Looking to strengthen your leadership team? Here’s an example agenda for a fun and meaningful team-building day. All the activities we suggest are easy to set up and can be done pretty much anywhere — no fancy equipment or special rooms needed.

Example Leadership Team Event

Event Overview

Duration: 1-day in-person
Location: Somewhere in Europe
Participants: ~15 senior and mid-level executives
Focus Areas: Team Building, Open Communication, Cross-Cultural Exchange

Objectives

• Strengthen relationships across the leadership team
• Foster open and authentic conversations
• Encourage cross-cultural understanding and collaboration
• Build trust and alignment for future work

Proposed Agenda & Activities

Morning: Setting the Stage & Deepening Connections

Welcome & Warm-Up

Activity: Unique Introductions
Each participant briefly shares:

1. Name
2. Role & Location
3. What makes them unique in this group? (A skill, experience, perspective, or personal trait that sets them apart.)

Activity: Common Ground

1. Participants walk around the room while music plays
2. When the music stops, they pair up with the person closest to them.
3. Each pair has one minute to find as many commonalities as possible (e.g., hobbies, experiences, favorite foods, travel destinations).
4. After one minute, participants rotate and repeat the process three times with new partners.
5. After the third round, the group shares some of the most unexpected or surprising commonalities discovered.

This activity fosters quick connections, energizes the room, and emphasizes shared experiences among diverse team members.

Cross-Cultural Leadership Stories

Each participant shares a short story about a leadership challenge they faced in a different cultural setting. This opens discussions on different leadership styles, strengthens empathy, and helps participants recognize cultural influences in decision-making. Affinity Mapping of most common challenges. A structured discussion follows to draw insights from common themes.

Activity: LEGO® Serious Play® – Leadership styles

Objective:
Explore leadership styles through hands-on creativity and reflection using LEGO® Serious Play® as a tool for deeper insights.

Steps:

1. Introduction to LEGO® Serious Play®

• Brief explanation of the method as a tool for thinking, problem-solving, and leadership expression.
• Emphasis that there are no right or wrong answers—every model is a valid representation of leadership style.

2. Individual Challenge: Build Your Leadership Style

• Each participant receives a LEGO® Serious Play® set. (that they may keep afterwards)
• Challenge: Build a model that represents your personal leadership style.
• Encouragement of creativity—models can symbolize values, behaviors, strengths, or leadership challenges.

3. Sharing & Reflection

• Each participant presents their model and explains how it represents their leadership style.

4. Group Discussion: What Traits Matter?

• As a team, identify common leadership traits that emerge.
• Discussion prompts:
• What patterns do we see?
• Which leadership traits are crucial for this group?
• How can we leverage these strengths in our collaboration?
• Optionally, participants can connect or modify their models to represent a shared leadership vision.

Outcome:
Participants gain a deeper understanding of their leadership style and recognize shared leadership values within the team.

Lunch

Afternoon: Team Collaboration & Problem-Solving

Activity: Sailboat Reflection – What’s Holding Us Back?

Objective: A facilitated discussion using the sailboat metaphor to explore drivers and obstacles within the team.

1. Step 1: Identify the Wind & Anchors

• The facilitator draws a sailboat and asks the team:
• What is currently driving the leadership team forward? (Wind in the sail – successes, strengths, momentum)
• What is holding the team back? (Anchors – obstacles, challenges, barriers)

2. Step 2: Clustering & Prioritization

• The group clusters similar themes and identifies the most critical pain points.

3. Step 3: Brainstorming Solutions

• The team collaborates to generate actionable solutions to remove barriers and strengthen momentum.

4. Step 4: Action Planning

• The most promising solutions are refined and discussed for implementation.

Activity: Team Ranking – Overcoming Barriers

Team members individually rank the identified solutions. The highest-ranked solutions becomes the team’s collective priorities

Activity: Two Truths & One Lie

Each team member presents three statements about themselves: two truths and one falsehood. The challenge for others is to identify the lie. This lighthearted activity fosters deeper personal connections and engagement.

Activity: Marshmallow Tower Challenge

A hands-on team-building exercise that encourages collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving under time constraints.

Challenge: In team of 3-4 people: Build the tallest free-standing structure using a limited set of materials, including marshmallows and spaghetti.
Objective: Foster teamwork, strategic thinking, and adaptability in a high-pressure, yet fun, environment.

Closing & Reflection

Activity: Sharing is Caring
Team members share something valuable with their colleagues. This could include:

• A personal insight
• A life-guiding quote
• A favorite book recommendation
• A weekend activity suggestion

This simple exercise helps team members bond on a personal level and exchange inspiration beyond work topics.

Reflection & Commitment
Each participant identifies one or two key takeaways from the day and reflects on how they will apply them in their leadership approach.

Team Day Moderator – Joern Steinz (MBA)

Joern Steinz (MBA), founder and managing director of the Hamburg-based agency SkillDay, will facilitate your team day. A seasoned expert in workshop facilitation and team development, Joern has been coaching teams since 2014, helping organizations create engaging, outcome-driven workshops.

Prior to founding SkillDay, Joern worked as a consultant at Accenture and held corporate development roles at XING and the freenet Group. He studied business administration in Aachen and Coventry and earned his MBA from EADA Business School in Barcelona.

Joern has worked with leading global companies, including Allianz, Bayer, Capgemini, DHL, E.ON, Ferrero, Horváth & Partners, Lufthansa, McKinsey & Company, Personio, PwC, Sanofi, Siemens, and Volkswagen, as well as numerous agencies, trainers, coaches, and consultants.

Get in touch

We look forward to receiving your inquiry and promise a prompt response within 24 hours. Explore how SkillDay can elevate your organization’s presentation skills and drive success.