Team Leader Guides

Team Leader Roadmap

All team leaders need to watch this video to understand the Peace Game, and the role and responsibilities of leading a Peace on Earth Team. This video will empower you with the knowledge, inspiration, and guidance on how to use the tools below. After watching the video you’ll be prepared to successfully start and lead a team. Then proceed to work through steps 1-5 below which are laid out in a simple and easy to follow format.

This roadmap is your guide to success. Follow it carefully to bring peace on earth to our world.

Step 1: Read “How to be a Team Leader” guide to learn how to be an effective team leader.

Step 2: Read “Facilitate the Information Meeting” guide to learn how to host an Information Meeting. At this meeting you will invite potential team members to join your team.

Step 3: Once people have committed to joining your team enter their names in the “Invite Your Teammates” section below to formally invite them onto the team. They will get a welcome email and your team number which they will use to register as a player. (Follow up to make sure they received the email.)

Step 4: “Facilitate the Team Building Meeting” guide to learn how to host a Team Building Meeting to kick off The Game with your team members. This meeting will provide the rest of the instructions needed to play. (Each action will be led by one of your teammates using the Action Leader Guide in each action.)

Step 5: Mix and stir Peace on Earth is on the way!

How to Be a Team Leader: This includes a job description and tools for team member recruitment, team leadership, group process facilitation, coaching and engagement with the team. The Team Leader helps ensure the team has a successful experience playing the Peace Game.

How to Facilitate the Information Meeting: This includes a pre-meeting preparation and a detailed meeting agenda with sections on introductions, how the program works, visioning, invitation to participate and setting up a team. This meeting is led by the Team Leader.

How to Facilitate the Team Building Meeting: This includes a detailed meeting agenda and processes for creating a team purpose statement, designation of action leaders, scheduling of meetings, management of the group process and a mutual accountability protocol. This meeting is led by the Team Leader.

How to Be a Team Leader

“Again and again in history some people wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and they move to broader, deeper laws. They carry strange customs with them and demand room for bold and audacious action. The future speaks ruthlessly through them. They change the world.”—Rainer Maria Rilke

WHY BE A TEAM LEADER?

Here are a few reasons why people choose to be a Team Leader. What’s yours?

Some Examples:

I care about the planet and want to do my part to make it better for the next generations.
I wish to protect the safety and security of my family, neighbors and community members and wish to do everything I can to create peaceful resolutions of conflicts.
I wish to experience a greater sense of community where I live.
I would like to improve my leadership skills by learning empowerment coaching, group facilitation and community organizing.
I wish to be part of a movement that is celebrating the oneness of humanity and creating peace on earth by 2030.
What’s yours? __________________________________

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?

As a Peace on Earth Team (POET) Leader you are responsible for starting a team of five to eight people and keeping your team on track to achieve their individual and collective goals. In broad terms, your work as a Team Leader is to help people adopt new behaviors and practices that enable you and them to contribute to making peace on earth a possibility. Once the initial recruitment phase is over the meeting responsibilities are shared. Following are the Team Leader tasks and approximate times divided over four months, the average length of The Game.

Organizing: This includes recruiting your team (3 hours), facilitating the Information Meeting including planning time (3.5 hours), and facilitating the Team-Building Meeting including planning time (3.5 hours). Total Time: 10 hours
Participation on a Peace on Earth Team: This includes attending seven 2-hour meetings (14 hours). Investing 2 hours per topic taking the actions (14 hours). Total Time: 28 hours
Team Leader Management: This includes supporting the team and addressing any team breakdowns. Total Time: 2 hours

Total Time: 40 hours or an average of 2.5 hours per week over four months.

Investing 2.5 hours a week will improve your quality of life, transform your community and help create peace on earth. It will also be a lot of fun as you do so much good for the world while enjoying the company of people you care about. Not many opportunities come along in life that provide such an extraordinary positive return on your investment of time.

CREATING YOUR VISION FOR PEACE ON EARTH BY 2030

From an empowerment point of view what motivates us to engage in something is a compelling vision of possibility. The stronger it is, the more powerfully it pulls us toward its realization. These questions will help you build your vision as a Team Leader. Take the time to reflect on them and write out your answers. As you do this step into your future and imagine having successfully implemented the 7 actions and the result it has had on your life, community and world.

In my highest vision what do I wish from being a Team Leader?
In my highest vision what experience do I wish for my team?
In my highest vision what experience do I wish for myself playing the game?
In my highest vision what experience do I wish for the world?
In my highest vision how has the game helped me grow as a leader and change agent?

