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Showing posts with label Memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memory. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Remember as Much as You Can

(Refer for the most authentic articles on Building Leadership and Management: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia Management Universe at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Remember as Much as You Can

As an effective workshop/seminar leader you need an effective management exercise or game as an opener. "Remember as Much as You Can" fills up this need pretty well. You can use this individual and group exercise in your sessions or modules on personal/professional effectiveness enhancement, observation skills, team work, team building, strategy formulation, communication, synergy, time management etc.

Tell the participants of your workshop/seminar that each of them should give you one item that they have with them. It could be anything. They will receive that item back in their possession after the exercise is over. Preferably it should be an inexpensive item. Go to each one of them personally and collect the item. Make sure that you pick up from each one of them a unique item such that no item is duplicated. Advice the participants that they better remember the item they are handing over to you in order to retrieve their item after the exercise is finished.

This way you would have collected the number of unique items that will equal the number of participants. If the number of participants are less, add a few items from your side to make the total number of items equal to around 25 to 30 or so.

Place all of these items haphazardly on a table in the seminar room. Make sure to keep the items separated from each other so that these can be seen clearly.

Ask the participants to come near the table and observe the items paced on the table. They should observe and remember as many items as they can. Give them one minute to observe. Then they should revert to their seating place. Let them write down the names of the items they observed and remembered in their writing pads. Let them also make a count of it. They should turn over the page on which they wrote and open a fresh page in their note pad. They will not refer the earlier page until told to do so.

Now divide the participants randomly into a few groups; each group consisting of around 5 participants. Members of each group will sit together in a circle. Ask them they they will have to carry out the same exercise as a group. Each group should try to maximize its total number of observations. Before starting the exercise in groups, members in each group can have an internal meeting and discussion on how they wish to maximize their observations as a group.

Allow members of each group to go near the table group by group and make the observations for one minute and then return to their seating place. After coming back to their seats each member can write down the items seen and remembered by him on a fresh sheet of paper in his note pad. Later on they can pool up their individual item lists and make one common long list of all the combined observations in each group. Each group will count the total number of items they observed and put down that number on the paper.

Now ask each person the count of observations they made when they had carried out this exercise individually. Also ask each group to tell you the number of total observations they made during group working.

Invariably it will be seen that when participants worked as groups they performed much better together as compared to when they did the exercise individually.

Initiate a discussion and allow the participants to talk. The discussion will help clarify the issues and concepts related to observation skills, memory power, strategy formulation, team work, team building and synergy. Part of the discussion may also touch some aspects of time management.

Close the session with your observations, comments and any additional theoretical inputs you wish to give.

Get Hold of the Related Books
You can order the following books on "management games and icebreakers" as printed books and eBooks from Amazon online:
  1. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
  2. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers (Volume 2)
  3. Classic Team Building Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
  4. 101 Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers

Friday, August 27, 2010

Building Blocks

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia Management Universe at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

"Building Blocks" is an effective group and participative game. It can be used in the sessions on observation skills, memory effectiveness, leadership, followership, communication, giving effective instructions, motivation, time management, team work and team building. The game is also a good energizer and icebreaker.

You are the program leader or the workshop facilitator and you need to do some preparation before administering this game. To start with, you have to have one master set of many square, rectangular, triangular and such shapes of blocks made of wood or plastic or any other such solid material. The blocks should be of various colors. From these blocks you should be in a position to make stable structure of blocks. Next step is to make such 3 to 4 more sets depending upon the number of participants in your program or workshop and how many groups you wish to form. Each set will have identical combinations of blocks of various shapes and colors.

Before the session in which you plan to play this game, build up a stable structure using the various shaped and colored blocks of your mater set of blocks in a room adjacent to the conference or seminar hall in which you are conducting your session. In case a separate room is not available, cover this structure of blocks in such a manner in the same seminar room so that the participants can not see it.

By now you are pretty familiar with the method of random formation of the groups. To refresh on the methodology, you can refer the previous management games and exercises. Using this method divide the entire participants in the groups of around 6 to 7 persons in each group randomly.

The members of each group will sit together. Give one set of blocks that you had already prepared to each group. Ask each group to appoint a group coordinator.

Now the game starts. The coordinators of each group are asked to go to the structure and observe it carefully. At one time the coordinator of each group can not stay near the structure for more than one minute. The coordinator will report back to his group about what he saw. He will describe the structure to them. He will give instructions to his group members on how to construct the replica of the master or model structure that he saw. The other members of the group can have a dialogue with the coordinator. However, the coordinator is not allowed to touch the blocks or physically demonstrate how the construction should be done. He can just about describe how the master structure looked like.

The group can send the coordinator to have a second look at the structure. In fact there is no restriction on the number of times a coordinator can visit the structure to observe it. But he can not spend more than one minute near the structure observing it during each of his visits. Groups are also free to change their coordinators during the game as many number of times as they want.

When all the groups declare the completion of their structures using their building blocks, their structures will be compared to the original or master structure.

Get the participants to start discussing their experiential learning from this game. How they would like to play the game if asked to do it again?

Give your observations and analysis on what went right and what went wrong and why. Provide additional inputs if necessary or planned and wrap up the session.

Get Hold of the Related Books
You can order the following books on "management games and icebreakers" as printed books and eBooks from Amazon online:
  1. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
  2. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers (Volume 2)
  3. Classic Team Building Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
  4. 101 Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
Related Reading: (Repository of a large number of articles in management and leadership): http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com and http://management-universe.blogspot.com