Toolkit exercise: Three similarities

This is the first post in a series of ten blog posts about the exercises in the Toolkit for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters. All exercises the blog posts in this series are about, are available in our free promo version of the book.

Three similarities is a quick yet effective exercise to do team building or as an energizer. It doesn’t take a lot of time to prepare and it’s quite simple to execute, so it’s a great go-to for those last-minute meetings you have to facilitate.

The goal of this exercise is two-fold: to find similarities between the participants, and to have them self-organize. The former builds a stronger bond between the people in a team. It’s easy to focus on differences between people, so knowing there are similarities creates more mutual respect. It should improve collaboration between people. The latter shows people how easy and simple it is to self-organize. It’s in our nature. (There is a reason people all don’t run into each at sports arenas and train stations.) Yet, in many organizations we tend to forget how good people actually are at self-organizing.

As a facilitator, you give people the assignment and then just observe what happens. Don’t intervene or interrupt unless you absolutely have to. That way you’ll get the most out of the self-organizing part of this exercise. The biggest part in letting people self-organize, is letting them do just that. Apply restraint. You can listen in to the conversations that are taking place. That will give you enough information to know when you might need to help clarify something. Whatever you do, do not go “manage” people into finding a similarity. This is 100% up to them.

Once groups of three have formed, people share back with the group. This is a great moment for you as a facilitator to emphasize the self-organization part of this exercise. You cannot repeat that enough. You have to constantly remind people about self-organization and how naturally it comes to us. That is the only way it will affect their day-to-day behavior on their jobs. Repetition is key!

After the first round, you can do additional rounds as time allows. After having spoken about self-organization, people are more conscious about it in a second and following rounds. That is a good thing, because it creates awareness about the fact that they are self-organizing when they are doing it. This clarity will help outside the context of this exercise as well.

Next week, I’ll write about the Team Canvas exercise. It’s a bit longer and more complicated than Three Similarities, but also much more powerful for team building. Want more exercises to choose from? Buy the toolkit in paperback or on Kindle !