After you have answered these questions take a moment to reflect on your answers and how they make you feel. This is the future you are able to create for yourself, teammates, and world.

MANIFESTING A VISION

Sometimes when we create a compelling vision what follows are all the reasons we think it can’t happen. This is not a bad thing. It means we have really stretched our imagination and allowed our self to dream. They are also part of the human experience, particularly for individuals assuming leadership positions. In the empowerment vernacular, we call these “limiting beliefs.” These are like weeds in the garden. If they are not attended to, they can take over the garden. Likewise, if they are not attended to in our thinking, they can eventually take over and our visions are not realized.

We need to know how to work with our limiting beliefs. If we can identify the belief underlying a doubt, fear, or resistance, we can address it. If we can create a limiting belief unconsciously that stops us, we can consciously create another belief that empowers us to move toward our vision.

It’s also important to realize, that just like you, those whom you wish to empower to take on leadership responsibilities such as being an Action Leader may also have limiting beliefs. So, becoming skillful in working with any limiting beliefs you may have, will help both you and the others you are empowering, to make your visions a reality. Since this game is based on a proven empowerment methodology there is an effective way to address these doubts, fears, and resistance when they come.

Here are some limiting beliefs you might be feeling. Included after each of them is a possible way you might transform it, or what is called a “turnaround.” A turnaround is simply moving from an either/or way of thinking to a both/and way of thinking. It does not deny the limiting belief but rather expands the context or reframes it so you can see it from a wider perspective and therefore take action. To do this requires opening up your imagination and creativity. Unlike the vision exercise where you were creating in a blue sky, this is visionary problem solving.

A note before you begin. If these limiting belief examples are not your limiting beliefs, please do not assume them!

Limiting Belief: I don’t have enough interpersonal communications and facilitation skills to be a good Team Leader.

Turnaround: My ability to be a Team Leader comes from my desire to improve my life, world, and create a better life for future generations. I ask for support when I need it.

Limiting Belief: I am afraid to reach out to my friends and colleagues to join my team and risk rejection.

Turnaround: Overcoming my own fears and resistances and developing new skills and talents is one of the opportunities provided by becoming a Team Leader.

Limiting Belief: I won’t have the time needed to be a successful Team Leader.

Turnaround: I understand that the way my current life is structured I might need to reprioritize some of my discretionary activities to free up time for this. I value the meaning, purpose, and opportunity this experience can provide me, and I make a choice to do less of something else, so I have more time for this.

Limiting Belief: My friends and colleagues will not be interested in playing The Game.

Turnaround: I focus my attention on those people who are ready—the early adopters—and encourage those who are not ready to consider participating in the future.

Limiting Belief: I don’t know how to successfully motivate a person to carry out the action they have chosen if they hit an obstacle and wish to give up.

Turnaround: I invite the person to rekindle their reason for participating in The Game and committing to taking on this action. I let the pull of their vision do the heavy lifting.

Limiting Belief: If my team doesn’t want to follow the meeting structure and agenda, I won’t be able to convince them to do it.

Turnaround: I explain the rationale for the meeting structure and the risk we face of not achieving our goals if we let go of this proven empowerment framework. I then trust the process.

Limiting Belief: It’s not empowering to request my teammates do something a particular way.

Turnaround: My principal responsibility is to help my teammates be successful in achieving the actions they have chosen. My role as a Team Leader is to provide real leadership when needed.

You may have limiting beliefs that are not covered here or you may have variations on them. If so, write down these limiting beliefs and create turnarounds. This is well worth your time because it will help you become aware of beliefs that, if not addressed, can erode your progress as a Team Leader. In fact, if you notice yourself stalled at any point in time, more than likely a limiting belief is in play. So just pull out this trusty tool and put it to work for you.

Finally, here is a deeper dive into the larger agenda of a Team Leader. With the help of the game’s empowerment tools, transforming a disparate group of people into a high-performing team capable of achieving substantive behavior change and much good in the world is readily available to you.

FIVE PRACTICES FOR CREATING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAM CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING BEHAVIOR CHANGE

Our experience in creating high-performance teams has grown out of the need in society for certain pro-social behaviors to be adopted by citizens. We discovered early on that a peer support group was a critical success factor in motivating people to change. But to achieve the gold standard of behavior change required that the group operate at a high level of performance. Learning how to do this has been a decades long journey. The many thousands of teams with whom we have had the privilege to work have been our teachers. The fruit of this learning are the following five practices.

