THIAGI GAMELETTER: May 2012

SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS, PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Masthead
Our mission statement, copyright notice, and cast of characters.

Feedback
Talk Back to Us
A new way for you to participate.

Interactive Story
Co-Creating Stories
Collaborative fiction.

Jolt
Read and Play
Rapid confusion.

Jolt
Blame or Praise by Tracy Tagliati
What's your opinion?

Guest Gamer
An Interview with Avi Liran
We will continue playing.

Positive Psychology Activity
Passions Tic Tac Toe by Avi Liran
Share your passions.

International Workshops
Thiagi in Switzerland
Now in its 11th year!

Twitter
Fifty-Six Tweets on Interactive Stories
A training technique explored in small doses.

From Brian's Brain
A Fool's Perspective by Brian Remer
A link to the latest issue of Brian's newsletter.

Online Game
Team Player Styles
Are you a contributor, collaborator, communicator, or challenger?

Scenario-Based Survey
Challenging Participants by Tracy Tagliati
Objections and arguments.

Survey Results
Managing Latecomers by Tracy Tagliati
A summary of your responses.

Check It Out
Paul McFedries's Word Spy ( http://wordspy.com/ )
Use the latest terminology.

Masthead

THIAGI GAMELETTER:

SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS, PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS.

Mission

To increase and improve the use of interactive, experiential strategies to improve human performance in an effective, efficient, and enjoyable way.

Editorial Roster

Author and Editor : Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagarajan

Assistant Editor : Raja Thiagarajan

Associate Editors: Jean Reese

Contributing Editors: Brian Remer

Editorial Advisory Board: Bill Wake, Matthew Richter, Samuel van den Bergh, and <type your name here>

Copyright Info

The materials in this newsletter are copyright 2012 by The Thiagi Group. However, they may be freely reproduced for educational/training activities. There is no need to obtain special permission for such use as long as you do not reproduce more than 100 copies per year. Please include the following statement on all reproductions:

Reprinted from THIAGI GAMELETTER. Copyright © 2012 by The Thiagi Group, Inc.

For any other use of the content, please contact us ( thiagi@thiagi.com ) for permission.

Subscription Info

To sign up, or to donate and help us continue this newsletter, please see the Online Newsletter page on our website ( http://thiagi.com/pfp.html ).

Feedback Request

Thiagi believes in practicing what he preaches. This is an interactive newsletter, so interact already! Send us your feedback, sarcastic remarks, and gratuitous advice through email to thiagi@thiagi.com . Thanks!

Feedback

Talk Back to Us

At the end of each article, you will see a link to this issue's Feedback page. We appreciate your comments, questions, suggestions, and sarcastic remarks about the article. Please include your name and affiliation with the feedback. From time to time, visit the Feedback page to read other people's feedback (and responses to your feedback).

Interactive Story

Co-Creating Stories

Have you ever watched a bunch of kids making up their own stories? They are totally engaged in the activity and they eagerly take turns building on each other's narratives.

We have used this type of co-created stories as an adult learning activity. We ask participants to take turns to make up a story. In order to maintain smooth continuity of the story, this activity forces the participants to listen carefully to the others.

We usually warm up the participants by having them create any story without any constraints. Later, we prescribe a training topic and ask the participants to co-create a story that deals with a specific process such as conducting a behavioral interview, mentoring a minority employee, or collaborating with a virtual team.

Here are some interactive story approaches that use this co-creation strategy:

One at a Time

Here's the basic technique: Ask the participants to pair up. Identify the younger participant in each pair to say a single word. Ask the other participant to supply another word that goes with the previous word. Ask the participants to take turns to supply one word at a time to create grammatically correct sentences and to string them together to make up a story. Stop the activity when the story comes to a meaningful conclusion or when you reach a predetermined time limit.

Here are some additional guidelines for using this technique:

Written Stories

The techniques that we described earlier involve oral storytelling. We have also tried our hand at asking participants to create written stories. In using this approach, we ask teams of participants to collaborate with each other in coming up with the stories. This encourages mutual learning among the participants.

