Skills Converged

Motivation Exercise: Big Up My Role!

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:25:00 GMT

This activity encourages delegates to explore the positive side of their job and role in the team and recognise its benefits. This exercise allows delegates to share their thoughts with others in the team. This activity works best with the people who normally work together.

Team Building: Positive-Negative Flipchart

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:32:00 GMT

This exercise has been designed for people who work in the same team. It is very effective in discovering strengths and weaknesses of teams, in particular those of newly formed teams. This activity allows team members to share their views on positive and negative aspects of their team and therefore seek ways to improve them.

Creativity Exercise: Expand and Shrink

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:14:00 GMT

When engaged in a brainstorming session on productivity, you want to maximise your search efficiency in order to systematically explore all areas and get the best from the time spend on the problem. A great way to do this is to expand and shrink the problem so you can come up with new ideas, get rid of the bad ideas and move forward. Effectively, you can use the following 5 techniques: Expand. Expand the problem by thinking of new associations on all directions. Reduce. Reduce the scope. Reverse. Come up with something opposite to explore new avenues. Eliminate . Remove those ideas that don t make any sense to reduce your search space and increase the efficiency of your brainstorming. After all, you can t spend forever on this topic so you need to setup boundaries. The following exercise helps the delegates to use this method.

Communication Exercise: Unusual Greetings

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:17:00 GMT

This humorous activity encourages delegates to use unusual sentences for greetings. This exercise aims to demonstrate the effect of honest and genuine greetings which can make communication more effective and helps to build better relationships.

Handling Unfortunate Events

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:13:00 GMT

This is a fun activity which encourages delegates to be more optimistic and find positive points about some situations often perceived negatively. This exercise works best as an energiser and generates some laughs.

Communication Exercise: Mime it out!

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:26:00 GMT

This is a fun activity which can be used to demonstrate the importance of non- verbal communication as well as a good energiser. This exercise is most suited to bigger groups of delegates but can be used in any group size.

Problem Solving Exercise: Word Change

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:12:00 GMT

This activity encourages solution generation by looking at the problem from a different prospective. By changing the way we describe a problem we can come up with ideas to fix it. This exercise works best with a group of delegates who normally work together or belong to the same organisation.

Energiser: You Are a Star

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:01:00 GMT

This is a great exercise for motivation and boosting morals especially after long training sessions. This activity is best placed in the middle of the training course due to its positive effects on delegates.

Problem Solving Exercise: Brainstorm or Expert

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:13:00 GMT

This exercise encourages creativity and helps delegates to come up with a larger variety of solutions. The activity also enables participants to evaluate and compare the influence and effect of using expert views in solving problems. This activity is suitable for groups of people who have access to Internet and phone during the training session.

Team Building Exercise: Reveal and Win

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:23:00 GMT

This is a fun activity which encourages honest communication between delegates. By sharing their difficult, frustrating or embarrassing moments at work, delegates will help each other in recognising that their problems are similar to those around them and helps to give them a new prospective on work issues.

Stress Management: Glass of Water

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:41:00 GMT

In this exercise, delegates explore the implications of stress and how it affects their workflow. In 1936, Hans Selye carried out extensive research on stress. He found that the body goes through 3 stages during distress : The body is alarmed The body s resistance is increased The duration of the distress causes exhaustion . These three stages are present in any stressful activity. If we want to get over our stress and reduce its impact, it is ideal to know which one of these is causing most of the problem so we can take steps to improve it. This exercise uses a simple example to demonstrate the three phases.

Problem Solving Exercise: Here is My Problem!

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:13:00 GMT

This exercise allows participants to use others knowledge or experience in solving their problems. The activity also encourages asking for help from colleagues and team mates in solving problems and coming up with a variety of solutions.

Communication Skills: My Perspective

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:18:00 GMT

Use this exercise to share personality traits. This activity helps delegates to see sometimes difficult situations from other people s point of view and change the way they think about difficult circumstances.

Problem Solving Exercise: Quick Thinking

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:44:00 GMT

This is a fun activity which encourages delegates to become creative with their ideas and share them with others. They will learn the value of quick thinking and quick judgement since sometimes you may need to rely on gut instincts to cut your search space and save time looking for solutions. If the delegates know each other or are from the same organisation, a common problem can be chosen as the main topic which helps them to use this exercise to brainstorming the problem.

Writing Skills

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:47:00 GMT

This series of exercises help the delegates to practice writing by observing and improving a variety of different sources. The list is intended as a starting point so you can get ideas about potential exercises. You can extend this list by thinking of many other ideas.

Stress Management Exercise: Shared Solutions

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:08:00 GMT

This uplifting exercise can be used as part of a stress management course or any other training session where delegates are more likely to be stressed or under pressure. The activity encourages a proactive approach to problem solving and therefore can effectively reduce stress levels.

Team Building Exercise: Thank You Note

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:16:00 GMT

An activity suitable for people from the same team, this exercise illuminates the importance of appreciating team members efforts and encourages delegates to show their gratitude towards their colleagues more often. This activity is especially effective at the beginning of the training session to create a good atmosphere in the session.

Freeform Creativity Exercise

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:38:00 GMT

Some people believe that they are not creative. The belief comes to define their attitude towards any problem and can limit their capability irrespective of their creative ability. Almost everyone is creative and uses that creativity on a daily basis in everyday tasks such as cooking, rearranging furniture, professional organisational skills, report writing and so on. Unfortunately, they may not see these activities as creative. It is a good idea to push these individuals into classic creative tasks to show them that they can be just as creative as others if they want to. Once their self-limiting attitude is corrected, their confidence is increases and they can start to see their own talent. The viscous cycle can be broken.

Bin Your Thoughts

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:51:00 GMT

The aim of this exercise is to prepare the participants for an energised and productive training session. Delegates are encouraged to get rid of all their negative feelings and perceptions at the beginning of the session.

Body Language Quiz

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:56:00 GMT

This is quick quiz on body language. It encourages delegates to put their knowledge on body language to test and see how well they can respond to realistic situations.

Tree of Life

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:44:00 GMT

This is a great exercise to get the delegates to pay attention to where they are in life and perhaps where they want to go. It is a good eye opener, so it is ideal when you want to talk about motivation or want to energise team members. It is also ideal for use in coaching sessions.

Team Building Exercise: Annoying Colleagues

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:11:00 GMT

This is an eye opening exercise which works best with a group of delegates who normally work together or are about to work together as a team. The activity increases individual s awareness about how their colleagues feel in difficult situations or under pressure.

Communication Exercise: Job Pantomime

Ehsan Honary — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:00:00 GMT

This fun exercise generates a lot of laugh and is very effective in putting participants in a good mood especially after a long training session. Although designed as a communication exercise, it can easily be used as a team building exercise or energiser.

Icebreaker: Congratulations

Ehsan Honary — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:26:00 GMT

This fun exercise generates quite a bit of a laugh and is most suited to group of people who are meeting for the first time. It also works for people who work with each other and are familiar with each other s sense of humour.

Team Building Exercise: Word Tangle

Ehsan Honary — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:19:00 GMT

This fun and creative exercise allows participants to work within a team and brainstorm different ideas to come up with the right answer.