Card Games for Developing Teams is a versatile team development tool consisting of a series of games and activities designed around a deck of 52 ‘Developing Teams’ cards. The cards present 52 behavioural characteristics of effective teams, divided equally into four key team skills: unity, communication, support and performance.

Each card has an eye-catching headline, an engaging illustration, a short paragraph describing a particular characteristic of effective teams, and a question or two for the user to answer about their own team. The cards are uniquely involving, requiring the players to use their senses of touch, sight and sound.

The behavioural characteristics
The first 13 cards in the deck present characteristics of team 'unity' - expressed in terms of a sense of oneness, group cohesion, and of working together to produce the desired result. Team 'communication' is represented by the next 13 cards. Strong communication skills are essential for team effectiveness. The third skill is team 'support', with 13 cards that explore interdependence and supportive relationships, so often critical among top performing teams.

Perhaps the most important of the four skills is covered in the final 13 cards on team 'performance'. Unity, communication and support combine to make excellent performance possible, but the actual performance itself is the final and truest measure of team effectiveness.

The individual characteristics are rarely linear in real life. They can, and often do, develop in a variety of sequences, according to the team, its members and the circumstances in which it is operating. However, in the cards, the characteristics are presented in a suggested order of development. This means that, within each skill area, the first few characteristics are fairly basic, whilst the final cards represent behaviours that are often more difficult for the team to attain.

The games
The 30 games in the collection include discussion games, card sorting and assessment games, acting and artistic games, as well as a number of games designed for use back in the workplace.

Each game includes: a learning objective, explanatory summary, approximate running time, directions for play, variations and debriefing questions. All of the games make use of the 'Developing Teams' cards and the last five games require additional materials, all of which are supplied. Games 26 and 27 are played with two different types of assessment sheets, supplied as photocopy masters. Games 28 and 30 use a double-sided A2 game board, printed on untearable paper.