Processes and Plot Lines

An obvious use of co-creating stories is to analyze and apply relevant processes. Here are some examples of such training content:

The main advantage of using story creation as a learning tool is that the phases, stages, or steps in the process provide suitable plot lines for the story. The participants can explore each step in detail by creating a fictional account that explores what happens when a step is effectively completed or when it is skipped. The story creators can track the long-term consequences of sloppy work during early steps. In creating a story, the participants frequently become aware that the steps cannot always be applied in a simple linear situation with real-world situations. Also, creating stories enables the participants to explore various what-if questions.

FCC: Fictional Case Creation

The case method is a powerful training technique. In researching and using this technique, we came up with an obvious conclusion: the people who create the cases learn more than the people who read and analyze them. This suggested an interesting learning technique that we call FCC (Fictional Case Creation).

Let's assume that you are going to help your participants explore the four stages of team development. Here's how you would go about using FCC to achieve your training objective.

Chapters

We have incorporated the concept of writing different chapters to go with different stages of a process in another co-creation activity. Here's how you would go about using this activity called Chapters:

Co-Creating Stories Online

The activities described earlier involved creating and sharing stories in a face-to-face situation. We have also used similar activities in online situations.

The web is full of interactive fiction of different types written by talented storytellers. Our favorite approach to using this strategy involves four parallel website tabs. Here's how we used this online approach recently to introduce the human performance technology process to a group of managers.

The first tab in our website displayed an explanation of the various stages of human performance technology, beginning with performance analysis and ending with the computation of return on investment.

The second tab invited the participants to collaborate in creating a fictional narrative about Chandra, a newly-hired performance consultant assigned to the International Space Station. In the beginning of this activity, this site contained a single opening paragraph setting the scene of the story.

The third tab contained instructions to the participants. It invited the participants to collaboratively create the story by adding one paragraph of about 100 words at a time. They were asked to make sure that there is continuity with the previous paragraphs and the plot follows the steps of the HPT process.

The fourth tab of the website was for comments from the participants. As the story kept developing, the participants were encouraged to comment on what is happening to Chandra, what is going to happen, what lessons were learned, and so on. In one sense, this commentary area became an ongoing debriefing section.

One Tweet at a Time

Recently we have begun experimenting with the use of Twitter as a tool for co-creating online stories. In the basic technique, the facilitator begins a story with a tweet and invites the readers to submit the next tweet that would smoothly advance the story. Participants are requested to send their tweets as direct messages to the facilitator so that none of the others can read their message.

The facilitator selects one of these direct-message tweets and adds it to the story. She continues by inviting the participants to send the next tweet as another direct message, and adds a randomly selected tweet to continue the story. The story is continuously updated on a separate web page to help participants read the current version without having to jump from one tweet to another.

The Role of the Facilitator

In online story creation activities, it is possible for the facilitator to shape the story by inserting suitable plot twists that highlight instructionally relevant aspects. It is possible for the facilitator to steer the story subtly or blatantly in a pre-determined direction. However, we feel that this subterfuge defeats the spirit and the purpose of interactive story creation. Our advice to facilitators is to resist this temptation and to let the inmates run the asylum.

In our HPT interactive story, for example, we became impatient because the authors kept revisiting the same stage again and again, dragging the project into an epic chronicle. In an attempt to speed up the process, we instructed the participants to wrap up the story in the next six paragraphs. The enthusiastic writers ignored this instruction and kept spinning their yarn like a Dickensian serial. In desperation, we snuck in a paragraph that involved the performance consultant being murdered by an irate employee and put “The End”. Within 20 minutes, however, some participant had resurrected the story with a new paragraph in which the performance consultant Chandra wakes up with a start, realizes her assassination was just a silly nightmare, and proceeds to conduct a SWOT analysis of the current situation at the space station. This taught us a valuable lesson that an engaging story has a life of its own and you cannot control the writers because they are the readers.

