10 activities that focus on the basics of team working.

• Time: 10 - 30 minutes
• Level: Introductory
• Participants: 3 - 20

• Building on ideas
• Expressing ideas
• Listening
• Questioning
• Respecting others
• Reviewing progress

Introduce and develop the skills, abilities and attitudes that are associated with effective team working. Although classed as introductory, these activities are both stimulating and involving. They can be used in very diverse situations and at surprisingly senior levels.

8 activities that deepen and develop insights into team working.

• Time: 10 - 30 minutes
• Level: Introductory to Intermediate
• Participants: 3 - 20

• Communicating
• Constructive criticism
• Planning
• Prioritising
• Quality standards
• Team decision making
• Understanding / achieving success

Designed to deepen and broaden individuals' understanding of effective team working, these activities build on the basics by developing the skills, abilities, attitudes and the personal confidence needed to perform effectively in teams that are working with more complex issues.

6 activities that help participants understand the key elements of effective problem solving and the perceptual, emotional, cultural and intellectual blocks that can inhibit an individual's performance.

• Time: 20 - 60 minutes
• Level: Introductory to Intermediate
• Participants: 3 - 16

• Building on ideas
• Critiquing
• Focusing on critical issues
• Problem identification, analysis and resolution
• Questioning self and others
• Success orientation
• Valuing others' contributions

Through involvement in these activities individuals gain insights into approaches and personal blocks that inhibit effective problem solving. By analysing the way they tackle problems, participants gain an understanding of the key elements of effective problem solving and their personal blocks, whether they are perceptual, emotional, cultural or intellectual. Involvement in subsequent activities gives them opportunities to practice and test new approaches before applying their learning to 'live problems'.

7 activities that develop attitudes and behaviours associated with effective communication.

• Time: 20 - 60 minutes
• Level: Introductory
• Participants: 3 - 16

• Explaining
• Instructing
• Listening
• Quality conscious
• Questioning
• Succinct
• Unambiguous
• Socially aware / sensitive

Aspects of effective communication are introduced in the team working activities, but these 7 activities are more focused. Besides raising issues about the style and content of communications, they highlight its two-way nature, the importance of people being ready and willing to give and receive information, and the attitudes that help and hinder communication.

• Working teams do not function in isolation: to be successful they must produce something of value to others. These 7 activities introduce this reality.

• Time: 20 - 60 minutes
• Level: Introductory to Advanced
• Participants: 3 - 20

• Business acumen
• Customer focus
• Optimising
• Prioritising
• Problem analysis
• Questioning to illicit information
• Selling (product or ideas)
• Thinking ahead

Enable individuals to practice and develop attitudes and skills that will enable them to be successful in these 3 areas that are common to businesses and many other organisations:

• Customer orientation; realising and believing that business success depend on investing time and effort into understanding and satisfying customers needs, demonstrating a genuine interest in customers
• Selling profitably; working efficiently and effectively, accurate costing, understanding the value of what you are offering, negotiating for profit
• Planning; clearly identifying objectives (organisational, team and individual), agreeing how to achieve these objectives, reviewing progress, revising plans and change.

The activities in this volume each cover aspects of all of these topics, they vary in conceptual difficulty from relatively simple to demanding.

6 intellectually demanding activities that challenge, question and develop many of the skills, attributes and attitudes required of top performers.

• Time: 40 - 90 minutes
• Level: Intermediate to Advanced
• Participants: 3 - 24

• Followership and Leadership
• Negotiation
• Gaining commitment
• Realising personal potential versus
  beating others
• Politically astute
• Strategic awareness
• Ethics and honesty
• Success orientation

These activities encompass some of the more complex and taxing aspects of leadership in business. They are demanding intellectually and can stretch even the most able.

Four of the six tasks use the plastic components in a similar way, but varying constraints produce very different learning opportunities. Participants, working for themselves, as leaders or as team members, have to; set and work towards personal or group objectives, develop and evaluate approaches, monitor progress, revise plans, cope with change and manage relationships with colleagues and competitors. Throughout there are ample opportunities for participants to make and break alliances, and suffer the consequences!
The fifth activity is more light-hearted and less taxing, but equally enlightening. The sixth is challenging, demanding strategic thinking and planning whilst providing opportunities to examine attitudes to risk taking.

5 short activities that introduce many of the qualities required by a new leader.

• Time: 15 - 60 minutes
• Level: Introductory to Advanced
• Participants: 4 - 24

 

• Basics of instruction
• Gaining and demonstrating commitment to others' ideas
• Challenging the way a group is approaching a task
• Remote working
• Setting targets for others
• Balancing personal vs leadership workloads

They are very different in content, style and level of challenge. Consequently they provide opportunities for participants to experience many different aspects of leadership and how to understand how and why a leader's approach affects their followers. Each can be used in isolation or in conjunction with others in the pack.

 

2 longer leadership activities: The Hoist and Cable Car.

The Hoist:

• Time: 1½ - 2½ hours
• Level: Introductory / Intermediate
• Participants: 8 - 14

• Building on ideas
• Applied team skills
• Instructing others effectively
• Communications
• Understanding priorities
• Keeping the overall objective in mind
• Gaining commitment

The task is to win a competition but members of another team must build your product in your absence. Can you communicate your requirements effectively, provide them with appropriate instruction and motivate them to build your product to a standard that will beat the one they designed?

Cable Car:

• Time: 1 - 2 hours
• Level: Introductory / Intermediate
• Participants: 10 - 13

 

 

• Managing geographically isolated teams who are working on the same project
• Core elements of  leadership
• Understanding the needs of teams
• Inter-team working

A manager has three isolated teams, each with a team leader. Success depends on the output of each team being compatible.  The manager's constantly changing role includes: providing the overview, managing resources, decision making, co-ordinating ideas, reviewing progress, technical support - there's always the job in hand to distract...

Besides direct learning through personal involvement, the variety of roles (3 separate teams, 3 team leaders, a manager) in this activity provide participants with an appreciation of how their actions affect others who are working elsewhere.

 

2 longer leadership activities: Maxi Market and Waste Away

Maxi Market:

• Time: 1½ - 2½ hours
• Level: Intermediate
• Participants: 5 - 14

 

 

• Project management
• Establishing the core problem
• Understanding the criteria for success
• Team problem solving
• Utilising people's particular skills

One of the most difficult aspects of project management is developing a clear and thorough understanding of the project: its objectives, priorities and constraints.
In this activity a project team has to prove to a customer that their company should be awarded a contract. Distractions like 'getting on with the job in hand' make it easy to miss this objective completely, fail to identify and satisfy customer priorities, and even forget the clearly stated needs of their manager. The learning relates all too easily to the 'real world'.

Waste Away:

• Time: 2½ - 3½ hours
• Level: Intermediate / Advanced
• Participants: 8 - 14 Participants

 

 

• Applied leadership
• Balancing technical and people issues
• Understanding the bigger picture and maintaining focus on the priorities
• Preparing people to manage others
• Applied team skills

A customer is coming for a demonstration that involves managing people doing an unfamiliar task. The manager cannot be there, so others need to be prepared. Later the goal posts appear to be moved by the customer, or are they?

The activity is split into 3 stages each of which introduces different learning opportunities. Roles change within the activity with people switching between leading, being team members and observing.