Planning to run your first MBTI Team Building Workshop or Offsite? Fret not. This article provides you with practical tips on how to facilitate and lead your MBTI team building session.
Do you want to improve teamwork and maximize productivity with the help of personality type insights? The MBTI, personality types developed by Isabel Briggs Myers helps improve communication and teamwork by creating self awareness and team awareness. It also highlights commonalities among members of different backgrounds. Learn how to maximize the effectiveness how to lead your team development session by reading on.
1. Define objectives and desired outcomes
It is very important not to assume every MBTI Team Building workshop is the same, even if you have similar experiences. Hence an important starting point is the define your objectives and desired outcomes for your team/learners.
Perhaps you have a general idea of what motivated your interest in a personality type session, but now is the time to refine your objectives. Specifically, what do you hope people will learn from the workshop that they didn’t know before? How might you like to see your team evolve as a result?
Your workshop will provide a high-level overview of personality traits and how they affect employees’ approaches to the workplace. Participants will develop an openness to differences in types and behaviour, diversity, which can improve teamwork and output. In order to get even more specific with your workshop, you might want to define some objectives as:
- Enable participants to understand their behaviour, strengths and blindspots
- Help participants understand each other, and ways to engage each other despite differences in types.
- Improve quality of conflict management through deeper understanding of each other.
Increase teamwork and conflict resolution by fostering an understanding of and respect for one another’s differences, as well as participants’ strengths and weaknesses.
Outlining your goals in advance will aid in communicating their importance to your team and in selecting the best means of achieving them.
2. Assess your team
I normally consider the demographics of the team so that I can appropriately plan and carry out the right types of MBTI team building learning activities. For eg, if you have females who are pregnant, avoid strenous physical exercises. If the majority of your participants are young working adults, avoid ‘lecturing’, and instead facilitate.
Consider your team’s demographics in the design of your objectives and team learning activities.
In most cases, it’s a good idea to have all employees who plan on attending the workshop take a personality assessment beforehand so that they can come to the workshop with knowledge about their own personality type already in hand. Educating your participants on the theory of personality types and how their teammates may be different from them will give them a deeper appreciation of the differences and think about ways to engage each other. Furthermore, it discusses that perennial favourites of human beings, ourselves, in order to introduce the ideas of personality type.
With technology advancements, personality assessments and tests can be administered online or use of paper test booklets. For eg, MBTI assessments can be handled easily online where participants’ results can be obtained before the workshop. For anyone new to the administration of the MBTI assessment – a word of caution: do give at least 2 weeks to administer the MBTI test. In Singapore, there is only 1 central MBTI Assessment body which is responsible for the administration – hence there can be ‘traffic’ congestion when many companies do their MBTI assessments at the same time especially during year end.
Read more on different Personality Profiling Workshops by 36 HR Training & Consultancy.
3. Plan your venue and logistics
You have to decide whether the MBTI teambuilding workshop is in Singapore or overseas, eg Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia.
Following that, you have to ensure you secure the venue in advance based on how much space you need, the no. of participants, the types of team building or team development activities you organise.
Typically, for small groups, eg up to 15 persons, I prefer to seat the participants in a semi-circle to allow free-flow of ideas. I also normally do away with tables so there is no psychological barrier between participants. I also normally like to have the other half of the room to have empty space for activities and movements – but that depends on what types of team building activities you hold. I usually will design learning activities that bring out the key learning insights, based on the team building objectives.
For large groups eg, 50 persons or more, then cluster seatings are recommended.
There are lots of good teambuilding venues in Singapore. Depending on your budget, you can get a decent room size (up to 15 persons) for between S$500-$1000 per day. I will separately write an article to provide suitable corporate teambuilding venues.
In Singapore, there are lots of interesting training venues for corporate team building events. This picture shows a training venue (if budget is not a huge concern for your clients) I had recently used which delighted my clients. I will be writing more on these venues in the coming days.
4. Plan your resources/Logistics
Do consider:
- What types of preparation you need in terms of content. For MBTI Team Development workshops, the lead facilitator should be familiar with the MBTI concepts, and should be certified. Contact 36 HR Training & Consultancy if you need help in facilitating your planned MBTI Team Development Workshop or any MBTI Offsite event. For more info on 16 MBTI types, read here.
- Consider whether you need any assistant facilitators, and whether any help for logistics. When I facilitate any group larger than 15, I usually will get a logistics helper or trainer. I will scale up the no. of assistants depending on the size of the learners.
- Team Building Activities and Games. Make your learning insightful but make sure it’s fun too! The best way to learn is to incorporate fun into learning and let participants experience. Check out some of our suggested MBTI Team Building Learning Activities.
- Facilitate using a combination of powerpoint, flip charts and papers, kahoot, games, plus course notes for participants to write their thoughts.
- Reflections – how do participants reflect and how do they bring these learnings back to the office? Plan these! I usually will create booklets or space in course notes for reflections.
- Music – consider using appropriate music for different learning activities. Music can help create the right mood easily! But make sure the venue has the means to project your music. If not, get portable speakers.
- I normally will test my laptop connectivity with the venue ahead of the team building event – just to be very sure!
- Feedback – consider how you would get feedback from the participants at the end of the team building event. Design your feedback form accordingly!
5. Perform A Mock Run
Do consider practising your facilitation/presentation several times from beginning to end to ensure a smooth flow of ideas whether you use the free presentation script provided above or write your own. Make sure you have everything you need for your planned activities by doing a checklist of timings and logistics.
Normally I would rehearse with another MBTI trainer at least the first part (eg 15 min) and then walk through the team building games and learning activities. I often get useful feedback and adjust accordingly.
Ready and Set! Prepare to facilitate and lead your team building workshop on mbti.
You’ve selected the materials you need to facilitate a workshop on personality type in the workplace, where you’ll help your team members better understand and appreciate one another’s unique qualities and contributions.
On the day of the workshop, be punctual – you don’t want to be sweating rushing in when participants are seated. I usually get there early 1 hour before hand to set up the laptop and the space, place the course notes and arrange the flip charts. And set up the area for the team building activities that have been planned.
If you would like to get help to facilitate for your company an MBTI Team Building session, or to have a MBTI lunchtime talk, please contact 36 HR Training & Consultancy.