3 free team building resources for creatives
As we entered the second month of the year I found myself in a small coffee shop with a colleague trying, if ever, to contain our laughter likely due to highly sugary-iced-caffeinated drinks and half eaten desserts when the subject on team building and management popped-up. The question? Have we become the generation of the dreaded icebreakers? As always, I have to argue my case.
“It’s not the dreaded icebreakers it’s the dreaded managers that do the same dated workshops over and over again.”
Ok, so let’s not blame design managers… lets blame the system. How do we acquire this knowledge anyhow? Is this some sort of torch passed down to us from previous managers that we pass on to our teams? Maybe workshops we’ve attended, books we’ve read or even school. Nevertheless, to kick off this 2019 I have listed my favorite management resources to unleash the potential of your design team, no funding necessary.
1. Hyper Island’s Toolbox
Hyper Island’s Toolbox is a resource kit for creative collaboration based on Design Thinking principles. There are many group and individual activities ranging from workshops to quick 5 minute activities to help build up your team’s potential. The best part is the practical step by step guides to all their activities and you can even filter categories like self-leadership, innovation, and energizers.
2. Playbook’s Design Manager Collection
Playbook all together is an amazing resource it’s a community by designers for designers. It promotes growth, the most honest advice, and experiences from relatable people. Buuut, this article is for design managers therefore the Grow as a Design Manager collection is your starting point with topics like Scale your team, Resolve team conflicts and Build a healthy culture and process you will have your hands full with some fun action items.
3. IDEO’s Design Kit
IDEO’s Design Kit is a based on Human-Centered Design principles. It’s one of my favorite resources to share with any team mainly because regardless of their seniority level they are usually familiar with some of the methods and find some bliss in knowing a thing or two. You can see their eyes shine from all the new methods they can learn to up their game which is one of the most rewarding things of being a manager: facilitating growth.
4. Bonus: 16 Personalities
One of my guilty pleasures is taking quizzes hence the bonus is in fact a quiz. 16personalities is a myers-briggs personality test, the most undeniably accurate personality test out there, it only takes about 12 minutes and its available in 37 languages! This is best practiced as team with a Myers- Briggs Team Reflection workshop from Hyper Island’s Toolbox but all on its own the quiz results are so refreshing and the information is very complete. Go ahead and take it now, you know you want to, and comment your results! I’m The Debater.
Were you familiar with any of these already? What are some resources you feel should be on this list? Did you take the quiz? Comment below!