Create the right size group

The size of the group is very important. Too small, and there is not enough energy and diversity of ideas. Too large, and there is not enough time for each person to fully participate in the meeting. The ideal size for a team being used as a support group for behavior change is five to eight households. This allows each person a chance to personally share his or her accomplishments and needs and to get support from the group. This size also allows for groups to bond socially, as it is small enough for people to form personal relationships with each of the other people.

Build the group into a team

The first meeting needs to be devoted to building the group into a team. The most effective way is to ask each person what they want as the outcome for participating and to combine these statements into a group purpose statement. If all members see a piece of that team purpose statement reflecting their personal vision, they can own it. This can be done in about twenty minutes and is the quickest and most efficient way we have found for bonding the team.

The next step is for the group to divide up leadership responsibilities so everyone involved is invested in the process. This is done by having a different team member facilitate each meeting. This distributes the responsibility and ownership for the team’s success among the different members. This also increases the pleasure of participation for everyone because they experience a diversity of meeting styles and hospitality if held in people’s homes.

Establish a group process protocol

The primary rationale for individuals to participate in a support group is that it will help them accomplish their goals better than on their own. The more effectively a team functions the truer this will be. Part of this functionality comes from the design of carefully crafted meeting agendas. But the other part comes from having an effective process in place to address any breakdowns in the group’s performance.

It is important to explain the group process protocol during the Team Building Meeting. We have found it effective to have a group check-in of up to ten minutes to air any issues and to see how the group is performing. Are people coming on time to the meetings? If not, what can be done either to renegotiate the starting time or motivate any latecomers to prioritize this as important? Are people taking the actions they told the group they would? If not, why not? How can the group help someone who’s having difficulty to be more successful in the future? Is the meeting following the agenda or veering off in many different directions? If so, how does the group wish to handle this?

During this Team Building Meeting it is also important to establish coaching guidelines for these communications, otherwise there is a good chance they won’t happen, or they’ll be poorly done, causing hurt feelings. The coaching process provides a means for the effective delivery of feedback. It starts by asking individuals on the team if they are open to both offering and receiving coaching from teammates when they see a breakdown in an agreement made by the team or an individual. Assuming people agree, which they generally do, then we need to ask people to share what type of feedback works best for them.

A regular time to check in and agreed-on guidelines for making difficult communications create the foundation for a team to achieve high-quality results.

Structure meetings to produce tangible outcomes

To get a group of people to achieve substantive results in a short amount of time requires structure. Underneath the softer process elements is the meeting skeleton. Like the skeleton in our bodies, this is what holds the meeting together. Each team meeting has a structured agenda with time allotments for each agenda item and a script for the facilitator. Some meeting elements may run longer, others shorter, and the facilitator will inevitably improvise on the script. But this clear structure enables the facilitator to know exactly what has to be accomplished and how to get it done.

The elements for an action meeting, which lasts 2 hours, include an inspirational start, sharing of actions taken since the previous meeting with support from the team as needed, a sharing of individual action plans for their next topic with a request for support, a modeling by the meeting facilitator of the next action area, check-in on team performance with interventions as needed, setup of support between the meetings by the facilitator to make sure teammates are on track, review of next steps, and acknowledgment of the team’s accomplishments.

The opposite of this, which we have seen in teams that do not produce tangible behavior change, is what we have come to call “pseudo empowerment.” In this situation, the meeting facilitator and group prefer not to structure the meeting or hold individuals or the team accountable for doing the things they say they will do. Empowerment by this definition is a hands-off affair. Inevitably, this approach quickly devolves into a discussion group or salon rather than a high-performing team committed to achieving the tangible behavior change of its members. At the end of the meetings people have not accomplished what they set out to and leave with a sense of dissatisfaction. Rather than being empowered by this approach, they often feel despondent, having spent so much time with nothing tangible to show for it.

The way to avoid this is by carefully establishing the value and rationale behind each element of the meeting agenda so that people understand why it’s important to the outcomes the individual and group wish to achieve. This careful explanation helps the team appreciate the meeting design so that if and when someone wishes to deviate from the structure, the group has enough knowledge to make a clear-headed decision.

Demonstrate an expectation of success

The intangible of a high-performing team is the expectation of the person who initiates it—the Team Leader. Our experience has been that the higher the expectation a Team Leader places on a team, the higher the expectation the team places on itself and the better the results it achieves.

A Team Leader needs to demonstrate an expectation of success by asking the team to take its investment of time seriously. That is, to do the things they say they’ll do. That’s why the group check-in and commitment to mutual accountability are the team’s backbone. When members of a team do not do what they say they will do, it’s essential that the Team Leader intervene even though he or she may be tempted to think, “It’s not the end of the world, I’ll let it slide.” If the Team Leader doesn’t speak up, the lack of accountability will quickly spread throughout the team, become the new social norm, and precipitate a downward spiral in performance.

