1.1(c) Our Best Team

Aim

To help the group look at the range of skills needed to make change happen and to value the importance of everyone’s contribution.

You need

Flipchart paper, pens, activity sheet 3 and about an hour.

Achieving your best as a group often means using a range of skills and gifts. It means recognising and valuing both the people who take a lead and those behind the scenes. This activity helps you to draw out the range of skills in your group. Some organisations and businesses invest in team building through doing some crazy activity together to draw out people’s range of skills and ability to work well together. They might have to build something, get from A to B without anyone touching the ground, or undertake a treasure hunt. Ideas are endless. You might want to do the same. Or you might prefer to imagine a team task for the basis of this activity, such as being a racing team wanting to win the Grand Prix or a sports team; you could be a group putting on a drama production, organising a camping weekend, or setting up a café.

a) Agree on the real or pretend team task. It may be just for fun or it may be some simple practical action relevant to the group.

b) Having chosen what your team is going to be and do, you now need to make sure it is the best and strongest possible team to get the task you have chosen done. List all the things you will need and all the resources and skills you will need in the team. If you chose the racing team example, your list might include resources like money, a fast car, fuel, the best tyres. The people in the team might include sponsors, drivers, mechanics, team doctor and so on.

What do you think?

Looking at the list of people in the team, are some roles more important than others? Why? What are the skills they need to have? How do these skills compare with the skills needed in your group? Are there any gaps you think you have and how might you fill them?

What next?

Are there any actions you want to take as a group to help combat climate change? How can you develop the strengths of your group to best tackle climate change? If so, use activity sheet 3 from the resource section to put what needs doing in the boxes, with specific names and dates if you can. Use this to review what’s happened at a later group meeting.