treated as if caused by blameworthy acts?
How might you, “frame the work” keeping the following features of the work in mind: uncertainty, interdependence, what’s at stake, the role of failure?
What will you say to build a shared understanding that anyone’s voice might matter?
What good questions can you ask in your next meeting?
When should you push for breadth? When should you probe for depth?


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titleTension Session

Tension Session 


Normalize productive conflict on your team by using an exercise to map out the unique value of each role and the tensions that should exist among them. Teach that conflict and tensions are not the antithesis of cross-functional teams, but part of high performance and continuous improvement.


Activity Instructions:

  1. Draw a circle and divide that circle into enough wedges to represent each role on your team. For each role, ask:
    1. What is the most common tension this role puts on team discussions? What one thing does the person in this role have to say that frequently makes others bristle?
    2. What is the unique value of this role on this team? What should this person be paying attention to that no one else is? What would we miss if this role wasn’t here?
    3. On which stakeholders is this role focused? Whom does it serve? Who defines success?
  2. Answer those questions for each member of the team, filling in the wedges with the answers.


Facilitator Notes: 

  • Emphasize how the different roles are supposed to be in tension with one another throughout
  • Use examples of contentious issues that your team has been stuck on to illustrate these points.
  • Talk about how you’ll use each of these different perspectives as criteria in your decision making from now on.


Once you go through this exercise, you’ll see that  when presented with all the information, the team will be able to align around a decision. Where they can’t, the most effective path is to defer to the team leader to make a call taking all of the perspectives into consideration.


What you’ll discover using this exercise will open up so many great discussions. Use it to address issues like:

  1. someone who is advocating too hard for their narrow point of view
  2. a team member who has stopped adding their unique value and as a result has left the team exposed in some way
  3. A role imbalance on a team where role coalition overpowers other roles
  4. Performance goals that are misaligned with the best interests of the team overall.


With heightened awareness and a shared language, your team will start to realize that much of what they have been interpreting as interpersonal friction has actually been perfectly healthy role-based tension. They’ll realize that ; they’re one of the main benefits of them. (Or as I like to put it, conflict is a feature, not a bug on teams.)


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titleAnxiety Party

Anxiety Party


This exercise helps teams to practice vulnerability honesty, and encourages them to acknowledge their own insecurities. It also surfaces conversation and alignment on projects, products and priorities. It was originated by Google Ventures n 


Activity Instructions:

  1. Ask your team to write down their biggest anxieties
  2. Have everyone rank their concerns in order from most to least worrisome
  3. Have a team member share their list with the team
  4. Ask other team members if they had similar anxieties.
  5. Facilitate a conversation to get feedback and perspective 


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