Skills Converged

Decision Making Exercise: Ups and Downs

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:28:00 GMT

This activity encourages delegates to think back to their personal experiences in life and share some of their important decisions with their team mates.

Icebreaker: Draw Your Introduction

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:38:00 GMT

This is a fun icebreaker to use at the beginning of any course with a group of people who are not familiar with each other. The trainer as well as the participants can use this exercise to introduce themselves to the group.

Conflict Resolution Exercise: Help Me Out!

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:42:00 GMT

The aim of this exercise is to draw attention to the number of conflicts and similar stressful situations experienced by delegates in one week and use others in the group to come up with reasonable solutions for each conflict.

Diversity Exercise: Draw Your Opinion

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:40:00 GMT

This is a quick and fun exercise that demonstrates diversity at a very basic level. It also encourages creativity and helps the delegates to understand a bit more about each other.

Externalising Internal Conflicts Exercise

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:36:00 GMT

This activity helps the delegates to resolve their internal conflicts by treating them as external conflicts. Internal conflicts are those conflicts between and you and yourself. External conflicts are those between you and others. The exercises help participants to view and resolve such conflicts in a systematic way.

Communication Skills Exercise: All about Me

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:21:00 GMT

This exercise is an effective way to draw delegate’s attention to their strength and achievements. The activity also allows participants to communicate their qualities freely with others and feel more confident about their abilities.

Team Building Exercise: The Punch Line

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:53:00 GMT

This is a creative and energizing exercise which encourages thinking on the spot and also allows them to compete with each other. Delegate must complete a story based on a number of given punch lines in a competitive environment.

Communication Skills: Recall Interruption

Ehsan Honary — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:42:00 GMT

Psychologists have suggested a direct link between the way you recall an event and the way you are questioned about it. The structure of the questions and the wordings are critical. Numerous studies on eyewitness recalls show that witnesses remember differently depending on how they are asked. In this exercise, delegates will get a hands-on experience of differences created as a result of asking different questions. This will encourage them to pay more attention to the way they ask questions and thereby improve their communication skills.

Effective Teaching Methods: One-Way Teaching

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:40:00 GMT

Instructional methods can be divided into one-way and two-way methods. In the one-way method, the direction of the information is from the instructor to the audience. In the two-way method, information is exchanged in both ways. These methods are also known as content-centred or learner-centred activity. In practice, lectures are generally one-way and training courses are two-way.

The methods in each style are quite different but they both have their uses. Lectures are suitable for a large audience, where interaction is not possible or time consuming. Even though lectures are very useful as a teaching method, delivering a training course in the form of a lecture is not recommended as the training session could become boring and unproductive. This article explores the one-way instructional method and suggests solutions to make the experience more interactive or memorable without losing the benefits of a lecturing activity.

Presentation Skills: Systematic Note Taking

Ehsan Honary — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:33:00 GMT

This is another Interactive Pause exercise used during a lecture or talk to help the participants to quickly go over the content they have just been thought and record the key points. These kinds of exercises encourage participation in learning environments where you are forced to use a one-way instructional method such as lecturing.

Presentation Skills: Sharing Content

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:28:00 GMT

This activity is useful as an add-on to lectures, talks or presentations to make them more interactive and memorable. An interactive pause used during or after a lecture stops the current flow of content and allows the audience to do something about what they have just been told. This helps them to go over the content quickly and somewhat participate before the speaker can move on. This exercise is an example of such interactive pause delivered at the end of a lecture or a talk.

Team Building Exercise: An Ideal Team

Ehsan Honary — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:19:00 GMT

This is a fun exercise that encourages delegates to think creatively and participate with each other towards a common goal. This exercise is physical and artistic and useful as an energizer. It is ideal for delegates who are part of the same organisation, or in particular if they are part of the same team.

Communication Skills: Multiplayer Puzzle

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:10:00 GMT

The problem presented in this activity encourages a better understanding of the effect of team work in problem solving. Although looking manageable individually at first, participants soon realise the need for cooperation with team members in solving the problem. This exercise is quite applicable to everyday work and it encourages delegates to examine their own behaviour and understand best approaches. It also allows delegates to consider long term effect of problems.

