Frenemy Mapping
activities for any meeting
These activities encourage collaboration between different team members and help break down barriers between departments. The goal is to develop and maintain a strong corporate culture that provides a positive working environment for its employees and helps the business succeed and grow.
An activity to help build empathy skills.Why try Frenemy Mapping?
Do you ever struggle to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see things from their point of view?
Activity Objective
It is essential for creating trust, collaboration, and innovation in any team or organization. However, empathy can be challenging to cultivate, especially with people we disagree with, dislike, or don’t know. This activity will help people enhance their empathy skills and connect with others more effectively.
Templates
Number of Players
2-6 (for larger groups, break people into smaller groups)
Activity Duration
15-90 minutes
Instructions
Share the free templates in-person or online.
Start with an icebreaker question to warm up your audience.
Individual work: Participants should consider someone with whom they have recently had an unpleasant experience, such as a neighbour, a pet, a friend, or a family member.
Consider their perspective; what do they think, feel, and do about the situation?
Group work: Participants partner up and share their Frenemy Map to reflect.
Look for common themes, new ideas, and lessons learned.
Group discussion: Share how your opinions have shifted now that you've empathized with your 'frienemy.'
Check out our blog for reflection questions for teams.
Agenda Example
Welcome and introduction (5 minutes)
Individual work (10 minutes)
Group work (10 minutes)
Group discussion (10 minutes)
Wrap-up and closing (10 minutes)
Check out our blog for planning meetings and workshops.
Script & Talk Track
Hello everyone, and welcome to our team-building session. Today, we will do a fun and engaging activity called Frenemy Mapping. But before we start, let’s warm up with a quick icebreaker question. Please share your name, role, and one thing you are grateful for today.
Thank you for sharing. Now, let’s move on to the activity. Frenemy Mapping is an activity that helps us build empathy skills by exploring different perspectives and viewpoints of others. Empathy is understanding and sharing what someone else is feeling and thinking. It is a crucial skill for building positive and productive relationships with others.
In this activity, we will use a template to map out different types of people we encounter in our personal or professional lives. These people can be our friends, enemies, or frenemies. A frenemy is someone whom we have a complicated relationship with. They can be supportive or helpful at times but also competitive or harmful at other times.
This activity aims to help us practice empathy by putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and seeing things from their point of view. Doing this lets us learn more about ourselves and others and how to communicate and collaborate better.
We will need a template, a pen or marker, and sticky notes to do this activity. You can use the template that I have provided for you, or you can download it from the website link that I have shared with you. The template has four quadrants: friend, enemy, frenemy, and unknown. Each quadrant has some questions that will guide us in mapping out different types of people and their characteristics.
We will do this activity individually first, and then we will share our maps in small groups. The training will take about XX minutes in total. Let’s begin by choosing one person and writing their name.
Once you have chosen one person, answer the questions in each quadrant. When you are done answering the questions in each quadrant, take a moment to look at your map and reflect on what you have learned. Any questions before we begin?
Now that you have completed your map, it’s time to share it with others. Find a partner or a small group of people and show them your map. Explain why you chose each person and what you learned from answering the questions. Listen to their feedback and ask them questions about their maps as well.
After sharing your maps with others, come back to the group and discuss what we learned from this activity. Thank you for participating in this activity. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new.