Creating Opening Exercises
3. Immediate learning involvement—creating initial interest in the train- train-ing topic
◆ C h a p t e r T h r e e
Creating Opening
All three of these goals, accomplished singly or in combination, help to de-velop a training environment that engages the participants, promotes their will-ingness to take part in some active learning, and creates positive training norms. You can take as little as five minutes or as much as two hours on open-ing activities (dependopen-ing on the overall length of your program); it will be time well spent.
Team Building
Team-building exercises foster positive group attitudes by asking participants to learn each other’s names and to get to know each other. If the members have already met, opening exercises can help them to become reacquainted after a period of separation. Either way, an opening design that stresses team building can develop a feeling of spirit and pride among the members of your program.
There are numerous getting-acquainted exercises that give participants an opportunity to introduce themselves to the other members of the group in an interesting and non-threatening manner. An excellent example is Name Bingo, the instructions for which appear in Figure 3.1.
Almost all opening exercises can be varied to produce different effects.
For example, Name Bingo can be modified to increase self-disclosure. Besides names, participants can be asked to obtain and record on the Bingo form one fact about each person they meet. Each time participants are asked for a fact about themselves, they are required to share one that is different from those given to other participants. In step 7, all the participants share the many facts they have learned about the person whose name is picked. This change length-ens the exercise, however, so it’s best to use it only when the group is small.
FIGURE 3.1. INSTRUCTIONS FOR NAME BINGO 1. Participants mill around the room and meet each other.
2. Each time a participant exchanges names with someone, she or he writes the new name anywhere on a Bingo form.
3. After all participants have met, each one places an O in any unused box.
4. The trainer then places a copy of everyone’s name in a hat.
5. The hat is passed around the group, one participant at a time. Each participant picks a name out of the hat. Everyone places an X on the box containing the name picked.
6. Whenever any player obtains 5 Xs in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diago-nally), he or she yells “Bingo!” (Eventually, everyone will get Bingo several times.)
7. As their names are picked, participants should introduce themselves to the group and share three facts about themselves.
A fun way to do group building once participants have become acquainted is a takeoff on the game show “To Tell the Truth” (see Figure 3.2 for instructions).
FIGURE 3.1. continued
B I N G O
Note: Use a three-by-three format if the group includes fewer than ten people or a four-by-four format if the group numbers between ten and sixteen.
FIGURE 3.2. INSTRUCTIONS FOR TO TELL THE TRUTH
1. Ask each participant to write down (legibly!) on a card three personal facts not previously shared with the group.
2. Mix up the cards and distribute a card to each participant. (Be sure no one receives his or her own card.)
3. Have each participant read the card she or he has been dealt, then ask for three guesses as to whose card was read. Prior to the guesses, request that participants not reveal their identity even if it is guessed.
4. Ask, “Will the real bearer of this card please stand up?”
5. Allow for surprise or self-congratulatory applause.
A more self-disclosing yet fun-filled way to accomplish the same purpose is Predictions, a guessing game based on first impressions. Participants are formed into small groups to do the activity, which is described in Figure 3.3.
FIGURE 3.3. PREDICTIONS
Your job is to predict how each person in your group would answer the follow-ing questions. (Try to be as specific as possible. Don’t be afraid of bold guesses!) When you have finished your predictions, the participants should respond to the questions themselves.
1. Where did you grow up?
2. What were you like as a child? A student?
3. Were your parents strict or lenient?
4. What type of music do you enjoy?
5. What are some of your favorite leisure activities?
6. How many hours do you usually sleep nightly?
Note: Other questions can be added or substituted.
Other team-building activities are especially appropriate for a group in which members already know each other well. Often, they involve some way for the group to produce something they can take pride in. One example that can be used in a longer training program is called TV Commercial (see Figure 3.4).
FIGURE 3.4 TV COMMERCIAL INSTRUCTIONS 1. Divide participants into teams of no more than six members.
