Skills Converged > Free Training Materials, Exercises, Ice Breakers & Roleplays

Current Articles | Categories | Search | Syndication

:: Exercises, Team Building , Emotional Intelligence

This simple exercise allows team members to share important information about their life with each other. The aim is to gain a better understanding of why people behave in a certain way and to help putting team members' actions into perspective.

Acting Exercise: Boost Performance Using Sensory Acting

:: Roleplays, Public Speaking, Exercises, Acting, Emotional Intelligence

The ability to act allows you to adopt different roles as you see fit. To be good at emotional intelligence, it is very important to understand emotions and be able to express appropriate emotions when needed, perhaps to sympathise with others or establish rapport.

We always recognise actors as those who are capable in presenting a range of emotions in their roles from sadness to happiness to anger. They seem to be able to switch from one emotion to the next at ease, while their facial expression shows every tiny detail for that emotion. How do they do it?

This exercise is based on classic acting exercises used in acting schools to increase students’ sensory awareness. Rather than asking students to cry, or to show some strong emotion, they are encouraged to think of all the sensory information present in any typical everyday activity. By becoming more aware of these sensory data, they can learn to improvise and imitate down to the tiniest detail.

For best results, you may need to give a pre-course assignment to delegates so they can prepare and rehearse for their acting which takes place during the course.

Motivation Exercise: My Heroes

:: Exercises, Coaching, Motivation, Goal Setting, Personal Impact

Research shows that people with specific and defined goals are more likely to succeed in life than those without. One of the great ways to find these goals is to get inspired by your favourite heroes and personalities in history. This exercise systematically helps delegates to formulate their goals using this approach.

This exercise has several parts though you don’t have to go through all of them. Pick and choose based on your objective, your time and your delegates.

Problem Solving Exercise: With a Little Help From My Friends

:: Exercises, Team Building , Creativity, Decision Making, Problem Solving

This exercise aims to introduce an effective method for problem solving and brainstorming within teams. It demonstrates the efficiency of using other’s experiences and expertise in solving problems and dealing with challenging situations.

Concentration Exercise: Focus on a Single Thought

:: Exercises, Productivity, Decision Making, Problem Solving, Stress Management, Report Writing

The digital age has made it possible to multi-task. Multi-tasking increases productivity because you can do more in a given time. But can you? With certain activities, such as driving while listening to an audio book, this is highly productive. With some activities, you may easily end up producing sub-standard quality or finish none at all.

Like everything, if used excessively, it can actually reduce productivity. People who multi-task too much may start to suffer from lack of concentration. For example, you may sit behind a computer and decide to write a report. However, lots of unrelated ideas about you latest emails, browsing, conversations or daily activities can pop up in your mind that constantly slow you down.

It pays to practice concentration, so that when necessary you can focus as if nothing else matters and give a task your 100% effort.

It is famously known that if you want to increase your productivity and quality of your life to 100%, give 100% to every little thing you do. In other words, when you write a report, only think about writing it and when you are on holiday, only think of things you can do to have fun and not about work you left behind, or work that you will have to do when you get back.

This activity contains a series of exercises on increasing concentration. Depending on your course and delegates, you can initiate them during the course or provide them as ideas for post course exercises.

Acting Exercise: Act Like an Actor

:: Leadership, Roleplays, Public Speaking, Body Language, Acting, Emotional Intelligence

This is a useful exercise in acting. Use this exercise to help people adopt certain roles or learn how to imitate target behaviours. Acting and understanding how an ideal role feels like can help delegates to get to those targets. For example, being able to act like a manager can significantly help people to eventually become a manager. Not only acting like a manager helps the person to see what it takes to be a manager, others will start to respond appropriately and will be more receptive when that person is elevated to the managerial level.

This exercise helps with various useful roles provided as mission cards. You can use the exercise as a template for other useful roles or choose based on the content of your course.

Leadership Skills Exercise: Help Others to Increase Their Self-Esteem

:: Leadership, Exercises, Communication Skills, Motivation, Personal Impact, Emotional Intelligence, Giving Feedback

A leader’s performance is defined by how he or she leads others. For others to follow a leader, it is critical for them to know that they are valued. The sense of significance and knowing that what they do has a benefit to the overall objective is a significant motivation. Hence, leaders must actively and routinely take steps to show that they value their team members and that team members’ effort are well appreciated.

