by Ashley Andrus

“Tell me and I may forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.”—Confucius

You can learn sitting in a classroom. You can learn listening to somebody talk to you. You can learn watching a webinar or listening to a teleconference or sitting around a conference room table or reading a manual. But it’s not the only way you can learn.

Why not invite some “fun and games” into your meetings and workshops and daily office routine? Incorporating some get-up-and-walk activities with your sit-and-talk sessions can be an effective catalyst in taking the team and the discussion to the next level.

You don’t have to take your team to a ropes course, white-water rafting, skydiving, or high-speed driving to benefit from experiential activities. Those experiences are exciting and can be very effective, but if your budget or timeframe doesn’t allow for that possibility, consider some alternatives that can be done closer to home.

INSTRUCTOR-LED OPTIONS include program like:

• In Hi-Tech Treasure Hunt, teams use handheld GPS systems to race around a geocached course. The challenge level rises as participants progress from one station to another.
• In Lessons from the Herd, horses—perhaps the ultimate team animals—teach valuable leadership and team lessons. No riding required!
• In Adventure Past Kilimanjaro, teams travel to Africa and encounter lions, elephants and hippos—without ever leaving the conference room.
• Team Work & Team Play utilizes games, improv activities, and more to demonstrate the power of laughter & leadership.
• Juggling Master is an innovative program in which participants learn to juggle in the process of learning lessons such as “count on dropping the ball” and “you can’t learn to juggle for somebody else.”

Continued advances and price decreases in technology have paved the way for a wide variety of GAME-BASED AND VIRTUAL-ENVIRONMENT SCENARIOS. MSNBC reports that Hilton Garden Inn is rolling out a program called “Ultimate Team Play” that offers timed scenarios to give employees a chance to practice job skills before interacting with customers. Scenarios include everything from housekeeping and maintenance to front desk operations. (Article here). Kansas City-based Assurant Employee Benefits rolled out a series of online training video games called “It’s Your Business” with a “CEO vs. CFO Smackdown Challenge.” (Article here.)

Full-blown hands-on workshops aren’t the only option, of course. There are endless SHORT ADD-ON ACTIVITIES that require no materials and only a few minutes of time. For example:

• The warmer weather of spring provides a perfect opportunity to take some of your team meetings outside.
• At the start of your next regular staff meeting, take a few minutes and have everyone introduce the person next to him or her as though you were newly-formed team.
• To get a team’s energy level up, incorporate a scavenger hunt into the start of one of your meetings.  Give the team 5 or 10 minutes to find items such as an out-of-state driver’s license, a cell phone less than 2 months old, someone who took a Psychology class in college, 2 people whose ages add up to 100, a 2009 quarter, etc.

Ashley Andrus is President of Zoe Training & Consulting. Her passion is making HR folks and meeting planners look like *rock stars* by providing one-stop access to 90+ speakers, trainers, facilitators, coaches, and consultants.