Using the “Tell Me” exercise to create change

Helping practitioners and teams to see how they can contribute to the change process will increase their commitment to the organisation’s mission and vision and ensure that goals are met. The ‘Tell Me’ exercise below can help teams identify their common values and skills and consider how they could be used more effectively.

‘Tell Me’ exercise

The goal of this exercise is to use guided conversation to define a common set of values and aims for a team or an organisation. ‘Tell Me’ can help develop working agreements, resolve hidden conflicts, or be used as a team-building activity to enhance mutual understanding. The exercise is suitable for groups of between 8 and 16 people. Some initial planning is needed, as you need to divide the group into pairs.

1. Each pair spends three minutes talking about their skills in turn (as teller and listener) and what they feel the team or organisation could improve upon. It is important that listeners realise this is not a conversation but an opportunity to pay attention to what tellers are saying.

2. A diligent timekeeper is needed to ensure that people swap to the next pairing at the end of each six-minute period (i.e. after each pair has had a turn at being teller and listener).

3. Listeners’ questions should be simple and specific. Listeners do not need to say anything else other than ‘thank you’ after the teller’s response.

For example:

• Tell me a skill you have that you think the team can benefit from?’

• Tell me one core thing we need to improve on to develop excellent practice?’

• Tell me how you think we could be working together more effectively to achieve the goal?’

At the end of all the rounds, feedback on themes and skills should be shared with the whole group.