Professional Documents
Culture Documents
For very large groups you can vary the exercise by asking people to
think and decide and then circulate around the room finding other
people who have chosen the same utensil to represent themselves,
and to form into sub-groupings of the same types. Fun and noise can
be injected - especially for young people or lively conferences - by
asking people to identify themselves by shouting the name of their
utensil, and/or by trying physically to look or act like the utensil.
You can extend and increase the challenge within the activities by
asking the team to role-play some 'questions from the audience' at
the end of each spoken exercise, which the speaker(s) must then
handle appropriately.
Show a picture to the group and ask them to consider and comment
on how they interpret what's happening in the picture - what's being
said, how people feel, what the moods are, what the personalities
and motivations are, what might have caused the situation and
what the outcomes might be - as much as people can read into and
interpret from each photograph. Additionally ask the group or teams
what questions they would want to ask anyone in the picture to
understand and interpret the situation.
It's helpful, but not essential, for you to know the true situation and
outcomes in each picture (perhaps you've read the news story or
the photo is from your own collection), which will enable you to give
the actual interpretation after each picture is discussed. However
one of the main points of these exercises is appreciating the variety
of interpretations that can be derived from observing people's
behaviour, facial expressions and body language, which means that
many situations can quite reasonably be interpreted in several
different ways. So knowing and being able to give a definitive
'correct answer' is not crucial - the main purpose of the activities is
the quality of the ideas and discussion.
The opposing team prepares and presents the case against the
motion, which is logically: "Christmas is a Pain in the Arse" (or
Holidays are a Pain in the Arse").
Begin the exercise by asking the group to organise itself into two
separate teams according to their individual views: ie., "Christmas is
Brilliant" or "Christmas is a Pain in the Arse" (or "Holidays") .
Alternatively split the group into two teams and allot the motions by
flipping a coin or similar random method.
Obviously the activity can be used for any debate exercise - work-
related or otherwise - and serves to get people working and
cooperating in teams, developing skills in preparing and presenting
arguments and propositions, and can also provide much revealing
and helpful mutual awareness among team members, and useful
insights for the facilitator/group manager.
Examples of other motions, which for group selection recruitment
exercises can be extended far beyond normal work issues, examples
of which appear later in the list below:
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
You can design other questions to suit the theme or purpose of the
event.
You can stipulate that the facing pairs each have a turn at
questioning and answering, or that one is the questioner and the
other the answerer. Whatever, ensure that everyone has a chance
to ask questions and to give answers. If appropriate nominate one
line as the questioners and the other line as the answerers.
After a minute ask the lines to rotate as follows (one person from
each line joins the other line and both lines shuffle to face the next
person:
2 1
3 1
4 2
5 3
6 4
6 5
(Ack C Mack)
The exercise is for groups of any size, although large groups should
be sub-divided into teams of between five and ten people
representing single functions. The bigger the teams the more
requirement there will be for good facilitation by a team leader
within each team.
The level of guarantee for ideas to be acted upon is a matter for the
facilitator and the organisation. Promise only what you can deliver
to people. Embark on these activities only if you can reliably
implement the outcomes, to whatever extent that you promise to
the team members.
The aim of the exercise is to gather, list and prioritise collective and
individual training and learning needs and wishes for work and non-
work learning and development. Involving the team in doing this in
an 'immediate' and 'free' informal situation generally exposes many
more ideas and opportunities than normally arise from formal
appraisal, surveys and training needs audits, or personal
development review discussions. Sharing ideas and personal views
also helps build teams and mutual awareness (see Johari Window
theory). The exercises enable the team leader or facilitator to work
with the people to arrive at ideas for learning and development,
which can then - according to organisational processes and
framework - be fed or built into proposals or plans for
implementation.
The process of hearing and sharing other people's ideas also greatly
assists people in imagining what might be helpful and relevant to
their own situations - far better than thinking in isolation.
Then ask the team members to call out in turn their top-listed work
or job learning personal development item. Write these on the flip-
chart.
Then ask for people to call out in turn their second-listed work/job
learning item and write the answers on the flip-chart.
Ask the group what type of learning they'd enjoy and best and find
most helpful.
It is important to open your own mind and the minds of the team
members to the fact that all learning and development is useful. All
learning and experience in life benefits people in their work.
Everything learned and experienced in life is transferable one way
or another to people's work. People commonly don't realise this,
because nobody tells them or gives them the confidence to see it.
When you see it and talk about it, people begin to see too that there
can be more alignment and congruence between their lives and
their work. Moreover, organisations are now seeing that when
people are supported and encouraged to follow their own life
interests and natural potential, so the organisation benefits from
their development.
