Discover your
Leadership edge.
Experiential Team Development
Is your team working together effectively? Are they “well oiled?” Or are you experiencing problems and frustrations?
If you are looking for a different, and more powerful, team development option then think about the last time you did a challenging experiential activity. Do you still remember what you learned?
Good team experiential, or “initiative” activities are amazing. People remember the lessons for years. That’s because they involve every step of the learning process and every aspect of the learner. People are fully engaged in doing something. As a result they tend to demonstrate instinctive behaviours. This can lead to mistakes that become a great learning experience.
Why choose an Experiential Activity?
The quote below is from a previous participant and is a great example. The team didn’t do any planning and subsequently failed the exercise. It taught them a great lesson about the importance of goal setting and planning as a team.
“I’ve just finished an MBA that emphasised strategy, goal setting, planning, and preparation and still got it wrong because I just jumped straight into task. This taught me more about the impact of planning and goal setting than anything else I’ve ever done. It got me thinking about how often I am doing that at work.”
Assess and Improve
Experiential team development is a great way to both assess and develop your team.
The assessment comes as you do each exercise. What are your teams’ natural instincts? Are they collaborating or competing? Do they share information? Do they align to a common goal? What sort of leadership emerges? How do they make decisions? The list of potential lessons is endless.
The improvement happens as people apply their observations to their workplace. This process can generate significant behavioural change.
Learn from experience
We’ve been running experiential activities for over 30 years. We’ve learned there are three steps in getting a great result:
- Choose the right exercise. This is critical. What team dynamic are you trying to recreate and challenge? The right exercise will create a great debrief.
- Pre-brief “why” you are doing the exercise. Most people focus on the debrief but the pre-brief is just as important. They need to know what to look for and how they will learn.
- Ask the right questions in the debrief. People love talking about what happened so you will need to ask questions that focus on why it happened and how that same behaviour is being displayed back at work.
Great team development
The biggest advantage of experiential team development is people generate their own learning. They observe their behaviour and discuss how it impacted their performance. They can then translate that learning back into the workplace.
This process of self-generated learning is much more powerful than any other option. If you tell them they’ll forget. If they do it themselves they will remember.
Talk to us today about how you can enjoy the benefits of a strong and aligned team.



Supporting team development is an investment in the future.
Download Experiential Team Development PDF
Take the first step towards your teams growth – contact us now.
Email – team@teamfocusplus.com
Call – 1300 551 274
Not quite what you are after? Schedule a free consult now to customise a workshop or book an Experiential Team Development workshop.
Want to keep updated with other workshops?
Contact us or Sign up to our newsletter
Download Experiential Team Development PDF and let us help you build a cohesive, high-performing workforce that drives your business forward.
Our Approach
We believe in a collaborative approach to leadership development, where we become your trusted partner, not just a service provider.