Team Building - Getting to Know You
As part of my strategy to change my attitude at work and have/provide more fun, I made the team cupcakes last night. If there's one thing that an IT department likes, it's food. Fourteen people went through 24 cupcakes in no time at all.
We have a new employee starting this week. He's a Mac Tech and doesn't report to me (which is probably a good thing for him considering my attitude of late). I thought it would be a prime opportunity to do a group activity to introduce him to the team and vice versa.
The instructions for the activity were for each person to take a blank 8 1/2 by 14 piece of paper and, using the materials provided, make a diorama/collage/whatever you want to call it that exemplifies who you are. The supplies included markers (Harry Potter markers, no less!), crayons, construction paper, pipe cleaners, foam letters, numbers and shapes, sticker letters and glitter. Everyone then had to present their work and explain what and why they chose to display.
I thought it was a good intro for the new guy. Hopefully, it helped him get to know us all a little bit. He scored points with me because he had football on his page but then he said he was a Broncos fan. Ugh. Lost all points there. He might even be in the negative now.
The most common items within the group: family, travel and alcohol. No surprise to me on the latter - this job seems to lead you to the whiskey (or, in my case, Miller Lite or wine).
Surprisingly, less than a third of the people had technology related items. I don't count my blog, though maybe I should, under that category but it was one of my items.
I think the most clever and geek-like presentation was one guy who did a Venn diagram with himself in the center and Family, Technology (represented by binary characters) and Travel in the intersecting ellipses.
We have a new employee starting this week. He's a Mac Tech and doesn't report to me (which is probably a good thing for him considering my attitude of late). I thought it would be a prime opportunity to do a group activity to introduce him to the team and vice versa.
The instructions for the activity were for each person to take a blank 8 1/2 by 14 piece of paper and, using the materials provided, make a diorama/collage/whatever you want to call it that exemplifies who you are. The supplies included markers (Harry Potter markers, no less!), crayons, construction paper, pipe cleaners, foam letters, numbers and shapes, sticker letters and glitter. Everyone then had to present their work and explain what and why they chose to display.
I thought it was a good intro for the new guy. Hopefully, it helped him get to know us all a little bit. He scored points with me because he had football on his page but then he said he was a Broncos fan. Ugh. Lost all points there. He might even be in the negative now.
The most common items within the group: family, travel and alcohol. No surprise to me on the latter - this job seems to lead you to the whiskey (or, in my case, Miller Lite or wine).
Surprisingly, less than a third of the people had technology related items. I don't count my blog, though maybe I should, under that category but it was one of my items.
I think the most clever and geek-like presentation was one guy who did a Venn diagram with himself in the center and Family, Technology (represented by binary characters) and Travel in the intersecting ellipses.
