The offsite meeting next Mon and Tue will be the first occasion when I facilitate large scale team building activities. I have been asking around to gather thoughts and suggestions on which activities would be more applicable for the occasion. To prepare better, I had my colleagues done a trial run in the office today.
Whilst I thought I already had a pretty good idea of how to run the activities, I was quite surprised to realize all the 'holes' when I trial-ran today. My learning is:
Always rehearse (always true) - especially the important occasion;
During the de-brief, everyone will have the tendency to go too fast. I should leave longer "pause" to push for thinking, summarize the points raised by the others and asking more prompting questions. (These sound natural but when you have to do it on the foot…..you are just so wary of dead air.)
Help them to imagine 'back' the real work. Give them a specific situation e.g. "imagine what will happen in the office on Wed - the 300 red emails on your laptop, the outstanding BCAs for you to read and support, the ...."
Good luck to me in Li-Jiang!!