Equally important, an effective Team Leader should be constantly looking for opportunities to affirm excellent performance, belief in the team, and the importance of the goal. The combination of nipping poor habits in the bud and reinforcing positive achievements keeps a team on track to achieve outstanding results.

The Peace on Earth by 2030 team experience is designed around these five practices. Those teams that followed these practices had a 95 percent completion rate with high levels of success in achieving their personal and collective goals.

CO-TEAM LEADER OPTION

If a Team Leader wishes to share this responsibility with another team member it is important that the two people carefully divide up responsibilities. This enables them and everyone on the team to know who is accountable for which tasks. On the one hand it’s nice to share leadership, but on the other it demands very clear communication and delegation of responsibilities or things fall through the cracks.

The next game guide shows you how to host an Information Meeting for those you wish to join your team.

Team Leader GuideFor those who want a printable copy of this team leader guide.

How to Facilitate an Information Meeting

INTRODUCTION

This Team Leader Guide will provide you with everything you need to conduct a successful meeting. What allows this meeting to be successful is the synergy among the various elements. The Game’s benefits are fleshed out so people see the value for them to participate. A human connection is made with others based on the authenticity and depth of the sharing that takes place. People experience the group process, so they see the care and thought that goes into a meeting design. And they get to meet the actual people who will be taking the journey with them.

To make leading this meeting as easy as possible, there is a script that walks you through all the steps from pre-meeting planning to saying good-bye. This script, along with all the other meeting scripts in this game, evolved through an iterative learning process based on carefully debriefing people who led meetings. We discovered what worked and built on it; and we learned what needed improvement and made the necessary adjustments. We observed that with a script people who were not experienced facilitating a group meeting were quite effective. Those who had group facilitation experience were relieved to know that they did not need to invest time in designing the meeting.

While the primary purpose of the meeting is to form a Peace on Earth Team (POET), an important secondary purpose is the building of social capital. People you care about are getting to know one another and purposefully exploring how to make their world better.

The Information Meeting serves to onboard people to The Game, so they know what it is and what is expected of them as a player. If someone is considering joining the team but cannot attend this meeting it is important to speak with the person afterwards to brief him or her on the game and the meeting outcomes using the information in this guide. If the person chooses to participate, he or she will then come to the following Team Building Meeting prepared to fully engage. In the case where team members are friends and you have already onboarded them, use the meeting to prepare them for playing the game.

Note: If you choose to enroll team members one-on-one, please make sure to cover all the relevant information in this guide so they come to the Team Building Meeting prepared. Otherwise, that meeting tends to devolve into an Information Meeting.

Let’s now begin with how to prepare for the meeting.

PRE-MEETING PREPARATION

Note: You can do these meetings virtually using Zoom, Google Meet, and Facebook Messenger Rooms.

Scheduling the Meeting: If you’re hosting the meeting locally the best time to host it tends to be a weekday evening from 7 to 9 pm or Sunday afternoon. If it is a work, school based, or virtual team just find out what works for the majority of people. Those who can’t make it you can brief one-on-one.
Beginning and Ending Times: Start no more than a few minutes late. If you know some people will be coming late, say so in your introduction. As a sign of respect for people’s schedules, be sure you end at the scheduled time unless the whole group agrees to extend the meeting.
Refreshments: If the meeting is in your home or held locally provide a fifteen-minute window at the beginning and again at the end of the meeting for socializing. While it may seem obvious, it is important to serve light refreshments. This increases the experience of community building. It is also an interesting phenomenon of human nature how such social niceties strengthen our bonding with others.
Room Setup: If meeting in person, arrange the room in a U shape with you at the front. This allows people to see one another and increases the sense of intimacy. It also makes it easier for others to see you.
Attendance: If meeting in person create a sign-in sheet with room for the person’s name, address, e-mail, and phone number.
Name Tags: If meeting in person, unless everyone already knows one another by name, provide name tags so people can immediately begin to connect. It is so much more gracious to address someone by his or her first name.
Paper and Pens: There is a visioning exercise in which participants envision the benefits of participating in The Game. If you are meeting in person, have pens and paper available for people to do the exercise.
Timing: Each element in the meeting agenda has an approximate time associated with it. It is rare that any meeting element will go for exactly that amount of time, so use it as a guideline. If one meeting element runs longer, you will need to make up the time by shortening another.
Practice: To get the full value from this script, take time to study it so you are fluent and understand what you are trying to achieve with each meeting element. Each is designed to achieve a distinct outcome described in a commentary after the meeting element.

