Motivation Exercise: What Makes Your Organisation Powerful

Purpose

This is a simple exercise designed to help the delegates see the positive aspects of their roles and organisation and define actions that can further boost the output of the organisation. This exercise is ideal for delegates that come from the same organisation. It can also be used in team building and leadership courses.

Objective

Consider a number of positive words and define objectives to be realised within the organisation.

What You Need

• Write the following words on a flipchart before commencing with the exercise:
  • Inspire
  • Boost
  • Create
  • Achieve
  • Influence
  • Persuade
  • Serve
  • Praise
  • Contribute
  • Delight

Setup

• Ask the delegates to suggest what these words have in common. Explain that these are some of the most powerful positive words in English. These are effectively goals that an organisation and its staff should aspire to.
• Divide the delegates to groups of 2 or 3.
• Ask groups to consider a word written on the flipchart and identify a number of actions that the company and the staff can take to realise that particular word.
• Groups should aim to identify three actions per word.
• Allocate 15 minutes for this part.
• Bring everyone together and go through each word one at a time and ask the groups to share their suggested actions. Encourage a group discussion around these actions and get them to vote for the best three actions from the set identified by everyone.
• Ask one of the delegates to help you out on recording the three best actions chosen by everyone for each word so that you can then make copies of this summary and distribute it to delegates at the end of the exercise.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes

Activity: 15 min activity + 10 min sharing actions = 25 minutes

Group Feedback: 5 minutes

Discussion

What were the most important actions identified in this exercise? Were there areas that the organisation was already strong at and you couldn’t think of ways to enhance them? Were there areas that the organisation was weak at and in need of immediate attention? Was there a consensus among all delegates on the choice of areas that were weak? What was the most important lesson you learned from this exercise?