Word Association Activity

Word Association is another great activity to help your team focus and highlight the group’s strongest and weakest aspects. This activity is a bit risky, easy to implement and with the possibility of achieving immediate results.

Gather your group and ask them to describe in one word “what this team is like”, highlighting the positive or negative aspects. It is very important that just one word is said, no more, no less, and that everyone participates.

Encourage people to say the word that comes to mind, there are no right or wrong words, ask your team to choose the word that best describes the group or the way the team works.

People might respond with “strong,” “inconsistent,” “progress,” “united,” “distrustful,” “incommunicado.”

No matter the answer, this exercise allows you to discover the opinions and feelings of your classmates. Inquiring into the reasons and assumptions that led to these summaries would help repair negative feelings and ideas.

Take note of all the words that are said and then invite the group to reflect on them.

Warning: This exercise can be tense if people take the answers personally.

Moment of Reflection

First ask the group to think about the positive words that were said. Read some of them out loud. Explain that it is good for the group to maintain these aspects and reinforce them.

Then invite people to explain why they said negative things. It is important that at this moment no person is pointed out as guilty and that the group understands that it is the dynamic of everyone’s functioning as a whole.

Finally, invite the group to think about how to make all its members feel good and comfortable about belonging to the team. What can be done to change the negative aspects? Is it necessary to modify behaviors and behaviors?

The topics of this publication: teamwork, trust, integration, interactions, foster relationships, reflection, empathy