So that you can answer questions about The Game, if you have access to the online platform read the “About” page on this site.

INFORMATION MEETING SCRIPT

Agenda Summary and Approximate Times

Social Time—15 minutes
Welcome and Purpose—5 minutes
Review Agenda—2 minutes
Introductions—15 minutes
How The Game Works—10 minutes
Visioning Exercise—45 minutes
Questions and Answers—10 minutes
Invite People to Join Team—10 minutes
Meeting Close—3 minutes
Post Meeting Logistics for Team Formation—10 minutes.

Total meeting time—2 hours

MEETING SCRIPT

Social Time—15 minutes

Welcome and Purpose—5 minutes

Introduce yourself and why you volunteered to initiate this Peace on Earth team.

The “why” is important as it allows others to know what motivated you to dedicate your time to this endeavor. As you prepare, take time to think about all the reasons you are doing this. Along with the inspiration it provides, it also models for others how to reach for a similar level of depth in what motivates them.

Thank everyone for coming and if meeting in person confirm that their names, e-mails, and phone numbers are on the sign-in sheet.
Meeting Purpose:
To learn about The Game.
For those interested, to start a team.

This provides an immediate signal that the meeting has relevant outcomes and begins assuaging any concerns they may have about whether this will be a worthwhile investment of their time.

Review Agenda—2 minutes

Introductions—15 minutes

Invite participants answer these four questions.

Name
Where they live
What motivated them to come and learn about The Game
What they would like to get out of the meeting

This seemingly innocuous part of the meeting is very important. This is the formal beginning of the relationship-building aspect of The Game. Ultimately, it is the social connection that people have with one another that motivates them to take the leap and participate in a game that aspires to change the world.

How The Game Works—10 minutes

Read out and/or create a visual.

Back Story: The Game is based upon the 1986 First Earth Run and the 86 days in which wherever the Torch of Peace went all wars stopped and the world was united as one. At the heart of the First Earth Run success were 7 strategies. These strategies have been created into 7 actions that are the foundation of The Game.
The Seven Actions: The actions are offered as quests to accomplish within specific locations that players and teams identify. A player is awarded a virtual bronze, silver and gold Peace Medal based on their level of accomplishment along with Peace on Earth (POE) Points.
Meetings: A team of 5 to 8 people meet locally or virtually eight times with each meeting being 2 hours. One person serves as Team Leader and the other team members take turns facilitating the meetings using detailed meeting scripts.
DreamKeeper: A player becomes a DreamKeeper – one who believes peace on earth by 2030 is possible and is committed to making this a reality – upon successful completion of all 7 actions. Forty million DreamKeepers tips humanity toward peace on earth.
POE Zone: A key goal of The Game is to establish POE Zones in every place on Earth.

Visioning Exercise—45 minutes

The purpose of this exercise is to inspire and empower people to participate in The Game so that they can bring these extraordinary possibilities into their lives and the world.
Explain to the group that we are now going to do a visioning exercise to help you understand what is possible for you and the world by playing this game. It is designed to expand your imagination, stimulate your social creativity, and envision the possibility of a radically different future for the world.
From an empowerment point of view what motivates us to engage in something new is a compelling vision of possibility. The stronger it is, the more powerfully it pulls us toward its realization. These questions will help you build your vision as someone with the capacity to help create peace on earth.
Provide them up to 15 minutes to answer the questions.

1. What motivated you to consider playing this game?
2. What learning and growth would you like from playing this game?
3. What impact would you like to have in the world from playing this game?
4. What do you bring to this game?
5. What challenges – inner our outer – might you face in playing this game and how will you overcome them?
6. What is your vision for peace on earth?

Have each person briefly share their answers. – 30 minutes

If a small group, divide the number of people on the team into 30 minutes to determine the per person time. i.e., 30 minutes divided by 6 = 5 minutes per person. You can also go question by question.
If a lot of people invite a few people to share per question.

Questions and Answers—10 Minutes

Invite people to ask any questions about the game and their participation. Draw out any concerns that individuals might have about participation.

The biggest concern for people, if there is one, is that they do not have enough time. The basic time commitment is 32 hours—8 bi-weekly 2-hour meetings plus approximately 2 hours for taking actions per topic, or 2 hours per week over 4 months. So, in fact, this is not really an issue, as there are very few people who do not have this amount of discretionary time. And even fewer can get this quality-of-life improvement and contribution to the world for a one-off time investment in comparison with other ways they could spend their time.

