Thanksgiving is less than a week away. It has been a challenging time over the last year. Lots of adjustments and anxieties - and there is still uncertainty over the future. Yet in even the worst circumstances, there are always things we can be grateful for. Here are some exercises you can do with your team that will draw you closer to one another and alter perspectives by being in a state of gratitude.
Exercise 1: Focus Only On The Areas Where You’ve Progressed
Go around the team and ask them to share an area where they’ve seen growth - whether individually, as a team, or even across the organization. Encourage them to be as tangible as possible. For bonus points, after each person shares, have them visually represent that growth on a whiteboard, flip chart, or poster board, and take a picture afterwards to capture everyone’s progress.
Exercise 2: Celebrate Those On The Team Who Helped Create Small Wins
Big wins get shared easily across a team. But often, we forget to share the small ones. These base hits go a long way towards helping a team thrive. Go around the room and have each team member share a small win and applaud those who contributed to the win.
Exercise 3: Gratitude Roundabout
Have each team member share one specific and genuine way in which they were grateful for each person on the team. The idea is to go for quality, not quantity. Have the team load up each other’s inboxes with gratitude moments.
Exercise 4: What Good Could Come From...?
If there was a hard circumstance that hit your team, then you can go around the room and ask: “What Good Could Come From [the Hard Circumstance]?” It might be hard to think of even two. So encourage the team to retell themselves a time when they were cracking up like crazy. As each team member does this in their head, they often will start smiling, laughing, or feeling their moods lift. Then after a minute or two, go back to the question and break it down into different parts of life. In other words, what good could come…
Relationally?
Emotionally?
Rationally?
Vocationally?
Financially?
Physically?
For the team overall?
Etc.
The idea is to generate a long list of the good that could come from even a bad circumstance until there is a sense of hope or encouragement. Gratitude flows when we see how to turn a bad situation into one with potential for good
Exercise 5: Turn a Challenging Circumstance Into An Opportunity
A modified version of Exercise 4 is to ask four questions of the challenging circumstance. As we look back on the challenging circumstance, ask:
What can we learn from it?
What can we be thankful for looking back?
What strengths did we display then?
How are we better now because of it?
Chew On This:
Which of the five exercises above do you think would best help your team get in that state of gratitude?
What are good could come if your team is in a state of gratitude?
Ryan C. Bailey & Associates is an organizational effectiveness firm focused on equipping leaders to develop in-demand high-performing teams to increase the health and effectiveness of the greater organization.
*This blog is an amalgamation of a few different clients. No client is being singled out.