by Richard L. Baron
Interactive Exercises for Team-Building and Communication
Catalyst: Think Improvement for Line-Level Leaders, is an interactive exercise that uses current concepts of organizational effectiveness and success to identify individual and group strengths and weaknesses in thinking and verbal communication. It is viable for communication training, employee interviews, company orientations and team building. It promotes practical steps to improved information exchange.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify individual and team communication strengths and weaknesses.
- Engage in structured discussion about diverse individual and team communication styles.
- Promote practical steps to improved information exchange.
Game Design
The game includes two kits: Kit A and Kit B. Each kit contains a total of 36 tiles (2 sets of 9 pairs), embossed with adjectives relating to organizational effectiveness and success (i.e. Harmony, Synergy, Excellence, Versatile, Novel, etc.). While the game design remains the same between the two kits, the adjectives in each set cover different concepts in order to expand the application to cover a broad range of organization settings and issues.
Facilitators can implement 3 different exercises: two-way partner exercise, two-way partner switch exercise, and three-way partner switch exercise.
A minimum 70% of participants will make errors in the replication of tile arrangement, creating opportunities for “ah ha” learning experiences and rich discussions about diverse individual and team communication styles, strengths and areas to improve, which surface post-exercise in a series of questions and analysis on the game experience.
The game is only as long as you need it to be—depending on how many of the three exercises you choose to implement, the game can take anywhere from 15–45 minutes. The design also allows for you to play with 2–12 participants.