2. Ask teams to create a thirty-second TV commercial that advertises their team, their organization, their common job, or the importance of the train-ing topic.
3. The commercial should contain a slogan (for example, “Just Do It”) and visuals.
4. Explain that the general concept and an outline of the commercial are sufficient. However, if teams want to act out their commercials, let them.
5. Before each team begins planning its commercial, discuss the characteristics of currently well-known commercials to stimulate creativity (for example, the use of a well-known personality, humor, or a comparison to the competi-tion).
6. Ask each team to present its ideas. Praise everyone’s creativity.
A second example is called Group Résumé (see Figure 3.5).
FIGURE 3.5. DIRECTIONS FOR GROUP RÉSUMÉ 1. Divide participants into groups of three to six members.
2. Tell the group that within it is an incredible array of talents and experiences.
3. Suggest that one way to identify and brag about the group’s resources is to compose a group résumé. (You may want to suggest a job or contract the group could be bidding for.)
4. Give the groups newsprint and markers to display their résumés. Each should include any data that sell the group as a whole, such as information about Educational background and schools attended
Total years of professional experience Positions held
Professional skills
Hobbies, talents, travel, and family Major accomplishments
Publications
5. Invite each group to present its résumé and celebrate the total resources contained within the entire group.
Yet another way to promote group cohesion is to invite participants to set ground rules that provide agreements about how they will interact and work with each other. One way to accomplish this is to provide a list of several pos-sible ground rules. Ask participants to select three from the list. Tabulate the results and take note of the rules most often selected.
The following items might be suitable for your list:
• Respect confidentiality
• Have everyone participate when working in small groups or teams
• Observe the starting time of the class
• Get to know others who are different from you
• Let others finish what they are saying without being interrupted
• Allow no put-downs or cheap shots
• Speak for yourself
• Be brief and to the point when speaking
• Use gender-sensitive language
• Be prepared for class
• Don’t sit in the same seat for every session of the class
• Agree to disagree
• Give everyone a chance to speak
• Build on each other’s ideas before criticizing them
On-the-Spot Assessment
On-the-spot assessment exercises ask participants to do such things as
• Share their learning goals or expectations
• Raise questions or concerns they may have about the course
• Relate their knowledge and experience to the course topics
• List the successes and problems they have experienced that are relevant to the course
• Explore their opinions and attitudes about the course topic
Such exercises elicit information that will help you to gauge the expertise of the group while giving participants a sense of immediate participation.
Often, you can request the information you want in a spontaneous manner by asking general questions in the opening minutes of the training program, for example, “What motivated you to come here today?” or “Do you have any con-cerns about today’s session or what you may be asked to do?” Or you can ask training-specific questions such as these used in a time-management semi-nar: “Who uses a ‘to-do’ list on a daily basis?” “How does it help you to orga-nize your day?”
Structured exercises can also be used to gain on-the-spot assessment in-formation, as the following examples illustrate.
ExAMPLE: Managers participating in a mandatory workshop on new cor-rective action policies were asked to discuss the following questions with their seat partners:
1. From your experience, what constitutes a “problem behavior”?
2. How do you feel when you have to confront a problem employee?
3. What actions have you taken in the past to discipline employees?
After each question, the trainer asked two or three participants to share their answers with the whole group. As group members had an opportunity to explore their own perspectives on handling problem situations before learn-ing new corrective action procedures, the trainer gained valuable information about the training group.
EXAMPLE: Child care workers in group homes were formed into a rotating group of panelists. Each “panel” was asked to discuss its responses to one of the following questions:
1. What do you like about the kids you work with?
2. What turns you off about the kids you work with?
3. What do the kids do to “push your buttons”?
4. What advice do you think you will get in this training program?
As panelists responded in front of their co-workers, the trainer learned about their willingness to self-disclose, their feelings about the children they cared for, and their understanding of the course content.