A Matter of Principle

All the examples that we presented earlier dealt with processes as training topics. We can also use activities that incorporate the co-creation of stories to teach principles (also known as rules, guidelines, tips, tactics, and other such things).

Recently, we used a time-travel story approach to teach principles of creativity. If you were one of the participants in our session, this is what you would have experienced:

You receive a 1-page handout explaining one of the rules of creative thinking. Depending on random chance, you might have received any one of these:

Your handout contains the principle of walking on both feet. You read the principle, underline key words and try to understand what it means and how you may be able to use it.

The facilitator asks everyone to apply the principle to a real or imaginary personal project. You do have a real project: how to make more money. You decide to apply your principle to this project.

The facilitator asks everyone to project himself or herself 5 years into the future and to make up a story about the effective application of the principle. You come up with a story about how you were able to monetize your newly-acquired skill of thinking on all different sides of your brain.

The facilitator asks the participants to pair up and share the story with a partner. You pair up with Hari who has been working on a different principle. You tell your story to Hari who listens enthusiastically and makes encouraging comments. Later, you return the favor by actively listening to Hari's story.

You find new partners and share your story. Every time you repeat the story, you notice it becomes more realistic and more interesting.

Key Principles

Here's a recap of some key points in using the co-creation approach to interactive stories:

As an application exercise, how about creating a time-travel story about your creative application of these principles?

Jolt

Read and Play

This game explores how people resolve conflicts associated with “cheating” while playing games. However, you introduce the game as an exercise in reading, understanding, and applying the rules of a game. (For a more extensive exploration of this idea, see my bestselling game Barnga .)

Participants

Minimum: 2
Maximum: Any number
Best: 10 to 30

Time

5 minutes for play, 10 minutes for debriefing.

Handouts

Rules of the game Five Tricks (two different versions).

Preparation

Copy the handouts. Unknown to the participants, there are two different sets of rules of a card game called Five Tricks. Make equal numbers of copies of each version and arrange the handouts in a random order in a single stack.

Flow

Brief the participants. Announce that you are going to explore how quickly and correctly participants read, understand, and apply the rules of a simple game. Tell the participants that they will be studying the rules individually for 2 minutes.

Distribute copies of the rules. Do not explain that there are different sets of rules. Ask the participants to read the rules independently, without talking to anyone else.

Organize playgroups. Take back the rule sheets from the participants. Divide the participants into playgroups of three to six members. (It does not matter if some groups have more players than the others).

Start the game. Give a deck of cards to one player in each playgroup and identify her as the first dealer. Ask the participants to begin playing the game, trying to recall and apply the rules they studied earlier. Announce a strict gag rule: The players should not talk to each other.

Monitor the game. The differences in the rules will create immediate chaos. If the players begin to talk, remind them of the gag rule. Tell them they may use gestures or grunts to communicate. If anyone asks you to intervene, tell the players to work it out among themselves by recalling and applying the rules—without talking to each other.

Conclude the game. Stop the game when you feel that you have made the point. Debrief the participants.

Handout

Five Tricks

Deal the cards. The first player shuffles the deck of cards and deals five cards to each player (including herself), one card at a time. The rest of the cards are placed aside. All players pick up their cards, arrange them, and keep them hidden from the others.

Place a card. Each player selects a card and places it face down in front of her.

Reveal the card. After all players have placed a card face down, they turn the card over to show its face.

Win the trick. If the majority of the cards are black (clubs or spades), then the player with the highest card wins the trick. She collects all the face up cards and places them in a neat packet by her side. (These cards are not used for the rest of the game.)

If the majority of the cards are red (hearts or diamonds), then the player with the lowest card wins the trick. The Ace is valued as 1 and is the lowest card.

Remember: Black majority, highest card wins. Red majority, lowest card wins.

Handle ties. If there is an even number of players, you may end up with equal number of black and red cards. In this case, nobody wins the trick for this round. This trick is set aside.

