Over the years, my colleagues and I have developed a reputation for using experiential activities when working with leaders and teams. When we say “experiential learning” what we mean is that rather than talk about “leadership” and “teamwork”, we give them a challenge they have to tackle together in the room to see how they come together and collaborate in the moment. We find that discussions about leadership and teamwork are much richer if we have a fresh experience together to reflect on. There are a number of reasons for being more experiential in our work with teams but let me let me share a few of the most compelling ones.
They’re fun!
Because they often involve people getting up out of their chairs and completing a task of some kind under a time constraint there is an energy and urgency that often emerges. This is so much more compelling than listening to someone go through slides talking about leadership and teamwork.
They are more impactful
We know that people retain about 30% of what they see and hear (i.e., Powerpoint with talking points), but about 80-90% of what they experience and then discuss. I have done enough leadership workshops over the years to notice this trend…when I see people from a workshop later, the thing they remember most is the experiential exercise, not any specific content points.
They help foster innovation
The innovation experts at IDEO will tell you that there needs to be a sense of play evident in a team for it to be innovative and creative. These exercises bring out that sense of play and loosen the group accordingly. Improv instructor Patricia Madsen frames it this way…
“Having fun loosens the mind. A flexible mind works differently from a rigid mind. The pleasure that accompanies our mirth makes learning easier and creates a climate for social as well as intellectual discovery.”
For those who want to become more experiential in their approach to developing and training others, there are some things we’ve noticed over the 20+ years we’ve been doing this that help. Below are some guidelines to keep in mind when using experiential exercises to start conversations.
Challenge by Choice
Even though most of the exercises we do don’t require any real physical risk, it is always a good idea to let people know that they get to decide at what level they want to engage in the activity (and “not at all” should always be an option). So we will say on the front end of a workshop or any exercise we do with a team that it is “challenge by choice”. This concept also applies to exercises involving interpersonal risk as well as physical. One of the more engaging exercises I will do sometimes with teams to build trust is called “Lifeline” where we ask people to share their high’s and low’s of their life with each other. This can make some people somewhat anxious as it asks them to make themselves vulnerable in front of their peers. This is why it is important to let them decide at what level they want to participate and that includes opting out.
When designing an exercise – less is more
When designing an exercise you want to avoid “over-engineering” it (specifying a lot of rules and conditions for completion). The minimum things needed are a goal, a time-frame and some minimum constraints to how they do it. This approach often leads to a more interesting interaction as groups often assume constraints that are actually not there. You can also make the challenge harder or easier by tweaking the constraints e.g., lengthening the time and relaxing constraints to make the challenge easier or vice versa.
Let go of outcomes
This is the biggest challenge for people when they first use these types of exercises. Those of us with an instructional design background are used to designing training to meet specific learning objectives, but when you throw in an experiential exercise, you can’t predict how it will unfold or what they will experience and learn. This makes these exercises difficult for those instructors and facilitators who want to produce a specific outcome. If you can’t stay away from trying to control what is learned in the experience, we would recommend staying away from these types of activities.
“Frame” the experience to their world
It helps people engage more in the exercise if you give them a frame (i.e., analogy) for the activity that makes sense to them. In the activity shown below small groups of 4-5 people have to touch the numbered discs in sequence where only one person can be in the roped off area at a time.
Rather than say “Your challenge is to see how quickly you as a team can complete this task by touching the numbers in sequence and only one person can be in the roped off area” – a better frame for, let’s say, a department of attorneys might be “These 25 discs in this roped off area represent the critical due diligence tasks we must do on every acquisition. You will have a few attempts to see if you can get through all of them and try to decrease the cycle time with each attempt.” Using language and analogies that your audience relates to will help them more fully engage with the challenge you are giving them.
Discussing the Experience
Here’s another area where we feel the guideline less is more is needed. Our experience is that the team/group assembled should dictate the amount time spent debriefing, not the facilitator. Often the insights people get from these challenges happen later as they reflect on it. Trying to force the insights in the immediate debrief afterwards is counterproductive. One way to gauge how much time to allow for debriefing an experiential exercise is illustrated in the graphic below.
If the goal of your activity is to just break the ice and promote networking, you should figure 90% doing the activity and 10% (or none at all) debriefing. If you are doing team/skill development allow more time for debriefing, etc.
A simple way to kick off the debrief is to follow a process used at Outward Bound for years – “What?”, “So What?”, “Now What?.” Ask “So, what happened?” and solicit responses and know different people may notice different things as to what occurred. Then ask “So what?” i.e. is what happened relevant to your group and how you interact and work together. If the answer is “yes”, move to the final question “Now what?” – i.e., what do we want to do differently going forward? As the facilitator you should feel free to share your observations (“I noticed that whenever ______talked the rest of the group got very quiet…is that noteworthy?”) Avoid judging what you saw going on (“Clearly we need to share responsibility for leadership and not let ______ dominate decision making.”) and instead ask questions that push the group to decide. “So, we saw that there were a couple moments where conversation stopped after ______ talked. Is that an aberration or something we should explore?”
Unless the Facilitator was asked to look for a specific behavior or pattern within a group, the Facilitator should be cautious about teeing up what they see as “concerns” and let the group decide if it’s significant.
I’ll close with an observation by Arie DeGeus former head of Shell Oil’s strategic planning group…
“We know extremely well in business that play is the best method of learning. That’s why it never ceases to amaze me that, in most business decision making, “play” is not even considered as a vehicle for learning.”
So, put the slides and workbooks away and go experiential – and trust that the group will take away the learning that’s important. Good luck!
