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One of the most powerful Team Building tools that I have used over the years with many different organisations, is a single sheet of A4 paper entitled "Rules of the Game".

I first became aware of the Rules of the Game whilst attending a sixteen day Business School for Entrepreneurs conducted by the Excellerated Learning Institute who are headquartered in San Diego. For the duration of the sixteen-day programme, the 150 participants were divided into various teams of approximately ten members each for the purpose of competing in several different events. Owing to the intensity of the competition and the different teams consisting of different people, the task of coordinating all the various meeting times and fulfilling the desired outcomes of each event was extremely challenging and exhausting.

It became obvious very early on that for each team to operate effectively, clear and explicit rules needed to be identified and more importantly, agreed upon.

Here are the rules that our ‘Team Seven" finally agreed upon:

1. Be willing to support our rules and goals.
2. Speak supportively.
3. Acknowledge whatever is being said as true for the speaker at that moment.
4. Complete your agreements (Responsibility)

1. Make only agreements that you are willing and intend to keep.
2. Communicate any potential broken agreement at the first appropriate time.
3. Clear up any broken agreement at the first opportunity.

1. If a problem arises, first look to the system for correction and then communicate your solution to the person who can do something about it.
2. Be effective and efficient (Do more with less)
3. Have the willingness to win and allow others to win (Win/Win)
4. Focus on what works.
5. When in doubt, check feeling-tone words.
6. Agree to agree. (Commit to resolution)
7. Act first, debrief later.
8. Clarify communications and verify the response.
9. Keep time agreements.

In addition to our agreed Rules of the Game, we decided that there would be benefits in having our own Code of Honour.

1. Always be willing to do whatever it takes to win. (Provided moral, legal and ethical)
2. Always be willing to do whatever it takes to support any and all team members.
3. Have a willingness to stay together.
4. Don’t desire or seek sympathy or acknowledgment.
5. Remember, we are a team.

I encourage you to get your own team together, whether it be your staff, your colleagues, your family, and discuss the above rules as a template for defining your own Rules of the Game.

Until next week, many happy customer returns!

Graham Harvey APS

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