EXAMPLE: Family therapy trainees were asked to form trios. Each trio was asked to generate two questions, one concerning the theory of family therapy and the other concerning the practice of family therapy. The questions had to relate to topics the participants hoped to learn about during the training pro-gram. Some of the questions that emerged were these:
• (Theoretical) What is the role of interpretation in family therapy?
• (Practical) Do you have to see the entire family to do family therapy properly?
• (Theoretical) Are the various models of family therapy really different from each other?
• (Practical) Is a “fifty-minute” hour enough for most family sessions?
The trainer gained in two ways from hearing these questions. She not only learned some of the issues that participants wanted to discuss but also found out about their knowledge regarding program content and their expectations regarding its level of sophistication.
Another design to consider, outlined in Figure 3.6, focuses on the concerns participants might bring to a training session.
Immediate Learning Involvement
Immediate learning involvement exercises ask participants to respond to initial questions about the course content, to try out learning activities related to the course content without previous instruction, or to view presentations or demonstrations that give an initial description of skills to be learned within the program. These activities help to introduce the course in a dramatic, active manner that draws the participants into the training program right from the beginning of the session.
One of the simplest ways to involve participants for this purpose is to dis-play an interesting proverb or slogan related to the training topic and then ask each participant to introduce herself or himself and share reactions to the state-ment. (Divide into small groups if the total group size is too large.) Here is a sample of sayings that could be used for well-known topics:
• Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? (time management)
• It’s not what you say but how you say it. (communication) FIGURE 3.6. CONCERNS OF A TRAINING GROUP 1. Hand out a blank index card to each participant.
2. Ask the participants to write down any concerns they have about the nature of the present training program (names should be withheld). These concerns might include the following:
• How difficult or time-consuming the training may be
• How they can participate freely and comfortably
• How they will function in small learning groups
• How available the trainer will be
• What access there will be to reading materials
• What the time schedule for the course will be
3. Request participants to pass the card clockwise around the group. Each time a participant receives a card, she or he should read it and place a checkmark on the card if it contains a statement that is also of concern to the reader.
4. By the time all of the participants have gotten back their own cards, each person will have reviewed the concerns of the entire group. At this point, hold an open discussion of the concerns that have emerged.
Variation: Instead of holding a discussion, identify the top four concerns in the group by estab-lishing which cards contain the most checks. Break the class into four groups and invite each group to elaborate on the concern written on one of the four index cards. Ask each group to summarize its discussions for the whole class.
• You can’t sell a product until you understand how it works. (sales)
• We cannot fully understand the beginning of anything until we understand the end. (planning)
• Nobody washes a rented car. (employee empowerment)
• A company is known by the people it keeps. (customer service)
• There is no “I” in TEAM. (team building)
• Yesterday’s home runs don’t win tomorrow’s ball games. (product improvement)
• Managers do things right; leaders do the right things. (leadership)
• The only person who likes change is a wet baby. (organizational change) Another simple immediate involvement technique is called Active Knowl-edge Sharing (see Figure 3.7). This is a great way to draw participants imme-diately into the subject matter of your course. It would work with any group and with any topic.
FIGURE 3.7. ACTIVE KNOWLEDGE SHARING
1. Provide a list of questions pertaining to the subject matter you will be teach-ing. You could include some or all of the following categories:
• Terms to define (for example, “What does Six Sigma mean?)
• Multiple-choice questions concerning facts, concepts, procedures, poli-cies, and so on (for example, “Being a team player does NOT involve (a) patience; (b) collaboration; (c) sharing the credit; and (d) constant fun.”)
• People to identify who are important to the subject matter (for example,
“Who is Jim Collins?”)
• Questions concerning actions one could take in certain situations (for ex-ample, “How would you deal with an employee who is persistently late?”)
• Incomplete sentences ( for example, “A _________ identifies the basic cat-egories of tasks you can perform with a computer application.”
2. Ask participants to answer the questions as well as they can.
3. Then, invite them to mill around the room, finding others who can answer questions they do not know how to answer. Encourage participants to help each other. Or invite participants to compare answers with a partner or small team.
