Are you looking for a quick and fun team building activity at work that only
takes 10 minutes, well I'm gonna share with you my all-time favorite that I
have had huge success with, stay tuned to the end of this video
because I have for you one of my amazing, number-one tools for meeting success
free. Hi if you're new here welcome, my name is Adriana Girdler, a business
productivity specialist and a professional meeting facilitator. I have
for you a very unusual team-building activity that I have used in many
workshops, and have got complimented for, so now I want to share that with you,
this fun quick and very unusual team-building exercise is called the
poncho exercise, so now I want to share with you exactly how we do it, so the
first thing you need is you need flipchart paper, so ensure that you have
this around the room, and what I usually say for all my participants,
I don't even tell them what we're doing by the way, I just say we have a poncho
exercise go to a flipchart paper and grab yourself flip chart, once everyone
gets one I actually guide them through this process so that at every moment,
they really have to listen to me, and they have to pay attention in order to
know what the next step is, so once everyone has this particular sheet you
need to ask them to create a poncho, and the easiest way to do that is by folding
it in half and then folding it in half again, I know the joys, and then you
actually can cut yourself space for your head so that you will have a poncho, so
here it is here's my poncho, next I say okay everybody put it on and then I have
everybody walking around with a poncho, grab a sharpie now, right away if there's
a woman in the room or a man who has a white shirt they go whoa whoa whoa,
Adrian isn't that gonna bleed through, it's never happened yet okay, you can't
do this with pens, you really need to do this with a sharpie because you need to
see it, so I have everyone in the room with these ponchos
on and then I have them with the sharpie usually it's black - green but that's
okay, then what I say is, I want you to look
around and every single person in the room you need to assure you right on
their poncho, but here is what you have to write, you have to write down
something that you are grateful for in regards to them, what appreciation do you
have and right away from that note they're like what, and if they don't know
each other you can give an example like, okay if you don't know somebody just say
I really appreciate your warm smile, or I really appreciate you making room for me
at the table and if you do know them well and you know the work that they're
doing maybe give them a great appreciation on some of the work that
they've done for you, or that you know that they've done, the whole purpose of
this exercise is to really get teams to come together and think positively about
what and how they feel about their teammates, so it's super fun, so now we
have this, now everyone understands those rules they go around and they start
writing and everyone's back, Superman here's my team do you mind writing on my
back, and you stand there, now what usually happens is a train occurs and
that train is everyone's kind of one behind the other writing the back, it is
fun, it's excited, people are laughing, they're having a really good time by
doing this, once everyone is done I say okay if you're done leave your Poncho's
on sit down at the table or wherever that where we're at and don't take it
off, now this is a really important part, you want everyone to take off the poncho
at the same time, but the key is we're not reading it out loud we're going to
spend two minutes where everyone can just take in the beautiful words that
their teammates wrote about them, so everyone sits down okay guys on a count
of three you are gonna take off your poncho, you're gonna read your words and
take it in and literally one two three take off that poncho, and since
everything is written on the back they read it, and as I'm looking around
because I'm the observer, the smiles on people's face, even a little bit
teary-eyed where people are super touched with what people said about them
it's powerful, I have people who then folded it up, and they've put it in their
knapsack or their briefcase because they
want to keep it, it is super powerful, really easy, I get extreme extreme
success with this, I've done this with people who are so into this stuff, but I have
also done it with other groups, like security teams who you think are walking
around with Poncho's giving gratitudes, yes they do and you'll be amazed,
everyone needs a little bit of love, and so what a wonderful exercise to bring
into your organization, now that you've gotten everyone into this really fun
cool team-building activity, it is time to go to another level of great meetings
and that is to get your free download on meeting rules, not only our team-building
activity is really great and helpful but understanding what you're supposed to do
in a meeting also plays a part in all this, on that note I want to thank you
for watching this video, if you can give it a thumbs up, if you can subscribe to
my channel and let me know if you're gonna try this poncho exercise in the
comments below, until next time, bye