The goals of this team building exercise include:
- Enhancing the team-building process through self-disclosure, feedback, and interpersonal commitment.
- Offering team members an opportunity to give and receive feedback about team-related, personal growth goals.
- Developing the team's commitment to support each others goals.
The materials needed for this activity are the following:
- Blank paper and a pencil for each person
- Blackboard and chalk
- The coach briefly states that a positive team climate includes being able to disclose team-related personal growth goals and then receive feedback about and support for those goals.
- The coach writes the following words on the blackboard and tells each player to complete the sentence on paper:
"On the team, I need to improve my ability to (fill in the blank)."
Sample sentence completions might be "confront other team members about difficult issues" or "acknowledge effort of teammates." The coach mentions that if several goals seem appropriate, the player should choose the one that she or he feels is most significant and complete the sentence accordingly.
- As the team finishes completing the sentence, the coach writes the following questions on the board:
In your opinion, does the sentence completion represent what this team member needs to do for her or his growth as a player? Yes or No.
If Yes, how challenging do you think this undertaking would be for this person?
If Yes, how can the team support this person in her or his efforts to meet this goal?
If no, ask the player to revisit their answer.
- The players take turns reading their sentence completions and then take turns receiving feedback from the remaining team members. After receiving feedback, each player decides to keep, modify, or completely change the goal and announces these intentions to the group by restating the final goal.