What you can do to form a team

The following two lists contain items that can help you form your team. Sometimes it is easier to start by discussing what you can do to avoid forming a team, and then continuing to discuss what you instead can do to form a team.

What you can do to form a team

  • Get to know each other
  • Do something social together
  • Do something risky together
  • Carry out a task together
  • Do something physical together
  • Tell personal things about yourselves
  • Express feelings about being on the team
  • Identify your strengths and any weaknesses as a team
  • Identify skills that can benefit the team
  • Identify your views on how you want to work with others in the team
  • Build, construct, draw or design something together
  • Do something creative together (like writing a two-minute play)
  • Sing a song together
  • Play a game together
  • Talk about why you are better than the other groups, be better than them!
  • Make sure to have fun together.

What you can do to avoid becoming a team

  • Avoid being involved
  • Spend time talking about anything, without any goals
  • Allow someone to dominate the group
  • Allow people to not be part of the group
  • Let it be formal, neutral and abstract
  • Avoid all expressions of feelings
  • Refuse to decide a task or goal
  • Don't care about finding out anything about the others in the group
  • Reveal nothing about yourselves
  • Express criticism and hostility toward each other or others
  • Do not listen to each other
  • Do not show any interest in the group

Inspired by G. Gibbs (1994) Learning in Teams. A Student Manual (Oxford Brookes University).

Back to the Guide to group work

Print