Invite People to Join the Team—10 Minutes

In some cases, this meeting will be with people who are already committed, and this serves as a briefing, so they come into The Game knowledgeable about how to play.
In other cases, this meeting will be with people you don’t know well, and it serves as a means to enroll them intoThe Game. If the latter, the following will help you do that.

1. Ask for a show of hands of who would like to participate in playing The Game. Acknowledge those who raise their hands and draw out any concerns from those who didn’t.
2. A simple technique is to raise your own hand to indicate the desired action as this provides a visual cue for others to follow. Most people will raise their hands. But some may not for various reasons. Often the issue holding them back is easily resolved but was not addressed in the question-and-answer period. This is why it is so important to bring everyone to choice. Making a conscious and intentional choice in the presence of others is the first step of building a high-performing team.
3. To be clear, the purpose here is not to cajole people to participate if they are not inclined to, but rather not to let them fall through the cracks for lack of reaching out. They would very likely not have attended the Information Meeting if they were not predisposed to participate. So, do make the effort to draw out their concerns. Often the group itself comes up with solutions to the issue and this conversation turns into a team-building exercise.
4. Propose a meeting time a week later for the Team Building Meeting. Adjust the time if needed to accommodate people’s schedule.
5. For those not wishing to participate at this time, let them know that they are welcome to join a future team.

Close Meeting—3 Minutes

Post-Meeting Logistics for Team Formation—10 Minutes

Set a date for the Team Building Meeting. This can sometimes require a bit of give-and-take, which itself is an important skill to develop in building a team.
If there are more than eight people (you can squeeze in up to ten) you will need to divide the group into multiple teams. local, everyone can meet at one location for a potluck dinner and the team-building meeting—space permitting—and then divide up into sub-groups. If this is not feasible, you will need to divide up the group into separate teams and identify someone to serve as Team Leader of the other team.
Before the Team Building Meeting, request that they read the Game Guides with a focus on Action 1, and if they have access to the online platform, read the “About” section.

Information Meeting GuideFor those who want a printable copy of the information meeting guide.

How to Facilitate the Team Building Meeting

INTRODUCTION

The Team Building Meeting sets the stage for the success of The Game. It helps a group of individuals to begin bonding and then mesh together into a team capable of achieving significant individual and collective results. This is no small feat to achieve in two hours. The meeting script has been developed over many years and various programs into a finely crafted process. If used as laid out, it will perform for you.

But it does more than build a team. It preempts the problems that can cause a team or individual team members to break down. Each time we debriefed a team and discovered a breakdown, we went back to the Team Building Meeting and redesigned it so it could head off these issues.

The meeting starts by creating a team purpose statement to enable alignment and a shared commitment. You then review the structure so people know the specifics of what they will be doing over the next seven meetings. Next you prepare the team for the first action area. Then you move into scheduling the subsequent meetings and selecting people to lead them. You end the meeting with a process to enable mutual accountability among team members, the backbone of a high-performance team. Each meeting element is carefully scripted so that with preparation and practice you can easily implement it.

PRE-MEETING PREPARATION

Note: You can do these meetings virtually using Zoom, Google Meet, and Facebook Messenger Rooms.

Here are elements to help you prepare to lead the meeting. Ignore those that apply for in-person meetings if your team is meeting virtually.

Refreshments: Allow a fifteen-minute window at the beginning of the meeting for socializing and light refreshments. In future meetings the group can decide if they wish to meet a little earlier for a potluck meal.
Room Setup: Arrange the room in a U shape with you in front. This allows people to see one another and you, as the facilitator, increasing the quality of the sharing and community building.
Attendance: Create a sign-in sheet with room for the person’s name, address, e-mail, and phone number.
Name Tags: Unless everyone already knows one another by name, provide name tags so people can immediately begin to connect.
Timing: Tell the group at the start of the meeting what time you propose to end and check that everyone can stay until the end. Make sure you end on time.

Each element in the meeting agenda has an approximate time associated with it. It is rare that any meeting element will go for exactly that amount of time, so use it as a guideline. If one meeting element runs longer you will need to make up the time by shortening another.

Give the team shared responsibility for timekeeping. If any point seems likely to take a lot longer than you planned, tell the team and ask them to decide whether to extend the meeting or quickly finish the point.

Pre-Work: Along with building the team, a key part of this meeting is to prepare people for the next meeting. Go to Action 1. Read it, select your goal and create your action plan for implementing it. You will present your goal and plan at the meeting. In each action you will also find an Action Meeting Guide.

