This article is part of our Team Communication Insights Centre.
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Sometimes teams simply need a reason to start talking differently.

A well-designed team communication activity can create that opportunity.

It can help people notice how they communicate, hear perspectives they don’t normally hear and discuss things that might otherwise remain unspoken.

And team communication activities don’t need to be complicated.

Some of the most useful require little more than a question, a few minutes to think and enough curiosity to explore the answers.

Here are seven team communication activities you can use to get the conversation started.

Teams communicate every day.

They exchange emails, attend meetings, share information, solve problems and make decisions.

But communicating frequently isn’t necessarily the same as communicating effectively.

• Patterns develop.
• Some people speak more than others.
• Questions don’t get asked.
• Assumptions go unchallenged.
• People interpret the same behaviour differently.
• Feedback gets postponed.

An activity interrupts those patterns.

Instead of asking the team to discuss the abstract subject of “communication”, it gives them something specific to respond to.

The team communication activity creates the experience.

The conversation afterwards creates the value.

This is one of the simplest team communication activities you can run.

Ask each person to consider two questions:

What do I need from other people in this team to do my best work?

and:

What might other people need from me?

Give everyone a few minutes to think individually before discussing their responses.

The first question is usually easier.

People may want:

• clearer information
• more notice
• quicker decisions
• greater involvement
• fewer meetings
• more opportunity to discuss ideas
• clearer priorities
• more feedback

The second question requires a different perspective.

People have to think about the experience of working with them.

That can produce some interesting discoveries.

Debrief questions

Ask:

What did you notice?

Were there any common needs?

Was anything surprising?

Which requests would be relatively easy to accommodate?

What might we each need to do differently?

This activity works particularly well because it shifts the conversation from:

“People need to communicate better.”

to:

“Here’s something specific that would make communication with me easier.”

This activity explores the difference between self-perception and how other people experience us.

Ask each person to identify three qualities or strengths they believe they contribute to the team.

Then invite colleagues to identify strengths they see in that person.

Compare the two perspectives.

Where do they agree?

Where are they different?

Someone may describe themselves as:

supportive

while colleagues particularly value their:

ability to challenge.

Someone may believe their greatest contribution is:

attention to detail

while the team notices:

their calmness when things go wrong.

Neither perspective needs to be correct.

The difference is what makes the conversation useful.

Debrief questions

What did colleagues recognise that you didn’t choose yourself?

Were any of your choices not mentioned by other people?

What might explain the difference?

Which strengths could you use more deliberately?

This is also an activity that can be made much easier by using behavioural statement cards rather than asking people to generate all the language themselves.

Ask everyone to complete this sentence privately:

When somebody __________, I tend to assume __________.

Give a few examples if needed:

When somebody doesn’t reply quickly, I tend to assume…

When somebody challenges my idea, I tend to assume…

When somebody stays quiet in a meeting, I tend to assume…

When somebody asks lots of detailed questions, I tend to assume…

Then discuss some of the responses.

This can reveal just how much communication is shaped by interpretation rather than simply by what somebody actually said or did.

Silence might mean disagreement.

Or reflection.

Or uncertainty.

Or distraction.

Or simply that somebody has nothing to add.

The problem begins when we treat our interpretation as fact.

Debrief questions

Which assumptions do we commonly make?

How often do we actually test them?

What could we ask instead?

A useful phrase for teams to practise is:

“Can I check what you meant by that?”

It is remarkably simple and can prevent a great deal of unnecessary misunderstanding.

Ask team members to consider how they prefer to receive different kinds of communication.

For example:

A quick question
Email, Teams/message, telephone or face-to-face?

A complicated problem
Written information first or talk it through?

Feedback
Immediately or after time to reflect?

A decision
Headline first or background and detail first?

A new idea
Discuss possibilities or understand the practicalities?

There are no universally correct answers.

The purpose is to make preferences visible.

Teams often develop communication habits based on what is easiest for the sender, rather than what helps the receiver understand.

