Open Fist
Teams work better when they find things in common. Stronger teams reduce turnover, increase pleasant interactions, and improve productivity.
Library of facilitation techniques
The Thiagi Group
Workshop Activities and Training Games from The Thiagi Group.
109 results
Keep Your Finger on the Pulse
Public speaking is reported to be one of the top stressful events for all people. This jolt uses that fact to make a learning point about the physiological effects of stress on the body.
Participants take their pulse at the beginning of a session. They are later told they will be participating in a stressful event. When they retake their pulse, they realize how much the thought of the stressful event has caused their pulse rate to increase.
Management
A Reflective Teamwork Activity (RTA) involves participants creating a checklist and then evaluating their performance by using the same checklist they created.
Here's an outline of this activity: Participants are organized into groups of five. Members of each group are randomly assigned to the roles of a manager, an assistant manager, and three employees. Each participant prepares a list related to a different management topic. The manager has the lengthy task and additional supervisory responsibilities. Other group members have simpler tasks. After the list preparation activity is completed, a debriefing discussion relates the manager's behavior to the items in her list.
Improved Solutions
You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.
Novice or Expert?
Trainers have difficulty imagining how people feel when they are forced to learn through their weak learning styles. This activity enables them to experience the frustrations of working though a weak learning style—and the positive feelings of using their strong learning styles.
Artful Closer
This activity begins with reflection, proceeds through nonverbal communication, and ends in a discussion. You can use ARTFUL CLOSER to debrief participants after an experiential activity. You may also use it as the final activity at the end of a workshop. You may even use it as an opening ice-breaker by asking participants to think about common personal experiences. For example, I began a recent session on presentation skills by asking participants to process their experiences with the most inspiring speech they had ever heard.
Passions Tic Tac Toe
This simple game that explores the concepts from these two quotations:
"Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you". —Oprah Winfrey.
"Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are." —Penelope Lively, novelist
Meeting Management
This textra game incorporates these important facts:
It is easier to compare two different items at a time than to compare a larger number of items.
When we compare two items, we understand them at a deeper level.
My Favourite Manager
Participants work individually, assuming the roles of three different people and brainstorming their perceptions of three most favourite managers and three least favourite managers. Later, they work with a partner (and still later, in teams) to prepare a list of dos and don't-s for improving employees' perception of a manager's style.
Values Processing
Which of these two values is more important among the employees in your organization?
- Integrity
- Customer-focus
Yes, you are right: Both of them are important. And comparing these two values is like comparing apples with oranges.
However, thinking about these values, discussing them, and placing them in a priority order makes them more tangible. Participants identify the highest-priority value among a set of employee values by comparing them two at a time.
One will get you Ten
If I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar, we both end up where we began. But if I give you an idea and you give me an idea, we end up with two ideas each, benefiting from a 100 percent return on our investment.
In One Will Get You Ten, we leverage this principle so that you and all other participants receive a 1000 percent return on your investment on ideas.