Purpose: To set a tone of openness and fun for a team-building session.

 Time Required: 30 minutes.

 Size of Group: Unlimited.

 Materials Required: Lots of colored markers; flipchart paper.

 The Exercise in Action: At the outset of team-building courses, Marty Jordan, a senior consultant with Amoco Oil, Chicago, IL, provides lots of colored markers and gives each participant a sheet of flipchart paper. He asks participants to divide the sheet into quarters and label the quadrants:

•   Upper left: Strengths I bring to the team

•   Upper right: Ways I might hinder the team

•   Lower left: What I need from others to do my best

•   Lower right: Hobbies, interests, outside activities

Participants are asked to use drawings (no words are allowed) in each quadrant. He gives them 20 to 30 minutes to complete their drawings.

Jordan completes a flipchart sheet, too, and “models” the introduction. He then has each person come up and share his or her chart and tape it up on a classroom wall.

Using drawings instead of words taps participants’ creative juices and allows people to share much about themselves in a way that doesn’t make them feel as self-conscious as they might if they verbally described the same attributes, Jordan says. He leaves the drawings up throughout the session as conversation-starters during breaks and lunch.