Bring the team's strengths to a real challenge.
A structured exercise where participants bring a current challenge to the group and colleagues suggest how their strengths might help to address it.
Participants gain practical insight into how the team's collective strengths can be applied to real current challenges, and leave with at least one new approach to something they are working on.
Ask each person to bring one challenge they are currently facing at work, something real and specific that they would genuinely benefit from thinking about differently. This exercise applies the team's strengths to those live problems, so it works best once the room is warm and generous, which it usually is by this point in the day.
Each person describes their challenge in one to two minutes. The group then has three to four minutes to suggest how specific strengths in the room might help, speaking directly: I think the way you handle a particular thing could help here because of a particular reason. Encourage the person with the challenge to listen and take notes, holding their response until the end, then give them a minute to say what they found most useful. Allow a couple of minutes to set up at the start and a few minutes to wrap up at the close. If time is short, select three or four people, ideally those working on challenges the whole team has some stake in. If someone is hesitant to share a genuine challenge, offer an alternative: is there a type of situation where you would find it useful to have more support from the team?
Use Strengths Swap when a team wants to put its collective strengths to work on real challenges. Each person brings a current problem and the group suggests how specific strengths in the room could help, so everyone leaves with a new approach to try.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