This exercise helps delegates to learn how to achieve this as leaders. It encourages specific actions on their behalf as opposed to vague strategies, so that they know precisely what to do for each member of their team.

Emotional Intelligence Exercise: How Admirable Are You?

:: Leadership, Exercises, Motivation, Personal Impact, Emotional Intelligence

Self-awareness and self-motivation are critical competencies within emotional intelligence. Everyone must actively take steps to become better in these areas. A great way to achieve this is by systematically reviewing your own performance and thinking of what you are good at. This positive thinking can reinforce your confidence and boost your motivation. This simple, yet powerful exercise helps you to achieve this.

Remember, admiring yourself is not about being arrogant or feeding your ego. It is about knowing and appreciating what you are good at so you can inspire others around you and help them to grow as you grow further. This is particularly important in leadership roles.

You can provide this exercise during training or provide it as a pre or post-course assignment so delegates have more time to spend and reflect on their life and behaviour. If you run this as a pre-course assignment, you can ask them to bring their responses and then initiate a group discussion and encourage delegates to get inspired by each other.

Ice Breaker: A Friendly Bunch

:: Exercises, Icebreakers, Team Building , Exercises for Kids, Motivation, Energizer

This is a fun and effective exercise especially for a group of delegates who don’t know each other or don’t normally work together. It provides a fun environment for training and puts some smiles on participant’s faces.

Emotional Intelligence Exercise: Visualise Your Ideal Team

:: Exercises, Team Building , Creativity, Emotional Intelligence

This is a simple yet powerful exercise on emotional intelligence which helps delegates to engage all their senses while thinking about what they or others around them experience emotionally.

Communication Skills Exercise: It’s All About Me!

:: Exercises, Communication Skills, Personal Impact

The aim of this exercise is to help participants realise how their conversations are often about themselves and regardless to other people involved. This is a useful activity to encourage active listening and helps delegates to improve their communication skills.

Telephone Exercise: Challenging Telephone Conversations

:: Exercises, Customer Services, Acting, Telephone Skills, Emotional Intelligence

Knowing how to talk on the phone is critical these days as a lot of communication takes place on the phone. Many times, you may need to respond to unusual requests or remarks and think on the spot so you can respond as diplomatically as possible. For example, how would you answer if someone asks you for a favour that you feel you cannot provide while not wanting to appear difficult or cold. As an example for the business world, suppose a customer wants something you don’t have or offer, how can you reply in a positive way to preserve the customer and not disappoint them.

In this exercise, delegates will go through a number of roleplays to practice challenging scenarios.

Brainstorming Exercise: Relocation

:: Exercises, Communication Skills, Creativity, Decision Making, Problem Solving, Body Language, Emotional Intelligence

You can use this exercise to get a group of people practice brainstorming and participate in constructive discussions. Delegates will go through a case study which can be applicable to just about anyone while still creating complex challenges. This exercise is also flexible in the choice of brainstorming method used or alternatively you can leave it to the delegates to decide. For example, you can use this exercise after explaining a particular brainstorming method such as mind mapping, six hats, Delphi method, etc., and then evaluate the performance of the delegates based on what you have discussed in the course. This exercise is ideal if all delegates are from the same organisation, though you can also use it when delegates are not from the same place.

Communication Skills Exercise: Act it Out

:: Games, Exercises, Team Building , Communication Skills, Body Language, Acting

In this exercise, participants learn how to act or roleplay certain roles. Acting is a very useful skill. It can greatly help people to place themselves in position of others and learn to think like them. Unfortunately, most people are not trained on this skill and simply find it strange to perform an act. They might feel shy, awkward or simply start laughing at their own abstract acting. The best way to overcome these problems is to simply act. Acting isn’t hard once people understand that all they need to do is to commit to it. This exercise helps the delegates to act in front of each other based on specific scenarios.

Team Building Exercise: Guess Who is the Leader

:: Games, Exercises, Team Building , Exercises for Kids, Energizer, Body Language

In this activity, participants engage in a fun and entertaining exercise. A person at the centre of a group attempts to guess the leader of others based on what people do. It requires attention to detail, quick decision making and observation of body language.