Conclude the game. After all five cards are played, the player with the most tricks wins the game.

Handout

Five Tricks

Deal the cards. The first player shuffles the deck of cards and deals five cards to each player (including herself), one card at a time. The rest of the cards are placed aside. All players pick up their cards, arrange them, and keep them hidden from the others.

Place a card. Each player selects a card and places it face down in front of her.

Reveal the card. After all players have placed a card face down, they turn the card over to show its face.

Win the trick. If the majority of the cards are black (clubs or spades), then the player with the lowest card wins the trick. She collects all the face up cards and places them in a neat packet by her side. (These cards are not used for the rest of the game.)

If the majority of the cards are red (hearts or diamonds), then the player with the highest card wins the trick. The Ace is valued as 1 and is the lowest card.

Remember: Black majority, lowest card wins. Red majority, highest card wins.

Handle ties. If there is an even number of players, you may end up with equal number of black and red cards. In this case, nobody wins the trick for this round. This trick is set aside.

Conclude the game. After all five cards are played, the player with the most tricks wins the game.

Jolt

Blame or Praise
by Tracy Tagliati

Joshua Knobe is an atypical academic with a joint appointment in the Cognitive Science Program and the Department of Philosophy. He conducts interesting scientific experiments on philosophic questions. You can learn more about his work by visiting his website ( http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jk762/ ).

This jolt is based on Joshua Knobe's experiments on intentional activity and side effects. It explores how a person's intentions affect our decision to assign blame or praise to a behavior.

Synopsis

In this jolt, participants work with two different versions of the same situation. One version focuses on a harmful side effect of a decision, while the other deals with a helpful side effect. The debriefing discussion explores how we are more willing to blame for harmful side effects than praise for helpful side effects.

Participants

2 or more
Best with a group of 15-20

Training Topics

Time

3 minutes for the activity
5 to 10 minutes for the debriefing

Handouts

Two versions of the handout, one version for half the participants and the other version for the other half.

Preparation

Make equal numbers of copies of the two different handouts and arrange them in the same stack with the two versions alternating.

Flow

Distribute the handouts. Don't reveal that there are two different versions.

Give instructions. Tell the participants to work independently. Ask them to read the questions and record their responses on the handout. Wait about 1 minute for them to complete the task.

Check the impact of the different context. Confess that there were two versions of the handout. Read each version and point out the differences.

Poll the Participants. Ask the following questions in your own words:

How many of you who had the harm condition handout blamed the chairman for the harmful effects?

How many of you who had the help condition handout praised the chairman for the positive effects?

Debriefing

The data will likely indicate that the participants will blame the chairman if his decision had a bad side effect, but they won't praise him if his decision had a good side-effect.

Explore why we are more willing to blame the chairman for the bad side effects than to praise the chairman for the good side-effects.

In your own words ask these types of questions:

Do you think it is morally correct to risk the retirement savings of others?

Did the intention of the chairman influence your decision to blame or praise?

Consider recent events like the financial crises, terrorism, wars, and politics. What effect does our moral values have on our decision to assign blame or praise?

Consider your own past decisions to assign blame or praise. What influence did your moral values play on your decisions?

Learning Point

People tend to consider harmful side effects as intentional and helpful side effects as unintentional.

Handout

Decision and Effects

The CFO of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, “We are thinking of implementing a new financial strategy. It will help us increase our profits, but it will also significantly reduce the retirement balance of our employees.”

The chairman answered, “I don't care at all about the retirement accounts. I just want to make as much profit as possible. Let's implement the new strategy.”

They started the new program. Sure enough, the retirement balances of the employees were significantly reduced. Many people lost everything.

Question

Did the chairman intentionally decrease the retirement balances of the employees?

Yes or No (Circle your choice)

Rating

On the following scale, rate how much blame would you place on the chairman for his part in reducing the employees' retirement accounts.

