Tag Archives: Team Building Exercise

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of December 2024

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of December 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are December’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Top Six Trends for Innovation Management in 2025 — by Jesse Nieminen
  2. Best Team Building Exercise Around — by David Burkus
  3. You Are Doing Strategic Planning Wrong (According to Seth Godin) — by Robyn Bolton
  4. Why Annual Employee Experience Audits Are Important — by Braden Kelley and Art Inteligencia
  5. Don’t ‘Follow the Science’, Follow the Scientific Method — by Pete Foley
  6. Artificial Innovation — by Braden Kelley
  7. Dynamic Thinking — by Mike Shipulski
  8. The State of Customer Experience and the Contact Center — by Shep Hyken
  9. The Duality of High-Performing Teams — by David Burkus
  10. Uber Economy is Killing Innovation, Prosperity and Entrepreneurship — by Greg Satell

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in November that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

SPECIAL BONUS: While supplies last, you can get the hardcover version of my first bestselling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire for 44% OFF until Amazon runs out of stock or changes the price. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while it lasts!

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Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Best Team Building Exercise Around

Best Team Building Exercise Around

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Team building is a crucial element of creating a strong team culture. Understanding each other’s differences and preferences is a vital step in becoming a high-performing team. But many leaders struggle to find and deliver effective team building exercises. There are many too choose from, and many fall short. So many exercises focus solely on getting teammates to understand each other’s differences—often expressed as personality, identity, or experiences.

But for team building exercises to work, teams can’t just understand each other. They need to understand each other’s behavior.

And that’s what makes the “manual of me” activity the single best team building exercise. Instead of assigning different letters or numbers to different team members based on personality. It focuses on having teammates share their different work preferences. This tool allows team members to gain a deeper understanding of each other’s strengths, weaknesses, preferred environments, and working preferences. And over time, teams become be able to coordinate and even predict each other’s behavior.

In this article, we will delve into the concept of a Manual of Me, how to construct one, and the benefits of sharing and collecting these manuals within the team.

The “Manual of Me”

The Manual of Me is a powerful tool that enables team members to gain insights into each other’s behavior and preferences. It consists of a core of four, fill-in-the-blank questions: “I’m at my best when _____,” “I’m at my worst when _____,” “You can count on me to _____,” and “What I need from you is _____.”

By discussing these questions, team members can understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, preferred environments, and working preferences. This understanding is crucial for creating a harmonious and productive team culture.

Constructing a Manual of Me

Constructing a Manual of Me involves a conversation within the team where each member shares their answers to the four core questions. Before starting the activity, it is important to inform the team about the purpose and provide them with the template and questions ahead of time.

The first question, “I’m at my best when _____,” focuses on identifying individual strengths, preferred activities, and environments for optimal performance. This question allows team members to understand how they can bring their best selves to the team.

The second question, “I’m at my worst when _____,” helps identify tasks and environments where individuals may struggle or under-perform. By understanding these limitations, team members can provide support and create an environment that minimizes challenges.

The third question, “You can count on me to _____,” highlights each person’s contributions and areas where they can provide help to the team. This question promotes collaboration and allows team members to leverage each other’s strengths.

The fourth question, “What I need from you is _____,” identifies areas where individuals need support or assistance from others. This question fosters open communication and helps team members understand how they can best support each other.

Additional questions can be added to the Manual of Me based on the team’s industry and level of familiarity with each other. These questions can delve deeper into specific aspects of work or personal preferences that are relevant to the team’s dynamics.

Sharing and Collecting Manuals of Me

Once each team member has shared their answers, there should be time for discussion and clarification. This allows team members to gain a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives and preferences.

The completed Manuals of Me can be in various formats such as PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoints, or videos. It is important to choose a format that is easily accessible and can be stored in a shared folder or platform where the team can easily access them.

The ongoing conversation and understanding fostered by the Manuals of Me can lead to improved collaboration and performance within the team. By referring back to these manuals, team members can ensure that they are effectively supporting each other and leveraging their strengths.

When new team members join, they can be introduced to the Manuals of Me and encouraged to share their own once they feel comfortable. This helps integrate new members into the team and ensures that everyone is on the same page.

The Manual of Me is a powerful team building exercise that promotes understanding and collaboration within a team. By discussing strengths, weaknesses, preferred environments, and working preferences, team members can create a strong team culture and enhance their performance. The ongoing conversation and understanding fostered by the Manuals of Me can lead to improved collaboration and performance within the team.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on October 2, 2023

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Announcing the Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool

I am proud to announce the availability of the Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool for pre-order as part of my crowdfunding project over on IndieGoGo. There you will find lots of great perks available including discounts on the Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool and even FIVE (5) two-hour innovation keynote and workshop combos at an incredibly discounted price.

The Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool will come with a series of simple exercises and a deck of roles cards to help create a fun, interactive experience for innovation teams or organizations to use to help people better understand what roles they fill on innovation projects, why the team’s or organization’s innovation efforts are failing, and how they can together improve the innovation performance of their teams or organization.

Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool Coming Soon

Design for Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool

You can click to read more about The Nine Innovation Roles, but here is the ethos behind it:

“Too often we treat people as commodities that are interchangeable and maintain the same characteristics and aptitudes. Of course, we know that people are not interchangeable, yet we continually pretend that they are anyway — to make life simpler for our reptile brain to comprehend. Deep down we know that people have different passions, skills, and potential, but even when it comes to innovation, we expect everybody to have good ideas.

I’m of the opinion that all people are creative, in their own way. That is not to say that all people are creative in the sense that every single person is good at creating lots of really great ideas, nor do they have to be. I believe instead that everyone has a dominant innovation role at which they excel, and that when properly identified and channeled, the organization stands to maximize its innovation capacity. I believe that all people excel at one of nine innovation roles, and that when organizations put the right people in the right innovation roles, that your innovation speed and capacity will increase.”

The Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Tool and Workshop can help you identify why your innovation efforts are failing or how your innovation teams could be more successful in the future. Don’t wait. Book a workshop, or pre-order the group diagnostic tool and run a team building exercise of your own.

Book a Nine Innovation Roles Group Diagnostic Workshop

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