New Year Teambuilding Ideas
What are you most proud of accomplishing in 2021? It’s time to celebrate!
Not only is celebrating your personal accomplishments important but celebrating yours and your team’s accomplishments together is a great way to team-build.
Below you will find 5 teambuilding activities to help you and your employees start 2022 with positivity and purpose!
It’s tempting to start setting resolutions and goals as soon as the clock strikes 12:01 in the New Year, but how about celebrating how far you’ve come before moving into “goal setting mode”?
Why Recognizing Accomplishments Matters
If you are a high-achieving leader, you likely have a tendency to accomplish one goal and quickly move on to setting the next, without taking time to recognize what you have truly achieved. Many of the people you work with are likely the same way.
And, what’s the result of not taking time to recognize and celebrate how far we’ve come? In my experience it’s boredom, feeling a lack of purpose, and feeling like I’m on a hamster wheel.
Simon Sinek’s work teaches us to “start with why,” which is indeed important in solidifying why we are doing something, but how about we also “end with why” to solidify why we did something?
What did we accomplish?
Why did we choose to do the work we did?
Why was it important?
What were the results?
What impact did we make?
Solidifying our purpose both before and after our work accomplishments…
….emphasizes the importance of our work
….enhances the meaning and purpose of our work
….gives us a break from constant goal setting and achievement (after this past year, who doesn’t need a break?)
….motivates us to keep doing great work
Teambuilding Activities
If you supervise employees, here are some ideas for celebrating accomplishments as a team-building activity. If you don’t supervise employees, these ideas will work with your co-workers as well!
(Note- Also important to keep in mind as you go through these teambuilding activities, sometimes starting a project or initiating an idea is an accomplishment in and of itself. The work doesn’t have to be completed yet for it to be considered an accomplishment!)
Team Brainstorming and Celebration Session
Schedule a team meeting (online, in-person, or hybrid works!) and ask each employee to bring at least 3 things they are most proud of accomplishing or working on this past year. Bonus follow up question - Why was this accomplishment/work important? In other words, what was the impact/result of the work you did?As employees go around the room sharing their accomplishments, write them out on a white board (online white boards work too!) Visually seeing the accomplishments drives home the volume and impact of your team’s work. As a follow-up to the meeting, send a picture or screenshot of the whiteboard to your team, expressing gratitude to each for their accomplishments.
Accomplishments Whiteboard Activity
This idea works both in the office or in a shared whiteboard space online. Set up the whiteboard and have employees choose their post-it note (or font) color. Using their color, challenge them to post at least one accomplishment from this past year at least weekly during the month of January to the whiteboard. At the end of the month, circulate a picture or screenshot of the whiteboard to the team. Bonus if you keep this going throughout the year!
Self-Reflection and Sharing Activity
Give employees an “accomplishments self-reflection questionnaire” with the questions bulleted above. Ask them to include their answers to the self-reflection questionnaire in your next 1:1 meeting. During the meeting, emphasize the impact of the employee’s accomplishments and your gratitude for them. Be sure to remind them of any additional accomplishments they may have missed!
Social Media Recognition
This activity is reserved for employees who don’t mind public recognition (and who have voluntarily given their permission). Ask the employee to email you what they are most proud of accomplishing or working on this past year. Include a photo of them with a quote of what they said and post it to the Company’s social media page. Often employees will share the post with their family and friends, and it generates a lot of positivity.
Peer Recognition Activity
Ask that employees come up with at least one accomplishment each of their co-workers has achieved. Then, have each employee share their co-workers’ accomplishments at a team meeting or individually with each person. A great way to amplify the “good vibes” of this activity, is to create a document or poster board for each individual employee with all of their peer recognition received in one place. Oftentimes, if it’s a poster board, employees will hang it in their office. If it’s remote employees, you can still achieve this in a shared document.
There are so many ways to recognize accomplishments and celebrate. Now is time to get creative and have some fun. After the celebration and recognition, then onto goal setting.
Happy New Year!
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