Large Group
Training Exercises and Resources

This is a great teambuilding exercise that helps to cover several areas on leadership, teamwork and problem solving. You can run it like a competitive game for a large group. Allow the delegates go through the exercise several times to see if they can become better at the task. In the process they can learn how to work as a team towards a common objective.

The task is also fun to perform so it can be used as an energiser or even as a fun exercise to run during seminars and conferences. It provides a shared experience and an opportunity for people to have a laugh while also being able to address subjects related to teams and task completion.

At the end of each training session, it is ideal to test delegate’s knowledge about the topics covered during the session. You can make the process more entertaining by making the test feel like a game. You can apply the questioning format presented here to test delegates’ knowledge about a given topic. The only requirement is that you need to prepare a number of questions before the course.

In this team building exercise, delegates learn to work together to complete a seemingly simple task. However, teams can always get better results if they plan ahead, assign leaders, coordinate their activities and generally think of ways to optimise their workflow. You can teach about many teamwork skills in the context of this exercise.

Humans have evolved to focus their attention on what matters most. To navigate a complex environment, we have ended up with a kind of brain that vigorously filters out unnecessary information. This filtering mechanism is always active and is essential in managing information overload.

For example, after entering a new environment, you start to pay attention to different things to find what is interesting. You notice the unusual architecture, the odd furniture, the people, the smell and the feel of being in this new place.

If you come back to this environment the second time, you may not scan it as intensely as the first time since your brain “thinks” it already knows about it. Instead, your brain tries to focus on other things, freeing up the processing resources for whatever else you need to do with your brain.

This filtering has its great advantages as it allows us to navigate complex environments without feeling overwhelmed by them. Once we get used to a complex environment, we can start to concentrate on something more focused and demanding.

There is however a downside to this filtering. We are susceptible to miss the obvious even if it is right in front of us. Once familiar, the brain can become lazy in processing new information and attention is simply lost.

To remain focused it is essential to practice paying attention and consciously reverse the filtering process. Several methods are presented here that allow you as a trainer to increase the attention of your delegates especially if they are attending a multi-day course where they are returning to the same training environment.

This is a fun and entertaining team training exercise that helps you cover many topics such as team coordination, self-organisation, leadership, teamwork and cooperative behaviour while achieving a given goal quickly and efficiently.

Teams are assigned to wear a bandana in a way that it is different from other groups. The first group that does this successfully wins. The pressure to wear the bandana uniquely but quickly leads to complexities similar to those found when engaged in real-life projects. The time pressure helps to increase tension and stress so teams can practice working under pressure while achieving a goal.

This is a feel-good training exercise that gets everyone involved in a creative activity. In this exercise, delegates get to create a variety of illustrations or produce crafts which resemble the logo of their company.

The creative effort is a useful team building activity that brings people closer together by working on something similar and by having a common light-hearted objective. It also makes staff feel warmer towards the company through association by working on the logo.

The results of delegates efforts will be a series of artwork produced in various styles and with different materials all resembling the logo of the company. The logos can then be then displayed in the foyer of the company where customers and visitors can observe them. It could signal that the company is a fun place to work in and that staff care about the company and are happy to be there.

This exercise is ideal for delegates who are from the same company.

A particularly useful problem solving technique is to see a given problem from the point of view of a 10 year old. This view point usually helps to simplify both problems and solutions and as a result creates clarity. It is also a form of devil’s advocate analysis; if you cannot describe your products or problems to a 10 year old, you may need to work harder to increase your understanding of the problem.

This is a fun activity that requires concentration and focus. It is ideal as a team building exercise or as an icebreaker to make people feel more comfortable with each other.

Use this exercise to get a group of people work on a common illustration exercise. This can be used as an icebreaker to make the group feel more comfortable with each other and also assess the competency of each person in drawing or painting. The group’s work leads to a final piece that everyone has equally contributed to which can then be kept to represent the class for future sessions or even to show off to external visitors. This exercise scales up quite easily for a large group as well, so it is ideal if you have a large audience and want to engage them in an illustration activity.

In this brainstorming exercise delegates learn to come up with ideas separately and then together as a large group. The brainstorming technique helps those who are more comfortable in smaller groups to contribute while still taking advantage of large group creativity and brainstorming.