The Goals and Hands Activity
Goals and Hands is a fantastic and creative strategy for exploring individual goal setting in relation to the group and is great for boosting teamwork.
In advance, grab a large sheet of paper, sufficient to allow for the handprints of every person in your group plus a little more (just in case.) Generally, a sheet about 1m x 1m is sufficient for a group of up to 25 people.
Gather your group around the outside edges of the paper. Instruct each person to draw the outline of one of their hands with a marker on the paper.
Challenge your group to ensure that every handprint is visually connected to the handprints of the entire group, ie no islands. Each person should aim to marks the outline of their own hand so that it touches or overlaps (intersects) slightly with the outline of another handprint on the paper.
Within a few minutes, you should be left with a wonderfully creative montage of interconnected handprints belonging to your group.
When ready, ask each person to write on the inside of their handprint a goal that they would like to achieve with your group and then add their name. Invite several volunteers to share what they wrote.
Invite them to reflect on what they just created, and when the activity is over, display this piece of art in a prominent place.
Moment of Refelction
- How does the finished artwork of our interconnected handprints remind you of our group?
- Metaphorically speaking, what does it mean when one of our group’s handprints is not connected to the others?
- How might this conversation relate to our group’s performance?
- In real life, how are we connected to one another?
- Does being connected to others make a difference? How?
The topics of this publication: interactions, integration, reflection, collaboration, teamwork, cooperation, adaptation
