Games
Training Exercises and Resources

Use this icebreaker to help delegates get to know each other better. You can also use the training exercises as a test to see who knows most about others. It is fairly easy to run. You can customise the exercise by changing the questions provided in the “About Me Form”. For example, you can increase the number of work-related or project-related questions to bias the exercise towards a specific direction.

If you run this exercise for people who don’t know each other at all, it would work like a test on stereotyping and first impressions. In other words, the person who identifies most people’s qualities correctly, when he has never met them before, must have a sharp eye in paying attention to detail and a good judgment in placing people in society with respect to their interests. This can be a fascinating training topic to explore at the end of the exercise.

This exercise is based on the use of modern tools that can give us an insight on people’s current interests. The exercise provides a template for a variety of exercises that you can conduct based on your specific training needs. Here are some applications:

• Marketing. You want to get the delegates explore the popularity of certain terms in a given market in your marketing training course.
• Team building. You want to help delegates find a particular topic to talk about and get to know each other better. The exercise provides a framework about a trending topic to discuss.
• Branding. You want to get the delegates explore the popularity of certain brands in relation with each other and see if it fits their perception. You can then focus to see what this means in practice.

Optionally you can also consider running this exercise as a competition between groups.

This is a fun outdoor activity ideal for team building. It is also useful for young children as it is cooperative and competitive. It’s the kind of team leading exercise that leads to a memorable experience.

This is a simple but fun team building exercise most suitable for outdoors. This exercise can also be a fun activity for kids. You can run competitively and give a prize to the winner. It helps to train people to stay focused while being totally aware of their environment as the dynamic changes. The winner must be good at predicting what others are going to do while keeping them guessing on he would do.

This is an exercise similar to the popular team building exercise on handling toxic waste. The major difference here is that participants need to handle a glass of water and don’t spill it while carrying it from one location to another.

The exercise is ideal for teamwork, leadership and resource management. The competitive atmosphere leads to rapid decision making, activity coordination, and novel ways to compromise and get the task done.

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.

This is a fantastic exercise in getting a group practice working together, coordinating their activities and learning to work more efficiently. Delegates must review their performance and think of better strategies in problem solving.

As an analogy this exercise can be thought of as a production team tasked to produce a gadget where the efficiency of the team leads to better production rates. The team must think of ways to improve the production rate and workflow. They must think of strategies that can be implemented easily in practice and improved on. The exercise requires teamwork, leadership, communication skills and the ability of each team to get the best from every individual.

The ability to persuade people is a useful skill both in personal and professional life. This exercise is ideal once you have covered persuasion skills in your training course and want to go through a more demanding exercise that requires people to persuade each other strongly. It is an entertaining exercise as it involves everyone in a simple yet powerful setting.

To truly get the best from this exercise, you can follow it with a review and discussion. You will need to take notes during the exercise as each can play differently. You will need to refer back to the strategies used by participants while persuading each other during discussions. You can then comment on the effectiveness of these techniques and get delegates to discuss them.

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 useful exercise that helps delegates to quickly come up with a plan to respond to a crisis. In today’s dynamic world, crisis management is crucial. Risk prediction and risk management is vital for companies. This exercise turns crisis management into a game, providing a fun and educational environment to learn about this important management activity.