Teambuilder: "Order of Importance"
"Order of Importance" is a teambuilder that you can play on any training course. It will teach your trainees something they need to know while helping them develop their teambuilding skills.
Preparation Time: 25 minutes
Running Time: 25 minutes
Training Exercise Style: ranking exercise
Multiple Intelligence style: mathematical
Materials: post-it notes; flipcharts; marker pens
"Order of Importance": Steps in the Teambuilder
1. First, find a list of 10 ranked pieces of information that are appropriate to your course and your trainees. For example, if you are running an induction course and want your trainees to know about the products you make, find out the top 10 products sold in the previous year. If you are running a course in IT applications, eg a new Microsoft product, use the list below on the 10 most influential Internet sites.
2. Now, from your chosen ranking list, write down the 10 items on 10 post-it notes (minus their positions), and hand them out to the team. If you are playing the training exercise as a team competition, create one set of post-it notes for each team.
3. Now play the game. Tell the team(s) to place the post-it notes in order of importance on a flipchart from 1 to 10. So, if you are using the first example above, say, "Place the products we sell in order of importance of sales in the last year". If you are using the second example above, say, "Place the list of Internet sites in order of their effect on changing everyday life".
4. If you want, introduce your own features of teamwork to the way in which the team plays the game. For example, you can tell teams to pick a team leader and decide on this person's role. Or you can tell the teams to do the exercise as individuals first and then as a team and to compare individual results with the team's results. You can also agree a method in which everyone gets to argue in favour of their list and their reasoning.
5. When the team has completed their "Order of Importance" lists, re-convene, get the team to feed back and score the results against the "expert" version. In drawing out the key lessons of teambuilding, ask questions such as the following:
- How did you decide your order of importance?
- What did you say to those who didn't agree?
- How effective was the leader?
- Did getting the right result matter more than teambuilding or the other way round?
- If you did the exercise again, what would you do differently?
- In what ways did the game mirror what happens at work?
- What one thing will you take from the exercise?
Here are 3 examples of "Order of Importance" lists to get you started.
List 1: The Most Popular Surnames in the UK
1. Smith
2. Jones
3. Taylor
4. Williams
5. Brown
6. Davies
7. Evans
8. Wilson
9. Thomas
10. Roberts
List 2: The Most Used Words in the English Language
1. the
2. be
3. to
4. of
5. and
6. a
7. in
8. that
9. have
10. I
List 3: The Top 10 Websites that Most Changed Everyday Life (researched by toptenz.net)
1. Google
2. eBay
3. YouTube
4. Amazon
5. Wikipedia
6. Facebook
7. Pandora
8. Blogger
9. Geocities
10. Craigslist