1 = No blame

2 = Very little blame

3 = Some blame

4 = A lot of blame

Handout

Decision and Effects

The CFO of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, “We are thinking of implementing a new financial strategy. It will help us increase our profits, and it will also significantly increase the retirement balance of our employees.”

The chairman answered, “I don't care at all about the retirement accounts. I just want to make as much profit as possible. Let's implement the new strategy.”

They started the new program. Sure enough, the retirement balances of the employees were significantly increased. Many people became rich overnight.

Question

Did the chairman intentionally increase the retirement balances of the employees?

Yes or No (Circle your choice)

Rating

On the following scale, rate how much praise would you give the chairman for his part in increasing the employees' retirement accounts.

1 = No praise

2 = Very little praise

3 = Some praise

4 = A lot of praise

Guest Gamer

Avi Liran's mother was a hard-working penniless refugee who became a pediatrician, healed many children, and saved many lives. During Avi's childhood, she told him that if he did not study well, he would end up cleaning the streets. To prove her wrong, Avi completed two BA degrees in Economics and Business. Later, he worked on his MBA for himself and is now contemplating earning a Ph. D in Positive Psychology.

Avi held leadership positions in government and in private sector. He established (and sold) an advertising and PR agency and founded two successful companies. He is the co-designer of a learning and training approach called Easier Done than Said that combines research-based principles from positive psychology, social neuroscience, behavioral economics, and Gestalt therapy—marinated with improv, humor, playfulness, and laughter. This unique approach creates rituals that stick.

An Interview with Avi Liran

TGL: Avi, what is your specialty area?

Avi: People store their memories as visual images and retrieve them faster when emotions are associated with them. My specialty is to design training sessions that store images and clips them together with emotions. People resist change from outside although they behave like they would love it and buy tons of self-help books. To overcome this behavior, we design small harmless-looking Trojan horses and take them inside your castle. The agents of the desired change sneak into your subconscious and activate intrinsic motivation. This encourages you to take ownership of the desired change.

TGL: How did you get into designing and using games?

Avi: Fate. Calling.

TGL: How long have you been designing and using games?

Avi: Since 2006.

TGL: Where do you use games?

Avi: In all my training sessions.

TGL: How do your clients respond?

Avi: They usually pay. Most of them invite us again and refer us to others.

TGL: How do your participants respond?

Avi: About 10 percent of the participants don't find our strategies suitable to their serious view of life at work. At the other extreme, 20 percent of the participants report a life-changing experience. The rest give us thumbs up and provide positive feedback about what they loved.

TGL: What is the most embarrassing moment you had in conducting games?

Avi: In one of my training sessions, I responded to an emotional question during a debriefing discussion with a logical explanation of research evidence. In doing so, I violated an important principle of good facilitation: I was not present and I was defensive. I owe the participant a great deal of gratitude for taking 30 minutes after the workshop to attack my character. This forced me to remember to be present, compassionate, and empathetic. This incident also taught me to take the contrarian voice as a gift and to share real life experiences. After that session I came up with this adage: “If your sole purpose is to be right, you are wrong.”

TGL: What advice do you have to newcomers about interactive training?

Avi: Always learn from the best. Don't sell anything. Fulfill their needs.

TGL: Do you have any book recommendations?

Avi: I have many, but they are not about the design of games.

TGL: What is your prediction about the future of games?

Avi: We will continue playing after December 31, 2012.

Positive Psychology Activity

Passions Tic Tac Toe
by Avi Liran

This simple game that explores the concepts from these two quotations:

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. —Oprah Winfrey

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are. —Penelope Lively, novelist

Purpose

Time

15 to 30 minutes.

Participants

At least 10.

Supplies

Flow

Brief the participants. Ask them to spend a few minutes to fill in all nine spaces in their grid with different personal passions. Give some examples of your passions. Explain that the participants can write each of their passions in any random space in the grid.

