Just come back from a really energising morning in London with a group of around 20 trainers (both independent & consulting trainers, and internal L&D staff). It was one of our regular Open programmes where we give people the opportunity to see how some of our learning tools can be applied in practice as well as discuss the design criteria used to create engaging learning tools and programmes. A couple of things seemed to be emerging:

1. Getting 20 people to give up a morning suggests that organisations are back considering how to best spend money on developing their staff!

2. The training profession is being asked increasingly serious questions about how it can provide real engagement for learners, and to demonstrate well thought-out and researched methodologies, and the use of professional tools and resources.

Will a result of this recent recession be an increasing use of experiential learning methods in workplace training, and a decreasing use of any kind of ‘powerpoint-based’ lectures?

Experiential Learning, learner engagement, Learning Games, learning tools, Training Games, Training Tools Hide

As suppliers of experiential learning programmes, we are often asked to design and deliver ‘team-building’ events. It often takes a lot of work to identify what the client actually wants and to explore the nature of the work we need to do. I’ve tried to break this area down and I now use three different terms:

i) Team-building ( (a new team, needing to get to know each other, identify skills, build relationships, merge cultures etc)
ii) Team development ( an existing team facing new challenges, difficult relationships, a need to ‘up’ current performance levels, align with a strategy etc)
iii) Teamwork skills (the skills of building and contributing to high performance teams, specifically important to specialists who regularly join new teams and to team leaders and project managers who constantly build operational teams)

Each of these ‘categories’ has very different needs, objectives and starting points. It becomes more important than ever for the supplier that our clients understand these distinctions and can work with us to develop appropriate content and success criteria. Here are some example questions that might help…

• Is this a team in which individuals work closely together and make decisions as a group? If not, what is the relationship between sub-groups? When do they meet and for what purposes?
• Is this a newly established team or a long-standing team (with or without new members?)
• What is the nature of the  leadership or supervision in the team?
• To what extent do these people control their own work patterns and practices and to what extent are these controlled by others?
• How much of the information they need to do their jobs is provided and how much has to be asked for or researched?
• Is quality/time/standard-setting managed by the group or by external ‘referees’?

• What are the particular communication issues that the team faces? Are they to do with the communication systems or content?
• How inter-dependent are team members?
• How does this team’s action impact upon other teams?

The list could go on. Questions of this type can really help designers to focus the learning and make it relevant and applicable to the teams. If we don’t get this type of information and clearly defined, measurable outcomes, we can’t effectively design and evaluate our ‘team-building’ events.

So purchasers, please help us to know what you really want when you ask for team-building!

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