Strategic Teambuilding Game: Intentional Diversity and Inclusion for Maximum Team Performance

Abstract

Inclusivity and diversity are critical to maximizing team performance. This activity incorporates a popular party game that connects students with the learning objectives, demonstrating the vital roles inclusion and diversity play in the success of a business and the importance of building skills for maximizing teamwork. With little instruction to expose cultural assumptions later in the game, students form groups and learn that it takes intentionality to avoid prejudice and establish a high-performance team. Participants work to build team member skills and experience loss when problems cause members to switch teams. Appropriate for graduate, undergraduate students, and professionals, the Strategic Teambuilding Game requires team members to communicate and network, reveals judgment in teambuilding, exposes students to risk and recovery from failure, and demonstrates the power of teamwork to build a high-functioning organization. Results are used to form teams for group projects.