A Fun Exercise to Foster Team Connection

Adapted from my newest book, Liberating the Overworked Manager. Order your copy here.

It is not easy to lead and manage, but it can be extremely rewarding and, at times, humbling. Enabling growth and self-development in others requires that they have trust in you. And you must be able to trust them. Trust is built through the repetition of positive interactions and demonstrating vulnerability.

Vulnerability is the keystone of building trust and relationships with others. That is the challenge. As a leader of people, you must be willing to demonstrate humility and vulnerability. However, your team members will not display vulnerability in the absence of psychological safety. The exercise below, "Letter from your younger self," is still one of the most fun and easy ways that I have found to explore vulnerability in a safe setting.

Long ago, when I was perhaps six or seven years old, my imagination was captivated by thoughts of becoming an astronaut. It was not long after the United States stopped landing people on the moon. Nonetheless, space exploration was still receiving significant press. I watched every program, interview, or movie about space and space adventure that any of the three channels available to me at the time broadcast.

To become an astronaut, you were required to have prior military experience, and most astronauts were previously pilots and, frequently, test pilots in the Air Force. I desperately wanted to fly planes in the military. I eventually joined the military, but it was the Army, not the Air Force. Due to my eyesight and color blindness, I did not qualify to train as a pilot.

For Christmas one year, I asked for nothing but an astronaut suit. I wanted the shiny silver suit, the pack on my back, the boots, and especially the helmet. It was an obsession. It was my only wish. Looking back, I can only imagine the dismay and fear of disappointing their youngest son that my parents must have felt. On Christmas morning, there was no astronaut suit. I received an Apollo lunar module mechanical toy, which I still have to this day, but no suit.

We can learn a lot about ourselves, our colleagues, and our team members through sharing our childhood dreams. This facilitated exercise asks everyone (including you) to write a letter to their current self. The catch is that you use crayons or markers and the non-dominant writing hand. It really gets your brain in touch with your inner child.

The time to complete this exercise varies by team size. Facilitated well, it can usually be completed in an hour for a team of five to seven people as long as you limit each step to a specified amount of time (timeboxing).

To facilitate the exercise:

1. The materials needed are colored markers or crayons. Crayons work best. If you were in the Marines, try to avoid the temptation to eat the crayons (that's a little joke between military services–it's ok, and it's in jest).
2. Ask everyone to think back to when they were kids. Have them choose a dream they had or think about what they wanted to be when they grew up. (30 seconds - 1 minute).
3. Instruct everyone to use their non-dominant writing hand (if they are right-handed, they will use their left and vice versa) and write a letter to their present self, describing how they feel and how excited they are to pursue this dream. (20 - 25 minutes).
4. Using the remaining time available, have everyone read aloud the letter they just wrote. I have found it works best if you, as the leader, read yours first. This will signal that it is safe to be open and vulnerable.
5. NOTE: It is important to ask them to share. Do not make sharing their letter mandatory. Forcing people to share signals control and reduces psychological safety. Most people with whom I have conducted this exercise will choose to share. On rare occasions, someone will decide to opt-out.

The exercise itself is easy to facilitate, but it is impactful in its power of vulnerability and emotion. Asking everyone to write with their non-dominant hand facilitates reconnecting with their younger selves. Be prepared! This exercise holds the potential to surface strong emotions. The intent is to allow everyone to understand their colleagues better and to grow intra-team relationships.

Strong bonds are built between people through shared, often emotional, experiences. This is why people who have served together in combat feel close to one another; they understand each other and have weathered strong experiences and emotions together. This exercise provides a way to do that in a relatively low-risk environment.

Here is a moving example of the potential power of this exercise: Karen was a software tester on a development team I worked with many years ago. As she wrote her letter, she became visibly emotional. She struggled to read her letter without breaking down. Her letter was very moving.

When she was young, she lived in an abusive household. Being naturally introverted, she struggled to express herself verbally. So, she kept a diary and wrote in it regularly. Through writing, she was able to, at least temporarily, escape her reality.

Karen still had a dream of becoming a writer, but until going through this exercise, she had not explored why she wrote. Writing allowed her to escape. Working with paper as her canvas, she created vivid landscapes and went on grand adventures limited only by her imagination. Through her characters, she became anyone she wanted.

As a result of going through the exercise as a team, Karen's colleagues grew empathy for her struggles expressing herself. They became more patient and forgiving in their interactions, particularly in group settings. Having a deeper understanding of why she wrote, Karen felt compelled to continue writing. The last time I spoke with her, she was working on a book to help other introverts overcome some of their social struggles by incorporating writing and journaling into their own lives.

Have you conducted this exercise in the past? What was the outcome? Please share any other exercises you find helpful in building team cohesion.