MEETING AGENDA AND APPROXIMATE TIMES

Social Time—15 minutes

Welcome and Meeting Purpose—10 minutes
Explain How The Game Works—15 minutes

Create Team Purpose Statement—20 minutes
Start Action 1—20 minutes

Schedule Meetings and Select Action Leaders—15 minutes

Create Mutual Accountability Agreement—15 minutes

Review Next Meeting Goals—5 minutes

Inner Peace Meditation—5 minute

Total Meeting Time—2 hours

MEETING SCRIPT

Social Time—15 minutes

Welcome and Purpose—10 minutes

Make sure everyone is acquainted with one another.
Explain that The Game requires a team effort to accomplish its ambitious goals, and your job, as Team Leader, is to keep the team on track so individuals can successfully accomplish the individual and collective actions they choose.
Share a personal anecdote, poem, song, or something inspirational that connects the group to the meaning and larger purpose of what they are aspiring to do as part of this global movement.
State the five-part purpose of the Team Building Meeting.

1. Help build the group into a team by creating a team purpose statement.
2. Explain how The Game works.
3. Identify people to lead the different meetings and schedule them.
4. Prepare for the next meeting and the first action of The Game.
5. Develop a mutual accountability coaching protocol for becoming a high performing team.

Explain How The Game Works—15 minutes

Invite different team members to read out each of these five game elements.

1. Back Story: The game is based upon the 1986 First Earth Run and the 86 days in which wherever the Torch of Peace went all wars stopped and the world was united as one. At the heart of the First Earth Run success were 7 strategies. These strategies have been created into 7 actions that are the foundation of The Game.
2. The Seven Actions: The actions are offered as quests to accomplish within specific locations that players and teams identify. A player is awarded a virtual bronze, silver and gold Peace Medal based on their level of accomplishment along with Peace on Earth (POE) Points.
3. Meetings: A team of 5 to 8 people meet locally or virtually eight times with each meeting being 2 hours. One person serves as Team Leader and the other team members take turns facilitating the meetings using detailed meeting scripts.
4. DreamKeeper: A player becomes a DreamKeeper – one who believes peace on earth by 2030 is possible and is committed to making it a reality – upon successful completion of all 7 actions. Forty million DreamKeepers tip humanity toward peace on earth.
5. POE Zone: A key goal of the game is to establish POE Zones in every place on Earth.

That’s it. If enough people across the planet choose to play, we get Peace on Earth by 2030!

Create Team Purpose Statement—20 minutes

Explain you will be creating a team purpose statement that will integrate the purpose of each individual member of the team. A collective purpose is fundamental to creating a team that sustains its commitment over time.
Ask each person to take up to a minute to share his or her purpose for joining the team. Write down the key points.
When complete, merge key phrases and words of each individual’s statement to create a joint purpose statement. Make sure some part of everyone’s purpose is included in the team purpose statement. If the team wishes to wordsmith it further, ask those who are interested to form a group and bring it back to the next meeting.
When created to everyone’s satisfaction, ask people to write down the team purpose statement. This serves as the North Star to guide each person and the group in playing The Game.
Invite team members to give themselves a team name.

Start Action 1: May Peace Be With You—20 minutes

Explain that this action is about empowering you to become an effective agent of change.
Invite different team members to read aloud from the Action 1 page: “May Peace Be With You.” Have them read the full action from “Why Act” through to the “Success Strategy” sections.
Share your goal to achieve a bronze, silver or gold Peace Medal and why you chose it. Then share your action plan (your success strategy) and how you will implement it.
Explain the first part of their assignment for the next meeting is to set their Action 1 goal, create and implement their action plan (success strategy), and report back their results in the next team meeting.
The second part of their assignment is to read Action 2, set their goal, create their action plan, and bring these to the next meeting.
Answer any questions about the process of taking this action.

Schedule Meetings and Select Action Leaders—15 minutes

Ask the team to agree on meeting frequency (bi-weekly recommended), dates and times for each meeting.
Read the titles and purpose to the seven actions below and then ask after you have read them, who is willing to lead each of the Action Meetings.
Action 1 – May Peace Be With You: Living In Harmony

Purpose: Empowering you to become an effective agent of change.

Action 2 – Way of Oneness: Creating Harmony in the World

Purpose: To create harmony in the world and more wholeness in yourself by befriending those who are different from you.

Action 3 – The Unitive Impulse: Celebrating Our Shared Humanity

Purpose: To experience and celebrate that which we have in common with other human beings and cultures.

