I was running a training course (.... oh the number of times I, as a management trainer, e-mailed course delegates to tell them that I would be ruining their course, but that's a subject for a future post all about funny typos!). Anyway, as I was saying, I was running a training course for managers, and I'd bought a "business game". I'd not tried the game out before "going live" with it. I'd barely even read the instructions or guidance notes. Had I done any of the aforementioned, I might have realised straight away that the game was not going to provide the lessons in team-building and project management that it promised it would on its box.
The game was long. The course delegates had to split into three teams and spend hours doing something under certain conditions, having first designed a map of "their island" and a "national flag" (to improve team cohesion). They were meant to barter and negotiate with other teams, but using communication-styles that were dictated in their mammoth instruction pack, styles that they would never actually use in reality. We broke for lunch and returned to the game. "No-one will solve the riddle", promised the game's blurb, and the idea was that the group would spend ages after the game had finished discussing why this was. Well, my course delegates did solve the riddle. They rather enjoyed playing the game too. But I could think of abolutely nothing to say in relation to team building or project management when the game was over. I mean that's not necessarily a problem at all. The job of the trainer is to pose good questions, not answer them. All I had to do was to re-convene the group and ask them "what lessons have we learned in team building from this game?" But really, the game provided no lessons whatsoever.
So, moving swiftly on...
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