Team Appreciation

There are instances where, as facilitators, we want to help our participants get an external view on a topic. This can be how they are seen by the group, their strengths, their values, or abstracted feedback. This method describes how you can use coaching cards to easily facilitate this process in a silent group exercise.

Setting:
You are running a team workshop for a team where people already know each other, and you want everyone to engage in a discussion about their individual and collective strengths.

• Individual and group reflection on individual strengths/values.

• coaching card set “Stronger You” , or

• coaching card set “What Really Matters!”

• icebreaker.online for online sessions

• Also available on SessionLab

1. Set the space:
   After establishing some basic psychological safety with the group, arrange a full circle with chairs and ask everyone to put a post-it with their name on their chair. Put the strength cards in the middle in a circle with the word side up.

2. Silent selection:
   Then ask your participants to select 1 card (i.e., one strength) for each other team member and put it on their chair — in silence. Play reflective music to support the process.

   • If you use the strength card set with 54 cards, you can work with up to 6 participants (6 participants choose 5×6 = 30 cards). Above that, the number of cards available for selection gets too low.

   • Using the value card set with 80 cards, you can work with up to 8 participants (8×7 = 56 cards used).

3. Reflection:
   Once everyone is done distributing cards, the participants will be curious about which strengths their teammates see in them. Give everyone 15 minutes for individual reflection . Prompt questions:

   • Which strength cards did I receive?

   • Why would someone give me that card?

   • Is that in line with my self-image?
     Ideally, the participants write down their reflections.

4. Sharing and discussion
   Let each participant explain their reasoning:

   • What is clear to me?

   • What am I surprised about?

   • After the individual reflection, let the card-givers reveal why they gave the specific cards. The receiver might want to take notes and compare the results to their reflection. Depending on the team size, make sure to limit speaking time !