About a year ago I came across a great team-building exercise on Sources of Insight, J.D. Meier's consistently thoughtful blog. I showed it to our Agile coach, the inimitable Tania Broome, and she made it happen.
A simple request was sent to each team member (paraphrasing):
- Contemplate each member of the team.
- Make a list of ~3 strengths for each person.
- Try to have a unique set of strengths for each person, i.e., don't put "smart" or "hard-working" as a strength of everybody. Dig deeper. What do you value about this person? What special qualities does he or she bring?
These lists were aggregated into an anonymized lists of strengths for each person. We then reviewed the lists in our retrospective, and tag clouds of the strengths were posted in the team room.
I was genuinely surprised by the strengths others saw in me. It was a motivating and heart-warming experience -- a feeling echoed by everyone on the team. It was also clarifying. Seeing which of my strengths others valued helped me understand how I can grow and do more to support my team. I highly recommend this quick, simple exercise for any small to mid-sized team, especially those who've been working together for a while and have maybe started to take each other's excellence for granted.
In the last year, some team members have moved on; some new ones have joined. Time has finally come to redo the exercise and replace the tag cloud wall. For the sake of posterity and in honor of a great team, I have shared the outputs of some of our team members below.
Tania (Agile coach and general badass):
Al (Hey, that's me! Senior Developer / Tech Lead):
Jason (Architect and PM):
Michelle (QA Lead / Tester / Agile Support):
Josh (Developer):
... and other equally important team members that continue the trend above. I'm sure you get the idea.