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Exploring personal patterns in trainer teams
Exploring personal patterns in trainer teams
Kontenido
This activity invites you to explore your behavioural patterns when working in trainer teams.
Trainers often carry recurring ways of acting, reacting and positioning themselves in teams, especially in situations of uncertainty, challenge or collaboration. These patterns are not always visible to us, yet they strongly influence how we contribute, relate to others and shape team processes.
The activity is designed as a journey from the outside (outdoors) to the inside (introspection into yourself). Using movement, reflection and dialogue, participants explore how they behave in teams, what roles they tend to take, and what these patterns serve.
While an outdoor hike offers a powerful environment for reflection and inspiration, this activity can also be implemented through visualisation, drawing, or creating constellations using objects such as LEGO figures or natural materials.
By becoming more aware of your patterns, you can begin to make more conscious choices about how you show up in teams and how you support collective learning and collaboration.
By completing this activity, you will be able to:
• Reflect on your behavioural patterns in trainer teams
• Identify recurring roles and their function in team dynamics
• Analyse how your patterns influence both you and the team
• Become more aware of opportunities for change and development
if you go on the hike, here are some ideas on the flow:
Arrival and tuning in (first 30–40 minutes)
Let people walk in pairs with easier, experience-based questions (your positive and challenging team experiences). This warms them up and builds trust without forcing depth too early.
Pattern awareness (next 60–90 minutes)
Introduce the more systemic questions. This is where you can bring in:
“What position do you repeatedly take in trainer teams?”
“What do you tend to carry that may not be yours?”
“What are you loyal to in teams?”
Keep people in pairs or trios and rotate every 20–30 minutes. Changing partners is key — it prevents fixed narratives and allows new insights to emerge.
Here is a non-exhaustive list og questions for exploring your own team patterns or offering it within your training session:
1. Dig deeper into some memorable CHALLENGING experience of working in a TEAM. Think for a while and share with someone…
- What position did you automatically take in that situation?
- What did you start doing more of?
- What did you stop doing?
- What do you think the team needed from you then, and what did you actually offer?
2. How do you feel about entering a NEW team of trainers? What is the process for you?
- What do you usually scan first, when entering a new trainer team?
- Which part of yourself is easy to bring into a new trainer team?
- Which part of yourself tends to stay hidden or held back?
- What silent contract do you tend to make with a new team?
3. When you are in teams, what are your behavioural PATTERNS?
- What role do you tend to occupy without deciding to?
- What function does that role serve in the team?
- What risk does it protect the team from?
- What price do you pay for taking that role repeatedly?
4. Recall a team of trainers in which you felt fully in flow…
- What was happening there?
- Who were you able to be in that team?
- What in that team brought out your best contribution?
5. What are you ‘loyal’ to when you work in trainer teams? (and how does that loyalty shape your behaviour?
- Harmony?
- Quality?
- Inclusion?
- Efficiency?
- Recognition?
- Control?
- Something else?
6. What invitation do teams seem to give you again and again?
- To lead?
- To mediate?
- To rescue?
- To challenge?
- To hold emotions?
- To make structure?
- To stay quiet?
How do you respond to that invitation?
7. What pattern of yours do you keep reproducing in teams, even if I don’t like it?
After the exploration phase, participants enter to the debriefing phase
- create a visual representation of their journey on a sheet of paper or using other materials. This can include symbols, metaphors, drawings or constellations that represent their patterns, roles and insights.
- look at their visualisation and reflect individually, zooming out to identify what it reveals about their patterns of being a team member. share their insights with a partner or small group.
In a larger group, participants explore what they discovered about themselves and discuss possible invitations for change, as well as questions and dilemmas they carry about their role in teams.
Reflect together on what these insights mean for your ongoing development as a trainer.
Go to the badge and submit evidence from your reflection on your patterns in trainer teams.
NGO Awero created this educational resource and activity for the Erasmus+ Accreditation ETS modular training for trainers.
Sources:
Processing the experience: strategies to enhance and generalize learning, by Luckner, John L
Moving Questions by Siets Bakker
Role of experiential learning trainer/facilitator, by Dr. Arturas Deltuva, kitokie projektai, in cooperation with Mark Taylor
This activity supports trainers’ competence development in the "Cooperating Successfully in Teams" area. Activity content and badge-issuing criteria aligned with the European Training Strategy (ETS) competence model for trainers working internationally. In particular:
Assessing one’s own learning achievements and competencies; Undergoing personal/ professional development through feedback.
Optené badge di aktividat
Personal Patterns Decoder Optené e badge akí
The badge earner explored their behavioural patterns when working in trainer teams and reflected on how these patterns influence team dynamics, collaboration and their own contribution as a trainer.
To get this badge, trainer:
reflected on personal experiences of working in trainer teams, including both challenging and positive situations; Identified recurring roles, behaviours and patterns they bring into teams; Analysed what these patterns serve in the team and what impact they have; Explored possible changes and development directions for more conscious participation in teams.
Activity content and badge issuing criteria aligned with the European Training Strategy (ETS) competence model for trainers to work internationally.
Learning duration: 5 hours
Tasks
Task no.1
Evidence verified by: un organisadó di aktividat
Please share what the invitation is for exploring deeper certain patterns and changing something in your behaviour when working in trainers' teams?
Skills
ETS-TR
#Being aware of the team processes and how they affect the team’s effectiveness
Organisadónan
Awero
Badge issuer recognized with
Badgecraft ta fasilitá e plataforma akí i ta desaroy'é huntu ku organishonnan líder den edukashon. E programa Erasmus+ di Union Europeo a ko-finansiá kreashon di e promé vershon di e plataforma akí. Tuma kontakto ku support@badgecraft.eu.
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