Debrief questions

Where are our preferences similar?

Where are they different?

Are we communicating according to what other people need, or according to what we prefer?

What small adaptations would make communication easier?

This can connect particularly well with behavioural profiling because communication preferences are often one of the first places behavioural differences become visible.

This team comminication activity requires a little more trust, but it can produce extremely useful conversations.

Ask each person to write down their response to:

What is something this team would benefit from talking about more openly?

Responses can be anonymous if appropriate.

Collect them and group similar themes.

You might discover:

• workload isn’t being discussed honestly
• meetings aren’t working
• responsibilities are unclear
• decisions aren’t being communicated
• people avoid giving feedback
• one relationship is affecting everyone else
• priorities keep changing
• the team isn’t challenging enough
• people don’t feel sufficiently involved

The facilitator doesn’t need to solve every issue.

The first objective is simply to make the topics visible.

Debrief questions

What patterns do we notice?

Which conversation would make the greatest difference?

What has stopped us discussing it before?

What would help us have that conversation constructively?

Sometimes the most valuable facilitation activity is simply creating permission to discuss something everyone already knows is there.

Choose a current issue, decision or challenge facing the team.

Ask people to explore it from four different perspectives.

For example:

Action

What needs to happen?

What decision needs to be made?

Possibility

What else could we do?

What opportunities might we be overlooking?

People

Who will be affected?

What support might they need?

Evidence

What do we know?

What information are we missing?

These aren’t personality types.

They are simply four useful perspectives.

The communication exercise becomes particularly interesting when people deliberately explore the perspective they would not naturally consider first.

Debrief questions

Which perspective came most naturally?

Which was easiest to overlook?

Did considering all four change your view of the issue?

Which perspective does this team need more of?

This gives teams a practical way to use behavioural flexibility rather than simply discussing behavioural preferences.

Finish with something extremely simple.

Give everyone the question:

If this team could have one conversation that would make working together easier, what should that conversation be about?

Ask people to write their answers individually.

Then share them.

Don’t rush to solve the topics.

First look for patterns.

Perhaps several people identify:

priorities

or:

decision-making

or:

feedback

or:

workload

or:

how meetings are run.

The facilitation activity gives the team an opportunity to influence the agenda rather than having somebody else decide what the team needs to discuss.

Debrief questions

There really only needs to be one:

Which conversation should we have first?

Then have it.

Several of these team communication activities can be run without any materials.

Sometimes, however, giving people something physical to respond to makes the conversation easier.

The Colour Energies Card Game contains 216 positive behavioural statements that can be used as prompts for team conversations.

Instead of asking somebody:

“What are your strengths?”

and waiting while they try to think of suitable words, they can look through behavioural statements and choose those that resonate.

The same cards can then be used by colleagues.

For example:

Which five cards describe what you believe you contribute to the team?

Then:

Which cards would your colleagues choose for you?

The interesting part isn’t whether the selections match.

It is the conversation created by the similarities and differences.

The cards can also be used to explore communication preferences, team contributions, perceptions and behavioural differences without needing to turn the activity into a formal profiling exercise.

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This is where practical team communication activities become valuable.

Not because people need another profile. But because they need opportunities to talk.

When teams discuss communication regularly:

• Awareness becomes understanding.
• Understanding becomes feedback.
• Feedback becomes action.
• Action becomes improvement.

That is where meaningful change begins.

The most successful team communication activities are rarely those that provide the most information.

They are the activities that generate the most meaningful discussion.

• When people exchange observations.
• Share perspectives.
• Challenge assumptions.
• Recognise strengths.
• Acknowledge blind spots.

The conversation becomes more valuable than the model.

The framework simply provides a structure. The workshop facilitator provides the space.

Take a look at our free guide: 7 Questions That Improve Team Communication and learn how to improve team communication without another profile.

If your team has recently completed a profile workshop, the next step is not another profile.

The next step is conversation.

Because communication does not improve when people complete a profile.

Communication improves when people start talking differently to one another.