Timing: Between 15-30 min

Materials:

piece of cardboard from any unused box  (~20cm x ~20cm), marker, scissor, ~10 threads (around 60/80cm each one), big sheet of paper

Instructions:

You need to do some preparation first:

  • Do a hole in the middle of the cardboard piece with your scissor. You need to be sure the pen is able to go there and it is not dropping.
  • Do small perforation in each side of the cardboard square. You need to do as many perforation as participants. (between 5 and 15 should be fine).
  • Attach one thread to each small perforation.
  • Design your race in the big paper sheet.
  • You should get something like that:

How to play:

Each member of the team need to pull one thread and place the pen in the start line.

They must do one “clean loop”. It means, not blank spot, and the line is not able to go out of the design. If one of these impediments happens, they need to re-start again. To avoid confusion, you could change the marker color.

To increase the difficulty and fun, you could design crazy races or mazes. Up to you.

It is a game that you could play it few times during the year with the same team, you only need to change the design (race or maze). The fun is warranty.

Learning Points:

Communication, collaboration, and leadership.

As facilitator, you could detect how take the leader and guide the team. I personally, when I detect the leader, I add one extra rule, he/she needs to stop talk for few minute or seconds. The idea behind the game is, the full team need to talk and collaborate to arrive to the end line. Normally after few tries, they got the idea, and they start to talk.

At the end, you only need to ask what happens, and the team alone will come with collaboration and communication as themes to discuss. You could guide the team to the level of communication you are expecting from the team, why and how they could get it.

You could see also one video here: https://www.agilecafe.org/team-communication-improvement

Variations:

You could design wherever you want to add complexity and generate frustration at the beginning

You could add also gifts when they arrive to the end, the last time I gave to each member one post card with a big BRAVO.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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