Workstations™

Workstations is a team communication and information-sharing activity which is ideal for groups not previously experienced in working together. It is packaged as an extremely portable box of playing cards containing delegate briefing instructions, facilitator instructions and review suggestions within the box of cards.

The team members are required to share information verbally in order to solve a 'matrix puzzle' - a simple process of elimination and logic. The difficulty comes in not being able to write anything down - the group must identify other ways of remembering and sorting key information.

The individuals working together tend to move at different paces and to have different strategies for remembering the given information. Can they, together, develop an approach which everyone understands and which supports different individual needs? Can they be sure by the end of the activity that everyone has the 'full picture' so that they can correctly complete their individual parts in an implementation process?

This exercise demands both task and group leadership. It is an excellent introduction to 'chairing skills' and could be used as the 'warm-up' to a session on managing meetings, team briefing or working with focus groups. It offers a good, practical illustration of team roles in action and can be successfully linked to work on effective team performance eg. using the Belbin Team Role model.

The exercise is designed to last for 30 minutes, followed by a 30 minute review, to highlight the learning points in relation to teamwork, communication and information management that maybe transferred back into the workplace as individual actions.

As all 30 playing cards are dispersed amongst the delegates the group size is flexibile. However we would recommend a group size of between 6 and 15 to ensure that the dynamic of using 'dispersed' knowledge around the delegates is achieved, whilst still having team members engaged and active for the duration of the activity.

As our most portable and inexpensive learning activity we think every trainer should carry one!