Timing: Between 15-30 min
Materials
A piece of cardboard from any unused box (~20cm x ~20cm), a marker, scissors, ~10 threads (around 60/80cm each), and a 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 perforations on each side of the cardboard square. You need to do as many perforations as participants. (between 5 and 15 should be fine).
- Attach one thread to each small perforation.
- Design your race on a big paper sheet.
How to play
Each member of the team needs to pull one thread and place the pen in the start line.
They must do one “clean loop”. It means, no blank spot, and the line is not able to go out of the design. If one of these impediments happens, they need to restart 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).
Learning Points
Communication, collaboration, and leadership.
As a facilitator, you could detect how to take the leader and guide the team. Personally, when I detect the leader, I add one extra rule, he/she needs to stop talking for a few minutes or seconds. The idea behind the game is, that the full team needs to talk and collaborate to arrive at the end line. Normally after a few tries, they get the idea, and they start to talk.
In the end, you only need to ask what happens, and the team alone will come up with collaboration and communication as themes to discuss. You could guide the team to the level of communication you are expecting from the team, and why and how they could get it.
You can 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 at the end, the last time I gave each member one postcard with a big BRAVO.
