Understand and appreciate your own and others work styles
Work Styles starts with participants considering their own working style and writing down their preferences on a number of given subjects. Next they get to know their peers by networking the room and finding out how others match their own styles. The aim of the game is to find as many matches as possible. With the group energized, it is time to form into teams of similar working styles.
The groups discuss and define the characteristics of their preferred working styles. Then they carry out a team activity. Next they form teams with as many different work styles as possible a similar activity to the last. A group facilitator then leads a group discussion exploring why it is productive to have a range of working styles within a team, but also why this may not be effective if there is limited appreciation of the different ways in which each other work.
Research shows that the most effective teams are formed of people with a variety of working styles. However these differences can cause conflict if they are not appreciated. If understood, appreciated and embraced, they will lead to more effective innovation and ideation.
Knowing Me Knowing You - Work Styles is a team building activity that has been specifically designed to help participants understand each other, and appreciate how both those with similar and different working styles can be key contributors to the productivity of the team. It gives participants the opportunity to explore the way in which they personally tend to work.
This is the best exercise for exploring and bringing awareness to work styles in a group. Its clever informal format transcends traditional formal personality testing. Highly recommended.