Ask participants to interact. After a suitable pause, tell the participants to walk around the room, pair up with each other, and compare their passions. When they find the same passion listed in both grids, ask them to sign for each other in the appropriate square.

Reward the winner. Announce a 5-minute discussion period. Ask the observer to keep track of time.

Change roles. The winner is the participant who manages to have other people's signatures on three lines (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal). Continue the game until you have identified five winners.

Variations

No hard writing pad? Bring smiley stickers and let the participants stick them on the appropriate space in the tic tac toe grid.

Not enough time? Settle for fewer lines for the winners. Limit the number of winners.

Ample time? Break into groups and share passions with each other. Conduct a debriefing discussion on how people's passions influence their relationships at work.

International Workshops

Thiagi in Switzerland

Thiagi is conducting two workshops in Winterthur (near Zurich) this June.

Workshop 1. Interactive Training Strategies (June 4-6, 2012)

In this workshop, you will experience, explore, design, and deliver 17 different learning activities that produce effective and engaging learning.

Day 1

Openers that jump start your training session and establish a climate of caring and sharing

Interactive lectures that combine structure and control with playfulness and spontaneity

Structured sharing activities that let your participants learn with—and learn from—each other

Textra games that convert dull handouts into dynamic tools

Jolts that last for less than 3 minutes and provide a lifetime of insights

Closers that review the new skills and action plans for their immediate application

Day 2

Board games that revive bored participants

Card games that increase the players' fluency with principles and procedures

Improv games that apply a spontaneous process to explore key concepts

Instructional puzzles that encourage participants to employ new ways of thinking

Magical events that engage participants in new ways of learning

Day 3

Simulation games that convert the context of the workplace to the security of the training session

Interactive story activities that move participants from passive listening to active sharing

Reflective teamwork activities that use action-learning techniques for immediate insights

The case method that encourages participants to analyze a realistic challenge and make effective decisions

Roleplaying that helps participants practice appropriate behaviors in response to challenging situations

Debriefing games that relate the simulated situation to workplace realities

Workshop 2. Design Clinic and Advanced Interactive Strategies (June 7-8, 2012)

Conducted by Thiagi and Samuel van den Bergh, this course is designed for participants who have completed Thiagi's 3-day workshops on interactive training strategies.

The course will incorporate individual needs of the participants. The topics explored in the session will be based on the participants' choices before and during the workshop. Thiagi and Sam will provide consultative advice and feedback on interactive training activities that you are currently designing (or planning to design).

For more information, see the detailed brochure (550k PDF).

You can enroll for these workshops online at: http://www.diversityandinclusion.net/index2.cfm?page=kurse .

