/ GUIDE FOR FACILITATORS
Team Scenarios

Team scenarios are discussion-based activities that are designed to give learners opportunities to:

  • Practice working together on typical challenges faced by work teams.
  • Build a sense of community
  • Explore the ideas in the course collaboratively

(The collection in this package has been adapted from Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun.)

Each week, post one of the scenarios to the WebBoard to start the discussion. As learners post, facilitate the discussion.

Let’s get started!

/ COPY, PASTE & CUSTOMIZE
The 7 Scenarios

Putting together the team

Imagine this …

You’re asked to join a team that will be working on a mission-critical project. You’re going to interview a number of potential candidates to join the team. They all have the technical skills to do the job but you need to find out if they have the right “fit” for the team (i.e. find out if they can work well with others, if they know how to handle conflict, if they have strengths that others on the team might not have, if they know how to communicate in a way that works for the team, etc.)

As a group,agree on 5 or 6 questions you’re going to ask candidatesto make sure you pick the right people.

Don't know where to start?

  • Research some of the qualities that people look for in team members (i.e. Google "teamwork skills")
  • Find out what questions employers ask during interviews to find out if people have great teamwork skills (i.e. Google "interview questions teamwork skills")
  • Suggest a question you would ask
  • Share your own experiences working in teams
  • Respond to someone who posts a question you like
  • Improve or build on a question that someone else has posted
  • Ask the group or yourinstructorto help you out if you’re stuck

Who’s the leader?

Imagine this …

Your team members have been chosen and your team is ready to start the project. Together you decide that each person will tackle one piece of the work.

Now how are you going to coordinate? Should all the work go through a single person or should you share responsibility for checking each other’s work? What are the pros and cons of each situation? What can you do to reduce the risk of not completing the project or completing it poorly?

As a group, decide if your team needs a leader and, if you do, who that leader will be.

You’ve got mail … or not

Imagine this …

You’ve started working together on your project. A member of your team agreed to send an email last week but hasn’t sent it yet.

As a group, talk about how you’d deal with the problem. Start by suggesting what you’d do and then respond to what others suggest.

What assumptions are you making about why the email wasn’t sent? (For example, are you assuming the person understood what they had to do? Are you assuming the person knew when they had to do it?) How would you check your assumptions?

Getting it done

Imagine this …

Your team has hit a snag. You can’t complete your work until another team completes its work. They’ve fallen behind.

Together as a group, draft an email that you would send to the project manager of the other team to persuade them to get back on track. You might start by suggesting points to include in the email.

The bully

Imagine this …

A member of your team is insisting on deciding every aspect of your project. This person bullies, ridicules and does everything they can go make sure their opinion reigns supreme. The problem is, they’re right most of the time.

As a group, decide how you’re going to deal with this person.

Launch party

Imagine this …

You’re two days from launching your project. The project is a major update to the company’s web site. A launch party has been scheduled. The company has spent $10 million to advertise the specific day of the launch. Then your team discovers a major problem that will take three days to fix.

As a group, decide what you will do.

Poison Apple

Imagine this …

Congratulations! The project is almost done. You’re responsible for writing the final report. You’ve worked hard. You’ve stayed up late. You’re holding the report in your hands, it’s done and you’re really proud.

You hand it to your team members. They read it and a stunned look comes over their faces. They hate it. Not only do they hate the way it’s written but they don’t think it’s accurate.

Have you faced this situation in the past? What would you do? As a group, decide how you’d avoid this problem in the future.