How can you ensure that team building activities are inclusive and valuable?

To ensure that team-building activities are both inclusive and valuable, it's essential to embrace diversity in all its forms. We should begin by understanding the unique backgrounds, abilities, and preferences of each team member. Activities should cater to a variety of skills and comfort levels, avoiding any that might alienate participants based on physical ability, cultural background, or personal interests.

For our team at My Speaking Score, it's crucial that every member feels safe and heard, ensuring a supportive and inclusive environment for all. Surveys and suggestion boxes might work for larger orgs, but we prefer regular check-ins on Slack -- pay attention to what you see and hear: tone, response time, productivity, mistakes -- these could all be signals that your team is misaligned. In my experience, almost every issue can be traced back to a comms problem.

Before deciding on a team building activity actually ask the team what they won't! Consider as a collective what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. Gain feedback on what activities they would find beneficial, this way you will ensure inclusivity and value in the team building activities. Any activies decided upon must, of course, then be adapted and accessibility ensured.

How awkward and counter productive can it be if team member do not work together. In the auditing world that happens a lot. Each team member should bring unique skills, perspectives, and experiences to the table, contributing to a diverse and well-rounded team dynamic. When teams are composed of individuals with complementary strengths and expertise, they can collaborate more effectively, solve problems creatively, and achieve better results. When a team is lopsided in terms of strengths and weaknesses, counterproductivity may be the result. There may be an imbalance in workload distribution; some team members carrying a heavier burden than others. The result: resentment and burnout. Homogeneous struggle to think outside the box.

Team Building can be a powerful time for leaders to step back and reflect on their lived experience, or to frame their precious upcoming time as purposefully as possible. Activities like the Back to the Future protocol, values discernment, and gratitude practices enhance the present moment while ensuring we learn from the past and keep our eyes on the incredible work to come.

Considering factors like the diversity of the group is vital. When considering professional development in schools that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, minoritized individuals in the group mustn't be used as tools to teach others. For example, the expectation that Black women participants will share stories of traumatic events in their childhood or the workplace to "bring home" the ideas discussed by the facilitator are tokenizing and dehumanizing. It should not be done if the activity cannot be completed without harming others.