Twitter

Fifty-Six Tweets on Interactive Stories

  1. Storytelling is an effective communication technique. However, it makes participants passive.
  2. Passively listening to a story is good. Actively creating a story is great.
  3. Listening to stories is fun. Telling stories is engaging.
  4. Your stories increase their attention level. Their stories increase their learning results.
  5. Change the stories that you tell others—and yourself. Change your life.
  6. Let the participants create, tell, share, modify, and analyze stories. They learn more by doing these than by listening to your stories.
  7. Story creating is a powerful improv technique. It helps participants explore training topics in depth.
  8. Create design-your-own-adventure stories. Let participants drive the story by making critical decisions.
  9. Action maze is a collaborative story activity. Readers make critical decisions and steer the story into different branches.
  10. All simulation games incorporate interactive stories. The players determine the action and the ending of the story.
  11. Have you played the simulation game, Starpower? It's an interactive story with an unpredictable ending.
  12. Have you played Monopoly recently? It is an interactive story.
  13. Remember Dungeons & Dragons? This provides a powerful template for a training activity.
  14. Remember old-fashioned text-based adventures? They form an effective basis for interactive training stories.
  15. Roleplays are interactive training stories. You supply the beginning; players create the dialog.
  16. Minimalist roleplays produce effective interactive stories: You play yourself in a changed context.
  17. Sample minimalist roleplay: Your group in a crowded lifeboat. One has to be thrown overboard. Make a case for saving yourself.
  18. Another minimalist roleplay: The aliens want to meet a representative earthling. Make a case for you being selected for this task.
  19. Jim McDermott compares interactive story activities to improv activities. Very true.
  20. Minimalist roleplay: Future history 20 years hence. Explain how you achieved remarkable success in your field.
  21. Another minimalist roleplay suggested by LA Cruz: Discuss a critical issue, playing the role of the person seated to your left.
  22. Make stories interactive. Ask participants to read a story. Then debrief them.
  23. Ask participants to read or hear a story and come up with the learning point.
  24. As a training technique, the case method makes interactive use of stories.
  25. Participants learn more by modifying other people's stories than by merely listening to them.
  26. Remember Rashoman? Four different characters narrate different stories of the same incident. Demonstrates multiple realities.
  27. Ask participants to read a case or a story. Have them retell it from alternative perspectives.
  28. Have participants read a case or a story about a training topic. Have them write a short sequel.
  29. Make stories interactive by asking participants to write prequels. Helps discover cause-effect links.
  30. Russ Powell suggests flowcharting the plot of a story. Excellent idea to introduce process-mapping concepts.
  31. Ask participants to rewrite a story by changing the setting. Help them apply diversity concepts.
  32. Ask participants to change the level of detail of a story.
  33. Zoom in: Ask participants to expand a single sentence from a story. Teaches them task analysis and process mapping.
  34. Ask participants to summarize a story in a single sentence. Teaches them to identify the main point.
  35. Stories evoke emotions. Emotions expand empathic understanding.
  36. Ask participants to add dialogue at a critical juncture of a story. New approach to roleplaying.
  37. Ask participants to change the ending of a story. Teaches them unpredictability of cause-effect relationships.
  38. Ask participants to change everything except the ending of a story. Teaches them alternative interventions.
  39. Instead of passively listening to a story, ask participants to actively analyze it as if it were a case.
  40. Remember doing an analytical report on War and Peace or The Scarlet Letter? Do the same with cases.
  41. Ask participants to read a story or a case. Debrief them by asking analytical questions.
  42. Debriefing question after a story: What's your emotional reaction? Why do you feel that way?
  43. Read a case/story. Debrief: What happened? What is the plot line? What do you see in a replay?
  44. Read a case/story. Debrief: How did the initial actions and decisions influence later events?
  45. Read a case/story. Debrief: What did you learn from the story? What's the key point?
  46. Read a case/story. Debrief: What are the different cause-effect links in the story?
  47. Read a case/story. Debrief: How does the story relate to your workplace?
  48. Read a case/story. Debrief: Do the characters in the story resemble the people in your organization?
  49. Read a case/story. Debrief: Do the events in the story resemble the recent events in your organization?
  50. Read a case/story. Debrief: What would you do differently if you were the main character in the story?
  51. Read a case/story. Debrief: How would you coach each of the characters in the story?
  52. Read a case/story. Debrief: Based on the insights you gained from the story, how would your behavior change?
  53. Ask everyone to read, listen, or view a story. Ask each to answer debriefing questions independently.
  54. Ask small groups to share and discuss their responses to a debriefing question. Then debrief the whole group.
  55. Read a story or a case and discuss these elements: plot, viewpoint, character, scene, conflict, dialogue, theme, pace.
  56. Read a story or a case and discuss the elements: structure, locale, style, climax, action, suspense, setting, point of view.

From Brian's Brain

A Fool's Perspective
by Brian Remer

We often commemorate the beginning of spring by playing foolish tricks. In this issue of the Firefly News Flash, the ridiculous idea of moving a barn by hand inspires more than a dozen lessons you can derive from an idea that at first seems silly. Then, a simple activity for partners or teams teaches how to be more accepting of absurd notions. Power Tip: To keep creativity flowing, say, “Yes!” even when it seems foolish.