When people learn and experience new 'non-work' and 'life learning'
capabilities and development, they achieve and grow as people, and
this gives them many new skills for their work (especially the
behavioural capabilities normally so difficult to develop via
conventional work-based training), and a greater sense of value,
purpose, self-esteem and maturity. All these benefits and more
result from non-work learning and experience.
What matters most is that people are given the encouragement and
opportunity to pursue experiences and learning and development
that they want to. People are vastly more committed to pursuing
their own life learning and experiences than anything else. So, the
more that organisations can help and enable this to happen for their
people the better. People develop quicker and more fully, and they
obviously become more aligned with the organisation because it is
helping them to grow in their own personal direction - far beyond
the conventional provision of work-only skills training and
development.
Every organisation contains several people like this, and many more
people with the potential to be the same. But nobody bothers to
ask.
Materials required are simply two packs of playing cards (or more
packs, depending on group size).
Shuffle the packs keeping them separate. Retain one pack. Deal
from one pack between three and ten cards to each team member.
The more cards then the longer the exercise takes. If there are more
team members than can be supplied from one pack then use
additional packs. It is not necessary to remove the jokers, but be
mindful of the effect of leaving them in the packs.
Team members must arrange the cards dealt to them face up on the
table in front of them.
The dealer (facilitator) then 'calls' cards (like a bingo caller) one by
one from the top of the dealer's own (shuffled) pack, at which the
players match their own cards (by turning them over face down).
The winner is the first to turn over all cards. Suits are irrelevant -
only the numbers matter. Aces count as one. Picture cards as 11
(Jack), 12 (Queen), 13 (King), or simply call them by their normal
picture names - again the suits are irrelevant. Jokers (optional) treat
as jokers. Players can only turn over one card at a time, in other
words, if a player has two 4's they must wait for two fours to be
'called'.
Have the group play in two or three teams (each team size ideally
no bigger six people). Deal each team twenty cards and ask them to
pick the fifteen that they wish to play with as a team. Again this is
pure guesswork, but it will challenge the teams to think about
statistics, and to agree the best tactical approach.
Also optionally at this point in the exercise you can ask people do
this calculation in their head to further concentrate the mind:
Subtract your age from 90 and add two zeros to the answer. Divide
that number in two. This is roughly how many weeks you have left
on this Earth, assuming you live to a very ripe old age. If you smoke
and don't look after yourself properly subtract 1,200 weeks (if you
are very lucky). How quickly does a week pass by? Almost the blink
of an eye...
Then ask the group to close their eyes, take a few slow deep
breaths, and visualise.... (it's a bit morbid but it does concentrate
the mind somewhat): You are very close to the end your life -
perhaps 'on your deathbed'. You have a few minutes of
consciousness remaining, to peacefully look back over what you
achieved, and what difference you made in the world. And
especially how you will be remembered.
We rarely think about our lives this way: that we are only here for a
short time, and that what really matters is beyond money,
possessions, holidays, cars, and the bloody lottery.
Thinking deeply about our own real life purpose and fulfilment helps
us to align what we do in our work with what we want to do with the
rest of our life.
(As facilitator do not ask people to reveal or talk about their dreams
unless they want to. The exercise is still a powerful one when people
keep their dreams and personal aims to themselves.)
Exercises examples:
1. For deciding order- 'Who goes first' - Ask each person to put their
bunch of keys on the table in front of them. Order is decided
according to most keys on the bunch. Tie-breaker(s) can be decided
according to the key(s) with most notches.
2. For splitting group into teams or threes or pairs - Ask the group to
sort themselves into the required number (which you would
normally stipulate, unless your purpose allows/prefers them to sort
into teams of their own choosing) of teams or threes or pairings
according to shared features (in common with others) of their
key bunches, for example number of keys on bunch; type of key-
ring fobs (sensible, daft, tatty, glitzy, unmanageably large, uselessly
small, broken, holiday mementoes, promotional giveaways, etc),
size of keys, type of keys, colours of keys, purpose of keys.
You will no doubt think of your own ideas and variations to these
exercises. Let me know anything different and interesting that works
for your team.
See also the 'letting go' de-cluttering exercise on the team building
games page 1, which might give you more ideas for extending and
varying these activities.
See also the Johari Window model, which helps explain to people the
benefits of feedback and developing self- and mutual awareness.
Ask people to write down their chosen one word (or words if
necessary), plus some brief explanation as to what they mean.
Then in turn ask people to tell or present their answers to the group
or team.