Valenteam - Sweetheart Ideas for meeting energizers

Valentine’s is probably the sweetest holiday of the bunch. The energy created between sweethearts is second to none. Creating energy within your team is equally as important. Here are some fantastic ways to energize your team in both virtually as well as onsite. As a gift to you, I’ve included a copy of my team tool Coffee Talk 2 so you can bring some sweetheart treats to your group right now!

Coffee Talk:

This little ditty is a fantastic book of open ended questions. It is a great, quick way to start off a meeting. It helps build those common connectors between people, increasing team bonding. Click here for your free ebook copy and use code PL97U (note: this expires on March 1st, 2012).

Commonalities:

A quick game that pits smaller groups (3 to 8) against each other. The goal is to find as many commonalities that are shared by the people in the group in an allotted time (2 minutes). They can’t be obvious ones like, “we all have finger nails or we all are wearing clothes” (though the opposite could be fun), they need to be a bit more “creative” like we have all visited Greece, we all like to go fishing, etc. The team with the most number of Commonalities wins, the team with the funniest Commonality wins, and you can add as many more winning categories with “prizes” as you wish for teams.

PPT of Me

Start off each meeting with a different 5-slide slideshow from a different team member. The slide show will give the team member an opportunity to share a bit about who they are, what they do, and where they come from outside of work. It’s a great way for team members to get to know each other.

Team Facebook

Set up a private group just for your team. Direct team members to online assessments where they can take “personality tests” or identify “celebrity lookalikes” and do those for fun. Plus offer up other fun things like recipes for “cocktail of the week” or host your own “photo contest.”

Tail Gate

Take your group outside and have a tail gate party for your meeting. Bring out some lawn chairs, barbeque, root beer and get ‘er done. A change of venue can bring out new ideas and inspire people to communicate in new, different ways.

Say What?

Start off a new team by getting together with this quick energizer. Have people introduce themselves by name and then say what car part best represents who they are. For example, “Hi my name is Tyler, and if I were part of a car I would be the back seat – because I like to have fun, and that’s where the most fun happens in a car.”

Rock’n Meeting

Start your next meeting by blasting a “theme song” that represents the content of the session. Choose a song that that supports your message. Have people come into the meeting with the song looping and then tie the song into your slide notes. (i.e. Weird Al’s “Eat It” for a meeting about acquiring a new company, or Black Eyed Peas “I Got a Feeling” for a meeting for launching a new budget).

Adding a bit of fun to each meeting will energize your team. Use your creativity try new things and make sure that it’s inclusive of as many peoples’ interest and reality as possible. Anything we do with our teams should embrace people and not distance them. So try some of the sweetheart ideas above to build a bit more love inside your team. And don’t forget to buy flowers and chocolates – because you can’t be a sweetheart at work without being one at home.