Ice Breaker Activities
Team Goal Setting

Free ice breaker activities and team building tools for goal setting introduction:

Goals should be broken down in to short-term, measurable and attainable objectives, each with a set time period attached.

Goals also provide a means for leaders to reward and recognize employees based on their abilities to achieve specific targets.

• Does the goal support the overall purpose or mission of the team?
• Is the goal Specific?
• Is the goal Measureable?
• Is the goal Achieveable?
• Is the goal Realistic?
• is the goal Time Sensitive?

Making your goals clear and easily understood using the above SMART technique will ensure that your goals are fair to your team.

Resume Builder
Purpose of this activity: To provide an ice breaker activity that will help to identify your next project or team leader.

Explanation: This exercise is a fun way to get your people involved in identifying their next team or project leader.

Let’s say you have a new project that you need someone to lead. You have a lot of existing employees who have a high desire to become the new team leader.

Since your team members already know each other, you can be certain that there is already some office politics going on as people begin to jockey for position for the new role.

Your task as the leader is to not only identify the new leader, but also to do it in a way that supports the new leader. The new leader must have credibility in the minds of those that will be working for him.

Gather you group together and create ice breaker activities that get everyone involved in defining the key roles and responsibilities of the new prospective leader.

Next, get everyone involved in defining the skills that that are necessary for this new leader to be effective in the role.

What you are doing here is getting your entire group to help define and eventually identify their new leader. By getting the feedback of the group, you are already helping to build valuable credibility for the person who is ultimately selected.

Give everyone a blank resume form. The resume form will have areas that need to be filled in for the following:

• Skills
• Accomplishments
• Leadership Abilities
• Team Building Abilities
• Customer Service Abilities
• Education Requirements

Inform your team that they cannot complete their own form. Instead, they need to talk with various members of their team to discuss and agree on what is needed from the new leader who is selected to head the team.

Each team member, upon completing his or her resume form will hand it in to you to assess. These forms provide great tools for group discussion and also provide insightful information for the leader to analyze as she works through the important process of selecting the new team or project leader.

Once you’ve selected your new team leader, you can make the announcement to the team that in fact THEY selected their new leader via the process of defining the perfect resume for the job.

Details for Results
Purpose of this activity: To engage the team in identifying the smallest details of a project in order to ensure maximum positive impact to the organization.

Explanation: While we often hear very well meaning, yet somewhat negative, thinkers make comments like, “The devil is in the details”, it sounds much more productive to turn this phrase around and state, “Success is in the details”.

When leaders are confronted with an opportunity for action planning for any particular goal or objective, this is a great time to get your team involved in creating a clearly defined plan.

The more detailed the team can be in identifying every key aspect of the task, the more likely they are to succeed.

First take your group through a short exercise by asking them to complete the following:

• Write down your next vacation destination.
• Make a list of tasks that must be completed prior to leaving (booking travel and lodging, arranging for pets, packing, arranging itinerary, planning to be absent from work, etc.)
• Make a list of things that must be planned for during their trip. (meals, activities, childcare, etc.)
• Make a list of items that must be addressed upon your return from your trip (paying bills, unpacking, getting photos developed, getting kids ready to return to school, etc.

Team building and ice breaker activities point out to your employees the fact that there are a multitude of small details that must be identified and pre-planned in order to limit the number of mistakes that are made, and to ensure the ultimate outcome of the project.

Make the point that most people take more time to plan their vacation than they do to plan their retirement. This is why 65% of all retirees must count on government assistance. Unfortunately, the government will not be here to bail the team out if they fail to properly plan for the success of this project.

Highly effective teams and organizations are very detailed in their pre-planning. The more you put on the table before you begin the project the better prepared you will be to adjust and adapt to issues and barriers you encounter throughout the process.

Now that you’ve made your point, get your team on track with planning their next greatest Success in a highly organized and detailed way.

Receive your free Team Building At Work tool, a collection of 40 fun and effective team building and ice breaker activities that promote increased team performance. Remember, you only need to download once. All of the various team building templates are included in a single pdf file for your convenience.

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Solving problems as a team helps to show employees that there are many potential solutions to even the most common of problems.

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