Catch Me If You Can

Here's an energizer for a group that will lift them up and get them laughing.

Ask everyone to silently walk around the room.
Have them pick someone in the room they are trying to avoid.
Ask them to imagine they owe this person money.
Don't make it obvious, just subtly try to stay away from that person.

Phase II

Play the game some more.
Try to stay away from the person you picked.
But this time pick a bodyguard.
Try to keep the bodyguard between you and the first person.

Just see where everyone ends up.

How I Would Use This
I am sure it is a metaphor for something deep, but I think I would just have fun with it and get some movement going on.

Batteries Not Included

Here's a prop that could be used for all kinds of key learning points.
Batteries.

I was reading about an analogy with batteries and can see how to use them the following way.

Take a pair of batteries and insert them wrong way in to a small device, like a flashlight. Nothing happens, no power. Then read the little positive and negative signs and put them in the right way. Suddenly power.

How I Would Use This

It is important to take the time to set things up properly. Great tools (like batteries) can become useless if we don't take the time to figure out how to use them.

A simple device, but I think a good one.

Straw Through a Potato

You may have heard of the demonstration of jamming a straw through a potato. It is a pretty popular science demo, but you can easily adapt it for a crowd.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/surfingscientist/pdf/teacher_demonstrations.pdf#search='straw%20through%20a%20potato'

Have a look at the site to get a good description. Two things:
1) you don't really need the gloves unless you are working with kids
2) make sure no one gets a hand or leg in the way of the straw as it is descending.

How I Would Use This

Commitment. Until we are truly committed we can't see how powerful we really are.

Potatoes are cheap and straws are pretty cheap. Don't use cheap straws. Buy a box from a fast food place or a restaurant and try this with a crowd.

Candy is Dandy

http://thinkingfountain.com/c/crosssection/namethatbar.html

Here is a bit of fun. You have to match the cross section with the chocolate bar it comes from.

How I would use it:

Someone holding a copy of the cross section has to find his or her partner with the full candy bar.

How to Ride a Dead Horse

Another gift from the internet. I truly cannot tell who first wrote this, as it is all over the web.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.But in modern business (and education and government), because heavy investment factors are taken into consideration, other strategies are often tried with dead horses, including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Reclassifying the dead horse as "living-impaired".
8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
10. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.
11. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
12. Declaring that the dead horse carries lower overhead and therefore contributes more to the bottom line than some other horses.
13. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
14. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Does this ring a bell, with you?

How I Would Use This

I would get small groups to pick one of the 14 points and give an anonymous or generic example of it.

#10 - an example of this might be the money that is poured into giving homeless people on the street increased training opportunities.

This could be a lot of fun.

Cher's the Name

Top One-Name Music Searches:
Cher
Bjork
Seal
Sting
Eminem
Shakira
Pink
Beyonce
Fergie

Isn't it interesting how so many celebrities and musicians have chosen to go with just one name? What does that say about them? I think it would be fun to have people in a group come up with a single name that tells the group all about them in that one name.

For example my name is Deborah Ann Calderon. I like that name just fine, but let's face it the name won't cut it in the celebrity circles. So I am going to re-christen myself for the purposes of this activity as:

Asha

I don't know why, it just sums up who I think I am (as opposed to who I really am). A little foreign, a little exotic, a bit more savvy.

Ask the people in your group to come up with one name and tell the group why they chose it.

Got one yourself? Post it here.

Eminem
Shakira
JoJo
Pink
Beyonce
Hinder
Rihanna
Nickleback
Fergie
AFI

Fill in the Blank

Went to a workshop in Vancouver with Altia Consuling and enjoyed their opening icebreaker.

Here is my remembrance of it.

Everyone gets a piece of paper with something written on it. Basically we are looking for a matching paper to the one we have.

My paper said:

In 1998 and then in 1997 research by Baldwin and Ford concluded that not more than ____ % training actually resulted in transfer to the job.

Introduce yourself to your partner and discuss this statement.

So I found my partner who had the answer:

10% and we talked about this for a few minutes.

It was an active, lively opening. Then the whole group debriefed a bit and the contents led to setting the scene for the workshop.

New Measurements

Here is another gift from the internet. I don't know who to give credit to, but I really enjoyed these and think they belong in a trainer's kit.


2000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbirds
Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi
2000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton
Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond
Half of a large intestine = 1 semicolon
1000 aches = 1 megahurtz
Basic unit of laryngitis = 1 hoarsepower
Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line
1 million-million microphones = 1 megaphone
10 cards = 1 decacards
force of 1 kilogram of falling figs = 1 Fig Newton
1000 grams of wet socks = 1 literhosen
1 millionth of a fish = 1 microfiche
10 rations = 1 decoration
8 nickels = 2 paradigms
2.4 miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Harvard = 1 I.V. League

How I Would Use This

I think I would separate the first part from the second and create a kind of match up game. Perhaps the participants have to find their partners. Maybe it is a card game in which you have to find the two parts. Maybe it is a treasure hunt. I don't really know, I just know this type of thing comes in handy, so pop it in your own toolkit and let me know if you have a brilliant idea.

Ever Been to Sea Billy?

Here is an activity that is kinda fun and intriguing.

1. Take a look at the list below

mainsail
rudder
navy
anchor
lifeboat
salty dog
crowsnest
captain
gangplank
ocean
compass
nautical
sextant
galley
poop deck
mast

2. Now stop looking at the list and look way way down the page.







Keep going further.....






Even further





A bit more......



3. Now thinking of the list, which of these two words did not appear on the list.

Fireplace Ship

4. Got your answer.....

5. Okay, say it out loud.......


Page down a bit




Page down a bit more




Page down a tiny bit more.....


Which of the words didn't appear? Fireplace, right?
Ship right? Ship isn't on the list, nope, nowhere on the list, nope, not even one little ship on the list somewhere.

How I Would Use This

To most people it is obvious that fireplace isn't on the list, but they really do believe that ship is on the list. I am not sure what I would do with this activity, but probably something around assumptions and communications.

If you have a great idea about what to do with this activity, let us know and post your idea.

Namecard Opener

Bob Pike is the king of training activities and ideas. I use an opener a bit like this one myself, but here is an activity that came today with his free newsletter.

It is probably worth looking at his website as it contains lots of ideas.

Opener/Icebreakers - Four Quadrant Name TentBob Pike CSP, CPAE
Creative Training Technique: Opener
Name: Four Quadrant Name Tent
Objectives: Break the ice
Become better acquainted
Provide focus on the topic

For a class three hours or longer
For any audience
For a group of 12 or more in subgroups of five to seven
Time 10-15 minutes

Equipment: Copy of the name tent sample on an overhead transparency
One copy of the name tent template for each person
A pen or fine-point marker for each person

Process: The trainer gives each participant a copy of the four quadrant name tent and asks everyone to fold the paper into thirds, making a triangular name tent with one side being the bottom and remaining blank. He or she displays the sample on an overhead projector. The “front” of the name tent is for the participant to decorate and insert his or her name and company name.

The back of the tent is divided into four “window panes,” in which participants write or draw four things about themselves, one in each pane. These items could be about one’s personal life, professional life, family life, a talent, an interest, best vacation spot, favorite sport, and so forth.

Participants are asked not to share while they are writing, but to wait until all their panes are filled.

The trainer debriefs the activity with everyone in the room for a smaller group or in teams for a larger group.

*This opener is from 50 Creative Training Openers and Energizers by Bob Pike and Lynn Solem.