How to Build Trust in 6 Minutes and 40 Seconds: Team Building with Pecha Kucha
Community Building First, Decision Making Second
Do pictures say more than 1000 words?
Our experience says yes! We use Pecha Kucha presentations in which our five students and the coaching team members have 20 slides each to get to know each other through pictures. The students take turns introducing themselves this way. In just a few minutes, previously unknown people spark each others’ interests by sharing intimate things, including their desires, friends, and attitudes.
Building trust: How it actually works
Many believe that genuine trust cannot be formed within an hour. But if everyone openly shares their attitudes and beliefs, it’s entirely possible. Because trust is not a matter of reliability, as Simon Sinek explains to us in this beautiful TEDx Talk, but of shared values and beliefs.
If you want to connect with others and be part of a community, you have to talk about yourself, your interests, and what makes you unique. We call this process Community Building First, Decision Making Second in moderation.
Without trust, i.e., without a community working towards a common goal, there can be no result. Trust is a catalyst that accelerates collaboration to such an extent that people regularly ask us how we can achieve such results in such a short time.
The answer is simple: co-creation!
People who trust each other build on each other. They say, as in an improvisational theater: “Yes, AND…” instead of “No” or “Yes, but…”. The flow of working together is not hindered by resistance but becomes a common game. Trusting integration develops when you accept what is and go with the flow instead of resisting it.
But because integration sounds far too conventional in today’s working environment, New Work jargon calls it co-creation. We create new things by building on what our team members contribute. As a result, we jump between different associations and better see the big picture. And this creates effective, integrating concepts that we cannot (and do not want to) predict.
Let’s Pecha Kucha!
It all starts in the simple format of a Pecha Kucha. Having to express yourself in 20 slides and each slide’s idea in 20 seconds makes getting started very easy. If everyone engages in these simple formats, productive teams are formed from the start.
And these are our magic queries:
1. You, as a baby
2. You, as a teenager
3. The heroine of your youth
4. Your family (pets included!)
5. Your friends
6. You right now
7. Your favorite animal
8. What is your actual challenge?
9. What is the vision for your life?
10. Why is that your vision?
11. What helps you to reach your vision?
12. What problems would you like to solve on this planet?
13. What are your values?
14. How do you live and show your values?
15. Your hero:ine today
16. Your unique competencies
17. Your passion
18. What do you not need in your life?
19. What difference would you like to make?
20. What should people remember of you?
Check it out: Example Pecha Kucha
Just try it out — you, too, can enormously strengthen the bond in your team with these few simple questions! In the coming weeks, we will share more team-building methods with you. Subscribe to the QLab Think Tank publication to never miss the best team-building practices!
Boris Gloger, Co-Founder and CEO of QLab Think Tank GmbH