Action 4 – Better Together: Cooperation for the Common Good

Purpose: To experience the collective benefit of working with others around a shared purpose in service to the larger good.

Action 5 – Blessed Are the Peace Makers: Supporting Those Creating Peace on Earth

Purpose: To support organizations that model the Peace on Earth by 2030 values of befriending the other, honoring the oneness of humanity and cooperation for the common good.

Action 6 – The World Heart: Praying for and Visualizing Peace on Earth

Purpose: To pray for and visualize peace within yourself and the world; and for peace on earth by 2030.

Action 7 – A Critical Mass of DreamKeepers: Inviting Your Network to Play

Purpose: To be the vanguard of human beings on the planet willing to hold the belief that peace on earth by 2030 is possible and are committed to making this a reality.

As the Team Leader, record these action leaders in the team section of the website under the “Manage” button.
If something unexpected occurs and someone cannot attend a meeting, request that the person notify you, as Team Leader, in advance and provide you with his or her goal and what they achieved. You will communicate with those who miss the meeting afterward to let them know what happened.
When the meeting scheduling is complete, invite team members to enter it in their calendars.

Create Mutual Accountability Agreement—15 minutes

The key to an effective team is an agreement among team members to be accountable to one another.
Explain what a successful team looks like.

1. Commitment: Team members create their goal and action plan before each meeting, come on time to meetings, and take the actions they agreed to do.
2. Support: Team members provide coaching to help one another accomplish the actions they committed to do. A team member with a problem can count on the support of the team and is willing to accept feedback.

Explain the need for commitment to the game.

1. It takes time.
2. It asks you to be accountable—to come to meetings, set goals, and follow through on them.
3. It asks you to help your teammates do the same.
4. It demands courage and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone.

Explain the process of providing coaching:
- A key to success for individuals and the team at-large is that people support one another to accomplish the goals they set for themselves. Specifically, this means giving one another permission to be coached if things break down. Without an agreement to coach one another, team members often hold back giving feedback and the support a teammate needs to achieve his or her goal.
- Point out that we usually have a preference, although rarely articulated, for how we wish to receive feedback. Some people need to be reminded of something repeatedly until they have done it, others prefer to be reminded only once. Communicate how you like to receive feedback.
Explain that we will now make all this concrete through a process that asks team members to agree to follow four guidelines to enable their and the team’s success. To succeed with this game, team members need to:

1. Set goals, create plans for taking each action and tell this to the team.
2. Take the actions to implement your plan.
3. Respect the rest of the team by attending all the meetings and being on time.
4. Coach one another if there is a breakdown in any of these commitments.

Ask each person one-by-one the following:

1. Are you willing to commit to these four game guidelines?
2. What is your preferred style for receiving coaching?

Note: If some people are hesitant, respectfully draw out their concerns and help them work through them. Thank each person who makes a commitment. At the completion of this exercise let the team know that having agreed to mutual accountability they have laid down the foundation for the success of their participation in The Game. They have taken a small step for themselves as an individual and a large step for humanity.

Review Next Meeting Goals—5 minutes

Inner Peace Meditation—5 Minutes

Note: Close the meeting by leading this inner peace meditation.

This inner peace meditation, which we also encourage you to do daily, cultivates inner calm, equanimity and the ability to be centered in facing life’s challenges. This inner peace work complements the outer peace work of the game.

Take a few deep breaths to quiet your mind.
Now become present to this moment of profound opportunity for rapid evolution of your life and planet Earth.
Experience peace within yourself. Affirm: I am in harmony with self!
Experience yourself at peace with all the people in your life. Affirm: I am in harmony with others.
Experience yourself at peace with the Earth and all living beings who inhabit it. Affirm: I am in harmony with the Earth and all living beings.
Deepen this state of harmony with self, others and the Earth for the next few minutes.

POST TEAM BUILDING MEETING RESPONSIBILITIES

Do the following tasks right after the Team Building Meeting.

Send out a list of names, email addresses, phone numbers, meeting dates and who is leading the meeting.
Send out a reminder of the assignment for the next meeting.
Check in with the Meeting 1 Action Leader to make sure the person is on track with their plan for the meeting. Offer your support if desired. Do this for each subsequent Action Leader.
If the team did not complete their team purpose statement, complete it and send it out.
Check in midway with all team members to see how they are doing in carrying out their action plan. Offer your support if they wish any help.

Team Building Meeting GuideFor those who want a printable copy of the team building meeting guide.

Peace On Earth by 2030

Team Leader Roadmap