Imagine you have been awarded a sabbatical - a year off work to do whatever you like. You could lie by the pool, immerse yourself in a new hobby, or learn a new skill. Anything you desire, for a whole year.

The reason: your company has found a clone of you that will work in your place. This clone looks like you, sounds like you, and has the same skills, expertise and experience.

The only difference is that the clone is 5% better at everything to do with teamwork and working effectively. They are 5% better at communication, knowledge sharing, prioritisation, giving feedback, thinking strategically, influencing others - you get the idea. We often run this after our Great Teams session, which helps participants identify the ingredients of high performing teams.

When you return from your sabbatical, what has your clone achieved in your absence? How have they gone about it? What actions did they take and why? What are the results?

We ask participants to discuss this with a partner, then share their insights with the wider group.

Almost always, the result of this exercise is that participants arrive at the insight that they can be successful by working smarter, not harder. They identify ways to think more strategically, prioritise better, focus on quality and improve wellbeing.

The reason for making the clone 5% better is that we can all be 5% better if we really try. It's an achievable, marginal gain.

We can follow up with a Team To-do List session to help participants identify actions they can take to emulate their clone's success.

This exercise was inspired by Jamil Qureshi.