The Recovery Files · For Clinicians
Team Building Activities
Exercises for treatment center teams
Eight structured activities for staff teams: building trust and openness, giving feedback, repairing trust after a breach, seeing past your own assumptions, and keeping group leaders and clinicians well. Each one has an overview, learning objectives and a printable worksheet.
Several of these activities build on classic group-training exercises, including the work of Rodney Napier, adapted for SUD treatment centers. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the original authors.
Trust and openness
Honest communication, deep connection, feedback that lands, and repairing trust when it breaks.
Permission to Be Open
A Team Building Exercise for Treatment Center Staff
Sets explicit permission for honest communication: team agreements on giving and receiving feedback, personal barriers to openness, and comfort with constructive conflict.
1.5–2 hours · 5 pages
The Old Seven/Seven
A Deep Team Building Exercise for Treatment Staff
Each person shares seven significant life events that shaped them. Builds empathy and lasting bonds, and shows how personal history shapes professional approach. For established teams.
3–4 hours · 9 pages
Genie in the Bottle
A Magical Approach to Professional Feedback in Treatment Centers
Uses the "three wishes" idea to make feedback supportive and non-threatening: saying what you need from colleagues and offering suggestions they can hear.
1.5–2 hours · 9 pages
The Modified 8-6 Activity
A Structured Process for Restoring Trust & Confidence in Treatment Center Teams
A structured way to work through a specific trust breach: processing what happened without blame, accountability without punishment, and agreements for moving forward.
2–4 hours · 9 pages
Communication, perception and growth
Seeing past silos and assumptions, and keeping group leaders and clinicians well.
Breaking Down Barriers
A Communication Workshop for Treatment Center Teams
Finds and removes communication barriers between departments, disciplines and levels of the hierarchy, with action plans for better information flow.
2–3 hours · 6 pages
Pop Quiz: Perceptual Activity
Understanding Perception in Clinical Practice
Perception exercises that show how assumptions and bias shape what we see, and what that means for clinical judgment and cultural humility.
1–1.5 hours · 8 pages
Marathon — Personal Growth for Group Leaders
An Intensive Training Experience for SUD Treatment Staff
An extended intensive for group facilitators to examine their own patterns, defenses and growth edges, including countertransference.
Full day or multi-day · 9 pages
Resiliency Intensive
Sustaining clinicians through the work
A ten-domain wellness self-assessment for treatment staff and leadership, with reflection questions, to find strengths and where self-care needs attention. A printable version of the app's assessment.
13 pages
Back to Clinicians & Clinical Leaders · Library · Back to the top ↑