4. Reconvene the full group and review the answers. Fill in answers unknown to any of the participants.
Finally, you can create an immediate learning-involvement exercise that is tailored to introduce your particular training topic. Naturally, the development of a customized exercise requires greater effort than the simpler techniques described above, but the return on your investment of time will be rewarded many times over. Here are some examples:
EXAMPLE: A trainer introduced the topic of organizational change by pro-jecting a cartoon depicting a wagon with square wheels, carrying a load of round tires, that was being pulled by a single person and pushed from the rear by two other people. Participants were asked to generate as many associations to this illustration as they could and to share their reactions with others. This metaphorical tool is a proven and engaging approach to identifying alterna-tives to the ways things are done in organizations. The illustration links neatly to issues of organizational change. Over two hundred points about the illus-tration have been accumulated, such as “Square wheels are better for going downhill” and “We also don’t use the round wheels we already have” (Sim-merman, 1998).
EXAMPLE: A trainer began a program on multiple intelligence by asking participants: “What do Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, and Mother Theresa have in common?” After participants responded with their thoughts, the trainer pointed out that all three are “geniuses.” While Einstein is usually seen as the epitome of genius, there are several ways in which very intelligent people ex-press their genius. Einstein is an example of logical-mathematical intelligence, Michael Jordan is an example of physical intelligence, and Mother Theresa is an example of interpersonal intelligence.
EXAMPLE: Participants in a course on conflict resolution were given a sheet that listed, in scrambled fashion, fourteen methods of handling conflict, ten of which might be considered “negative” methods and four of which might be considered “positive.” They were asked to circle the five methods they per-sonally used most often and underline the five methods used most often by other people in their personal and/or professional lives. The selections were then tabulated across the full group, and significant discrepancies were ob-served. Typically, the participants saw themselves as users of positive meth-ods more often than they perceived others doing so. The trainer then pointed out the human tendency to project negative attitudes on others and asked par-ticipants to discuss how this tendency affects people’s behaviors in conflict situations.
Multipurpose Exercises
While it is possible to design one of each kind of exercise as part of your course introduction, too much time spent on opening exercises may require you to skimp on the meat of the training program. Another approach is to design one
opening exercise that simultaneously accomplishes team building, on-the-spot assessment, and immediate learning involvement. An example is an opening exercise called Rotating Trio Exchange, described in Figure 3.8. This is an in-depth way for participants to get acquainted and become immediately involved in the course topic. At the same time, valuable assessment informa-tion is obtained.
FIGURE 3.8. ROTATING TRIO EXCHANGE
Participants are asked to discuss within trios a variety of questions that help them to get to know each other; learn about their attitudes, knowledge, and experience;
and begin discussion of the course content. For example, a group of managers could be divided into groups of three and asked such questions as “How have you been managed by others?” “What advice would you give yourself to be more effective as a manager?” and “What do you want to learn from this training pro-gram?” Similar questions could be developed for other subject-matter areas. In a course on stress management, participants could be asked questions such as
“What are some of the causes of stress in your job? At home?” or “How do you currently try to deal with stress in your life?” With each question posed by the trainer, new groups are formed by rotating two members, thereby increasing the number of participants who become acquainted with each other.
Another opening exercise that both fosters group building and provides assessment information is based on a scavenger hunt. Participants receive a set of questions that must be answered with the names of other group members.
Use a wide variety of questions that touch on both personal information and course content. (This activity is extremely flexible, because you can easily adapt the questions to fit any type of group.) You might want to offer a token prize to the participant who finishes the scavenger hunt first. When a winner has been declared, reassemble the participants and survey the entire group about each of the items. Promote short discussions of some items. A sample human scavenger hunt for a team-building workshop is given in Figure 3.9.
FIGURE 3.9. HUMAN SCAVENGER HUNT
Read the following items. Then, for each item, find someone in the group who fits the description. Write his or her first name in the space after the item. You may not use any person’s name more than once.