How To Bond Your Team Through Better Communication Skills

The best team members genuinely listen to one-another. Here’s a quick and simple 30-minute team-building exercise from Mindtools.com that will improve this critical interpersonal skill.

Divide your team into pairs and sit them across from one another. Give each pair eight index cards with topics written on them. While one person listens, the other person shares how they feel about the topic for three minutes. The listener must remain silent and just listen. When the three minutes are up, the listener has one minute to recap what the speaker said.   Then the roles switch and the process starts again.

At the end, the facilitator asks how the participants felt about the exercise, how difficult it was to stay silent, how well each person summarized the other’s points and how it can be applied at work.

For 5 more team building exercises, including one to help teams talk about difficult subjects, visit Mindtools.com.

5 Active Listening Team Building Activities