Give each participant a piece of paper and a pencil. Announce that they have 30 seconds to write down all the words they can think of to describe a penny (copper - round - Linclon, etc.) At the end of 30 seconds, direct them to form teams of 4 to 6 people. Direct each group of people to generate a list of all the different words that the team members generated. (As they come together, they begin to share with each other their lists, and discover words they did not consider.) Ask individuals on each team to total the number of responses they generated individually, and compare that number to the total number of different responses generated by the team. (note: the number generated by the team will most likely be larger than any one individual's number)
Debrief: When you combine your reponses with others, you have a larger total of responses. In the same way, when you combine your work with other team members, you get more done.
Teamwork rocks!
Now that employees understand the importance of teamwork, provide them one or two simple problems to talk about. As they learn to discuss and share, they learn the concept of team problem solving. It would be a good idea to approach this through facilitation techniques.