In any successful team, identifying and addressing the needs of your team is crucial for productivity and satisfaction. A simple but powerful way to facilitate this discussion by asking a straight forward question “What do you need?” This question sets the stage for an engaging and collaborative team discussion. The second part of the question provides a specific context. For example: “What do you need? — To make work more fun”
Here’s a list of tailored questions to help guide your discussion:
What do you need? — To complete the project
What do you need? — To make work more fun
What do you need? — To improve team communication
What do you need? — To feel more supported at work
What do you need? — To better manage your time
What do you need? — To enhance your skills
What do you need? — To achieve your professional goals
What do you need? — To increase your productivity
What do you need? — To balance work and personal life
What do you need? — To feel more motivated
What do you need? — To reduce stress
What do you need? — To innovate and be creative
What do you need? — To foster a positive team environment
What do you need? — To improve our workflow
What do you need? — To ensure everyone feels heard
What do you need? — To enhance collaboration
What do you need? — To solve current challenges
What do you need? — To implement new ideas
What do you need? — To improve customer satisfaction
What do you need? — To adapt to changes smoothly
Use these prompts to guide the team discussions and identify actionable steps to meet the needs of your team.
Facilitation experience
When I facilitate this activity with multiple teams, each team came up with unique, team specific ideas.
For example, some of the responses to “What do you need? — To make work more fun” were:
Team Activity — Organise regular team-building events
More opportunities for pair programming — Enhanching collaboration and learning
Introducing trash day — Dedicated days to focus on fixing easy wins
Quick win — Implementing small meaning full changes as part of continuous improvement
Maintaining sustainable pace — Ensuring manageably workload to avoid burnout
Coffee breaks — Having short coffee breaks with the team to talk about life apart from work
When individual team members shared their idea, a few stand out and are further discussed. As a facilitator, you can read the room and gauge the team’s thoughts. Pick up the most liked outcome of this discussion and dive deeper into it. Let the team brainstorm and come up with action items. In case there is no clear winner, or if you have loud / dominant participants, voting can always be an option to make sure everyone is heard.
By following this structured approach, you can facilitate a productive and inclusive team activity that identifies and addresses the specific needs of your team, ensuring that everyone feels heard and valued.
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