Read more in the April 2012 issue of Firefly News Flash: http://www.thefirefly.org/Firefly/html/News%20Flash/2012/April%202012.htm .

Online Game

Team Player Styles

My friend Glenn Parker has an instrument that classifies people into one of four types of team players:

Your performance in a team can benefit from being able to rapidly and accurately classify the styles of team members. There are two ways to acquire this skill: One is through a long period of experience with teams and the other is through practice in classifying different statements and behaviors associated with team styles and receiving immediate feedback.

The online game Categorize enables us to do this. Last month, we used this game to classify cities in Switzerland and the neighboring countries. This month we will use the same game to classify statements associated with different team player styles.

In this issue's online game ( http://thiagi.net/tgl/wgs/8923/ ; requires Adobe Flash ), you see a statement on the left side of the screen. Your task is to click on one of four different buttons (contributor, collaborator, communicator, or challenger) on the right to identify the correct team player category. To add excitement to the activity, there is a timer counting down to zero. You also get immediate feedback and a score at the end of each round of the game.

You can play the game any number of times. Each time you play, you get different statements in a different order.

Play the game and increase your fluency with the team player classification scheme.

Scenario-Based Survey

Challenging Participants
by Tracy Tagliati

What do you do when participants keep challenging each other during a training session?

When this happens to Thiagi, he uses it as an opportunity for an activity. He calls it the Shouting Match ( http://www.thiagi.com/game-shoutingmatch.html ). The activity is simple and it can be conducted on the fly: The participants are divided into three teams. Two of the teams take turns providing statements to support their opposing views. The third team's job is to listen and decide which team made the best points.

Poll Question

Is this a technique you would use to handle challenging participants?

Vote

(The poll opens in a new window.)

Open Question

What are some techniques you use to manage participants who excessively challenge the statements of the others?

Respond

(The survey opens in a new window.)

You may include your name along with your response, or if you prefer, keep it anonymous.

Survey Results

Managing Latecomers
by Tracy Tagliati

Last month we asked you how you manage latecomers to your training sessions. Thiagi's technique is to ask the participants who arrived on time to share aloud with the latecomers the important points they have learned thus far. We asked you if you would use this technique. Here's how you responded.

Here's what you had to say:

Yes: 83% No: 17%
(Percentages reflect 94 votes received by April 30, 2012.)

Yes: 83% (78/94).
No: 17% (16/94).

We also asked you what are some of the techniques you use to manage late attendees.

Here were some of your responses:

Response #15) I always thank (with excitement and a small reward) on-time arrivers. If there are a lot of missing participants I say that I'm ready to start and ask the on-timers if want to wait or start? If start, I start and ignore late arrivers. If wait, I say I will wait 5 minutes…then I start. I think on-time arrivers need to feel some control in the process because they made the effort not to hold up the group. —J. Robb San Francisco

Response #14) I voted no. To have voted yes, I would need to have explained what I am going to expect from the on-time attendees' when late attendees arrive. Otherwise, the on-time guys may feel like the facilitator's requestion is a “pop test” and they've not had time to “study.” I simply say to late attendees: “If you have any questions, please see me at the break.” Why cater to and support late-arrival behavior?

Response #11) The one I use (with reluctance) is fining the latecomers. The fine is agreed on day 1 while establishing the ground rules. No one likes giving up money. So it works! But I am not very happy with manipulation.

I have used the one Thiagi recommends a few times and it is very dignified. Though I have forgotten to use it regularly. Now I shall use more often. —Nitul Ojha, India

Thanks for your responses.

Check It Out

Paul McFedries's Word Spy ( http://wordspy.com/ )

Do you know the newly-coined words that mean the following?

Here are the words: buzzword bingo, nomophobia, tweetup, ineptocracy, phishing, 100-foot diet, hashtag activism.

I found all of these words in Paul McFedries's Word Spy, http://wordspy.com/. I subscribe to their daily email and follow them on twitter (@wordspy).

If you love word games, you will enjoy this site.