Team Evaluation Self-Test

Ehsan Honary — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:06:00 GMT

This is an ideal exercise which enables participants to find out more about themselves. It is highly effective in bringing up lots of hidden issues that could be present in the team and causes conflicts. This self-probation can be used for coaching where team members can clearly see various points of view and based on those take steps to move the team forward towards its ideal state. This is effectively a self-coaching exercise where only the team members’ views are used to evaluate the group. This activity is as opposed to using 360 degree questionnaires or other elaborate formal feedback mechanisms used in some organisations. Indeed, since team members know more about their own team more than anyone else, their self-analysis will be more useful and accurate than many other methods.

Ice Breaker: Is That Really You!?

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:32:00 GMT

This exercise helps delegates to understand more about each other’s interests, past experiences and share them with the group. This is also useful for delegates who may somewhat know each other and want to take their understanding to the next level. This exercise is best suited to participants from the same team or company who already know each other to some degree.

Ice Breaker: Greedy to Pick, Greedy to Share

Ehsan Honary — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:27:00 GMT

In this exercise delegates are encouraged to share something about themselves with others in an entertaining way which keeps the atmosphere light. They will also get to learn about implications of greed!

Is it Better to Go for Knowledge or for Money?

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:23:00 GMT

In certain countries, writing an essay on “Money or Knowledge” is a classic school activity. Sometimes the essay writing activity is so classic, it is dismissed as routine and is not paid as much attention as it deserves. Worst still, the question is ignored for later stages of life where the question actually becomes far more applicable.

This training exercise helps professionals to explore this subject once again, “Is it better to go for knowledge or for money?” Like all grand questions, the answer is far from trivial and you can have endless debates about the merits and pitfall of each direction. Nevertheless, the direction taken comes to define your individuality and will also explain a lot about your economic prosperity, your social and academic skills as well as your general knowledge about the world.

Can You Make it with Dominos?

Ehsan Honary — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:17:00 GMT

This exercise helps delegates to understand the importance of feedback in communications and realize why the lack if it can be so frustrating for both sides. By working together towards a common goal, delegates will learn to be patient, pay attention to details and of course use feedback.

Ice Breaker Exercise: Are You an ‘A’ or a ‘B’?

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:18:00 GMT

This fast-paced highly active exercise helps delegates to understand each other better and also appreciate their differences as well as commonalities. It generates lots of laughter so it is a good choice as an icebreaker. This exercise is also surprisingly ideal for students even those who are young.

Decision Making Exercise: What’s the Meaning of...?

Ehsan Honary — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:13:00 GMT

It is 2075. You are on Mars. A strong solar radiation took out your communication and computer electronics and disconnected you from the rest of the world. You have no idea what happened to others on Earth and must simply carry on surviving since you might be the only humans alive.

You are now faced with many tasks, one of which is preservation of human knowledge, culture and know how. You are in the team that works on dictionary restoration. With great difficulty, you have been able to salvage some data from the toasted hard-drives. Unfortunately, the index table that connects the words with their definitions is lost.

You have a series of words and definitions and your job is to find out which word correlates with which definition.

Communication Exercise: Read Me

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:38:00 GMT

This is an exercise in communication with the aim to increase awareness of body language and non-verbal communications.

Which One is a Lie?

Ehsan Honary — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:24:00 GMT

This fun exercise helps the delegates to get to know each other better. It also gives them the opportunity to release statements about their life they may not otherwise do.

Team Building Exercises: What Would You Do If...?

Ehsan Honary — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:36:00 GMT

Knowing how other people respond in different situations can be extremely educational. Sometimes we use a particular solution in response to a situation because that’s the only way we have seen it done. A lot of these responses are acquired in our childhood, from school or our environment. However, as we all know there is more than one way to handle a situation and a great way to learn it is to simply ask others how they have done it before and then examine it in more detail in a controlled environment.

This exercise helps the delegates to find new solutions for a number of common scenarios encountered in everyday life.

Team Building Exercise: The Perfect Team Mate

Ehsan Honary — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:20:00 GMT

This exercise allows participants to recognise and appreciate the range of talents and achievements each individual brings to the team. Identifying and acknowledging individual abilities increases team members confidence in what they can accomplish as a group.

How to Use Ice Breakers

Ehsan Honary — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:43:00 GMT

An opening exercise such as an ice breaker is useful to start up a training session. As the name suggests, ice breakers are designed to “warm up” the session. It is important to note that delegates need to be receptive to learning before they can start to learn. An ice breaker helps to warm up the delegates and prepare them for more learning activities.

Ice breakers are effectively a tool in your trainer’s toolbox. Of course, like any tool, you need to master the skill of using them to get the most out of them. This article explores various qualities, benefits and advantages of ice breakers and presents guidelines in using them.