The Client
The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is the UN organisation that promotes volunteerism to support peace and development worldwide. UNV contributes to peace and development by supporting member states to leverage volunteerism as a means of implementation and people’s engagement to achieve the 2030 ‘Agenda for Sustainable Development’. UNV is headquartered in Bonn, Germany with an office in New York and has six regional offices in Amman, Bangkok, Dakar, Istanbul, Nairobi and Panama.
The United Nations Volunteers programme contributes to peace and development through volunteerism worldwide. Volunteerism is a powerful means of engaging people in tackling development challenges, and it can transform the pace and nature of development.
The Vision
A number of new employees joined the existing team of volunteer co-ordinators.
The purpose of the event was to bring the UNV team together outside of their day-to-day activities to work together to move towards being a cohesive, highly productive team with a positive and supportive working environment.
This incorporated “getting to know you exercises”, development of self-awareness and of others through Clifton Strengths and Behavioural Styles, and team building exercises that enabled team analysis and development.
The Background
10Eighty were tasked to design and facilitate a 5-day team building workshop. The aims of the workshop were to:
- Strengthen team cohesion and joint working together;
- Improve intra-team communication including communication styles;
- Enhance team motivation towards the achievement of the goal of “Promote volunteerism” as established in the UNV Strategic Framework.
The design of the event focused on activities that enabled the team to connect with each other, learn about each other’s strengths and explore how they worked together as a team.
Our Approach
We designed a blended approach to the team building event for the Volunteer Advisory Services Section. The event was a combined event of standalone team building elements and substantive technical exercises.
It was important to ensure a balance of fun team building activities whilst also clearly showing how they could work together as a high-performance team whilst working through key issues such as establishing a shared understanding of Integration and evidence.
As the team worked through the activities, everything was clearly linked to the team building cycle of:
- Team Purpose;
- Challenges and Opportunities;
- Options, Ideas and Solutions – including awareness of strengths and behavioural styles;
- Actions, Commitment and Team Charter.
Working through these stages provided clear next steps and motivation for the team to communicate and collaborate after the event.
The objectives of the day and the exercises used were designed to increase collaboration, improve communication, enhance motivation and help participants identify their strengths and the strengths of their team.
Also included, were pre-work: strengths identification with personalised feedback; session icebreakers; various individual and group exercises and activities including puzzles and presentations; and we committed to produce a post-workshop report to cover a review of the workshop, and action points agreed.
Outcomes
By the end of the event, the team had:
• Gained a deeper understanding of each other: knowing each other as people; their strengths and behavioural styles and strengthened the connection between them.
• Greater clarity on the collective purpose and value they contribute to the organisation.
• Identified areas in which they could give help and support to each other.
• Left with a clear action plan for the next phase of team development and progress as a team.
Additional Support Provided
In addition to design and delivery of the team building workshop, 10Eighty identified potential locations, organised venue, facilities, refreshments, catering (including special dietary requirements), accommodation and transport to and from the workshop venue. We can provide coaches and facilitators fluent in a range of languages.
Client Testimonial
“I enjoyed getting to know better my colleagues”
“Connecting with each other ( from nine different countries working in four locations: Bonn, Bangkok, NY, and Addis) was very important; creating our Team Charter and agreeing on actions to take forward was great” “Fun team building exercises, strength exercise and behavioural explanations. Paul was a great facilitator who did a fantastic job and followed the brief”
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