The Leadership Puzzle: Everyone Plays A Part

Everyone Plays a Part

An Interactive Teamwork & Shared Ownership Facilitation Kit

You don’t have to hold every balloon.

Sometimes the best way to help a team understand shared ownership isn’t another conversation—it’s letting them actually see and experience what happens when one person tries to carry everything.

Everyone Plays a Part is a practical, interactive team exercise designed to help managers and facilitators create a memorable conversation about delegation, capacity, responsibility, individual strengths, and shared ownership.

Using different-sized balloons to represent the responsibilities within a project, your team will physically see what happens when one person tries to hold every piece of the work—and what changes when people begin stepping forward to own their part.

It’s simple. It’s engaging. And the visual tends to stick with people long after the exercise is over.

WHAT THIS EXERCISE HELPS YOU EXPLORE

Use Everyone Plays a Part to open conversations about:

• Shared ownership and individual responsibility

• Delegation without abandoning accountability

• Team capacity and workload

• Strengths, interests, and opportunities to contribute

• Asking for and accepting help

• Supporting without rescuing

• What happens when one person is carrying too much

• Whether the team is distributing the work effectively—or there are simply too many “balloons” to carry

WHAT’S INCLUDED

Your downloadable facilitation kit walks you through the exercise from beginning to end, including:

• Facilitator guidance and preparation

• A ready-to-use company-wide party example

• Step-by-step facilitation script

• Balloon and responsibility planning

• Guidance for handling silence and encouraging ownership

• Debrief and discussion questions

• Team application tools

• Manager follow-through guidance

• Ways to connect the exercise back to real projects and responsibilities

The kit is designed so you can prepare quickly and confidently facilitate the exercise with your own team.

WATCH THE COMPANION DEMONSTRATION VIDEO

This kit includes a companion video demonstration to help you see how the exercise comes together before you facilitate it yourself.



🎥 Watch the Everyone Plays a Part Companion Demonstration:

https://youtu.be/6K9QD1oP24c

I recommend downloading and reviewing the facilitation kit first, then watching the companion video before leading the activity with your team.

The written kit gives you the structure, scripts, questions, planning tools, and follow-through resources.

The video is the visual companion—showing how I would introduce the exercise, add the balloon responsibilities, allow the physical experience to unfold, use intentional silence, invite people to step forward, transfer ownership, and connect the activity back to real work.

The video does not replace the facilitation kit. The two are designed to be used together.

THE IDEA IS SIMPLE

At the beginning, one person is trying to hold everything.

By the end, the work hasn’t disappeared.

The goal hasn’t gotten smaller.

What changed is how the team chose to carry it.

That’s shared ownership.

Every person has a piece. And every piece matters.

The Leadership Puzzle

Practical leadership for real people problems.

PEOPLE | PROGRESS | A STRONGER TOMORROW

Stronger people. Stronger teams. Better outcomes.