Activity for volunteers: Reflecting on our strengths
Reflect on, acknowledge and celebrate aspects of Our Volunteering Culture with the Well Done You! activity
Activity outcomes
- Get to know your team – discover and celebrate what your Team Members do well.
- Develop your team – increase awareness of your collective strengths.
Activity details
- 15 minutes (or longer)
- Indoors/outdoors/in person/online
- Any volunteer team
You'll need
- One double-sided printout of Our Volunteering Culture Prompt Cards
- A pair of scissors
Before you begin
- If your team needs a light refresher on Our Volunteering Culture, you can share the link ahead of the activity.
- Print and cut out the prompt cards.
The activity
- Place the prompt cards into a hat (or similar).
- One by one, each Team Member randomly picks a prompt card from the hat. They say which other Team Member has recently lived/exemplified the behaviour described. If they cannot think of someone, they put the prompt card back into the hat and pick again.
- The highlighted Team Member has an opportunity to comment on the situation faced and what they did.
- If there’s time, do another round.
Activity variations
- As an alternative to prompt cards, print out the PDF version of Our Volunteering Culture and cut out the statements.
- This activity can be done in various ways without losing its essence. It could be a short reflection activity to start a team meeting. It might also be done as part of a longer team review exercise. The duration of the activity depends on the size of your team.
- Team Members randomly pick each other and identify a prompt card they feel that person recently lived/exemplified. This will ensure everyone is mentioned.
- If the activity is done online, the facilitator can randomly allocate the prompt cards.
Reflection
This activity asks us to reflect on what our fellow Team Members do well. You may want to explore this further.
What are members of the team good at? Do they make it look easy? Is it something others could learn from?
What do those on the receiving end of these observations think? Are they aware of their own abilities? How easily does dealing with certain issues come to them?
If using the prompt cards, see the reflection points on the opposite side.
- To encourage your team to focus on specific behaviours, base the activity on a smaller and pre-selected number prompt cards.
- Not everyone is comfortable with positive feedback, even as observations from by fellow members of the team. Use your knowledge of the team to sense the ‘room temperature’.
- This could be a recurring activity within a team. Try having a regular reflection on Our Volunteering Culture. Lead the conversation to cover points you haven’t touched on before.
- Try another Our Volunteering Culture activity.
Activity for volunteers: Opportunities to improve our Culture
Reflect on and acknowledge aspects of Our Volunteering Culture that your team can improve upon.
Try the Challenging Ones activityActivity for volunteers: Our Volunteering Culture and me
Reflect on your own behaviours within Our Volunteering Culture, both in terms of what you do well and what you could work on.
Try the About Me activity