The Business Coaching Toolkit

CHAPTER TEN

What Color Is Your Team?

Whenever I am asked to speak on the subject of teamwork, I begin with a game. Our family loves word games, and anagrams is one of our favorites. Anagrams is played by taking a word or phrase and rearranging the letters to form other words. No slang, no proper nouns, no abbreviations, and no words fewer than three letters.

On a flip chart I write the words One Audacious Claim and shout, “Go!” Each person has 60 seconds to write down as many words as they can. Stirring the competitive fires a bit, I offer a prize to the winner and demand the audience not cheat. At the end of 60 seconds, people in the room have formed their words, some as few as five or six and others as many as 15 or 16.

Then I put everyone in groups of four, have them choose a recorder, and repeat the process again with the same three words. At the end of 60 seconds these small groups have come up with 30, 40, and even 50 words from One Audacious Claim. We list the very real lessons on teamwork that we have all just experienced:

• Some people are good at word games; others are not. The team made that weakness irrelevant.

• Everyone brought a unique perspective to the group, even the non-word people. Each contributed a different set of words to the list.

• When group members shared their words, other words came to mind that no one had thought of by working alone.

• It is easier to reward individual achievement with a single prize. How do you reward four winners with a group prize? ...