Cultural Triangle
Culture Triangle is a motivational activity that helps teams or organizations understand each other better in order to improve collaboration between their units. This team building activity achieves its objective by talking about, and getting behind, the stereotypes that professionals from different areas hold about each other.
The stereotypes held always have elements of truth within them, but also contain huge generalizations that should not go un-challenged. Using this exercise provides an opportunity for the truths to be discussed and worked with, and the myths to be dispelled, providing a firmer foundation as the team goes forward.
Present the cultural stereotypes slides.
Draw a large triangle on a flip chart and label each of the corners.
Allocate a colored sticky dot to each team or department participating.
Ask each participant to place the sticky dot on the triangle according to where they think they are in terms of the cultural stereotypes.
When the exercise is completed, ask participants how they feel about their team’s overall positioning on the chart.
You can also ask for specific feedback from anyone on the reasons for their positioning.
Lead the group into a discussion of the implications of this exercise for their on-going team-working.
Make sure that all insights are treated as constructive feedback and an opportunity to initiate change in the culture where appropriate.
Note that this is not about ‘us and them’ but about collaboration in general; a strong collaborative environment benefits everyone when it works well so hold this as the vision.
In processing this activity and leading participants through a reflection of culture implications, it is important participants view what they’re about to hear about themselves as constructive feedback. If it looks like there are some who are taking the process personally pull back for a few minutes and discuss the importance of feedback for continuous improvement.
As the plenary discussion progresses, make sure to capture headlines and actions. An honest purge of emotion and ideas often happens and you want to make sure you capture the essence so the teams move forward after they leave the room.
