Challenge implies a battle, a struggle, a competition, striving or proving yourself, not that these are necessarily negative but just exhausting at a time when we are all exhausted anyway. So when someone suggested I run a lockdown Lego challenge I had to take a step back.

What would that look like? How can we reframe ‘challenge’?

So I decided not to ask people to join me in a Lego challenge but to join me in taking some time for themselves and see it as an opportunity to build on wellbeing, to experience something different and see how it can open up new thoughts and ideas about personal wellbeing.

With that in mind, participants were invited to look out some Lego, set aside some time to understand themselves a little more and how positive psychology, Lego and coaching can change how you view your wellbeing.

This led to a week of ‘Building Wellbeing’ online that allowed participants to explore their own current wellbeing in a unique way that combined Positive Psychology Coaching questions with Lego Serious Play. This was in response to how Covid-19 was affecting wellbeing and that all face to face workshops and coaching weren’t taking place.

Was it possible to build wellbeing using the online space?

Well-being itself is build-able. It isn’t just about the absence of negative functions such as depression, loneliness and illness but about the presence of positive attributes (such as happiness, connection and wellness) that make a person’s life fulfilling. It is about being able to thrive, as well as healing pathology.

In order to allow people to focus on their wellbeing building opportunities were developed based around Martin Seligman’s PERMA Model of Wellbeing. Seligman states Positive Psychology is about the concept of well-being, which he defines using 5 pillars. These 5 elements can help people reach a life of fulfilment, happiness and meaning. They are:

P – Positive Emotions

E – Engagement

R – Relationships

M – Meaning

A – Accomplishment

More recently, Health has been added as a 6th pillar of well-being as eating well, good sleep and enough exercise are all essential to both our physical and mental health. Health is the corner stone the other pillars rely on. When we pay deliberate attention to these interrelated areas of well-being and take positive action towards them we have the potential to improve individual, organisational and community well-being.

During the Building Wellbeing week, held on LinkedIn, each building opportunity presented enabled participants to focus on one of these aspects of wellbeing. To illustrate, the first aspect of wellbeing to reflect on was Positive Emotions.

Before, starting the activity it was useful for participants to familiarise themselves with Lego especially if they hadn’t used it for a while. Getting used to how the bricks fit together and thinking about how you could use the Lego to represent your thoughts helped prepare for the coaching question.

Giving themselves time to think whilst building was an integral part of the building opportunity.  There were no rules, no expectations. No one to judge the models, no competition. Participants could use as many or as few bricks as needed. There was no right or wrong answer.

The Positive Emotions activity was to:

“Build a model that reflects what you hope your life will look like look when you are no longer in lockdown.” Give yourself 20 minutes to complete this task.

Participants were asked to keep their models or take a photo for all the building opportunities during the week and post a photo and any comments/questions they had.

Here is a sample of the insights that participants discovered.

“We have full control to choose whether we walk through the door to a new way and my hope is to walk straight through and enjoy more of the good life, love, beauty, variety and our natural world.”

“Here is my ‘Hope’ model. I’m probably unlike a lot of people in that I’m (really really) enjoying lockdown. There’s such a lot of it that is already good, primarily the vast reduction in road traffic and having more time with my family.  A lot of wanting that to remain is tied up in the model – represented by the prevalence of green.”

Positive emotions are represented by feelings such as hope, joy, optimism and gratitude. Focusing on this area of well-being by broadening our experiences means we are more likely to try new things, step out of our comfort zones and engage with other people, enabling us to learn and grow. This in turn allows us to build lasting emotional resources. Focusing on positive emotions puts us on an upward spiral of being more positive and doing and learning more, increasing our levels of well-being. Exploring hope through the building of a Lego model gives participants the time to create new awareness and insights into a hopeful future in a safe environment, enabling them to set realistic and intrinsically motivating goals.

Participants were invited to further building opportunities on the remaining 5 pillars of wellbeing. Such wonderful moments were shared, some deep reflections and a feeling of connection, just some of the feedback on how using Lego influences coaching conversations even when carried out as online building opportunities with conversations, connections and experiences just shared on an online platform.

“I found that I was able to really connect to the topic I was building about, on a more emotional level than perhaps I normally would, which was interesting. Also as you can ‘rebuild’ any part of it of the model, the process felt more organic and natural, rather than saying something to a coach, then having to say, “oh what I meant was…”.

The post Building Wellbeing, One Brick at a Time first appeared on Ludogogy.

1. Take inspiration

Many collaborative games already do things well. Not just co-operative boardgames and ‘co-op modes’ on computer games: party or ‘parlour’ games, word games, ‘car’ games and children’s games too. I’ve found six loose categories of game that I take inspiration from (although I’m careful to remember that some of the best games cross categories or defy categorisation).

‘Beat the game’

The players are a team, with complementary skills, roles or resources, aiming to beat the game’s obstacles and challenges. The best games of this type have systems to differentiate how players can contribute. Examples include Pandemic, The Crystal Maze, World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, Rock Band, children’s clapping games, Tick Tock, and the co-op mode of computer games such as Portal 2. Many such games can be thought of as collaborative puzzle-solving.

‘Enemy within’

Most of the players co-operate to uncover one player working against the group. The ‘mole’ has their own goal, but can’t work too obviously towards it without showing their true colours. Examples include Werewolf, Saboteur, Wink Murder, Secret Hitler and Spyfall.

‘Limited communication’

Collaboration is hampered by rules and structures limiting how players communicate, and the challenge is to overcome these limits. Charades is a classic example (some people play this competitively, but its essence is collaborative). Other examples include Hanabi, Keep Talking & Nobody Explodes, Codenames and The Mountains of Madness.

‘Mind-reading’

Players must think about how others think and take action based on that, with little/no actual communication. For example, in Mind Meld, players must try to work out what word is ‘between’ two other words, and shout it out, winning when all shout out the same word. But what makes a word ‘between’ two others? It depends how you think. The Mind, Dixit, Cards Against Humanity and Mysterium work similarly.

‘Make-a-chain’

In Word Chain, given a category, players have to name something from it that begins with the letter the last person’s contribution ended with. See also Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Carnelli, The Exquisite Cadaver and Consequences.

‘Sandbox’

Some collaborative games may challenge the definition of games. Minecraft probably sits somewhere between a game and a toy, depending on definitions and how you use it. But many options involve helping others, collaborating on building projects, and appreciating others’ efforts. Sandbox games gove a lot of autonomy to players, and so have huge capacity to inspire creativity. Other sandbox games include the Legend of Zelda series, and by some definitions, actual sandboxes and Lego.

2. Use shared obstacles, goals and gameplay

Once we start to look around for inspiration, we find patterns in ways effective games often do it. This may be the simplest. Almost any competitive game can be switched from ‘who can do this best?’ to ‘can we beat this target?’. If tempted to use individual goals alongside team goals, remember that some player types will prioritise individual glory.

The most collaborative games are often ones where the shared objective is central to gameplay. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where players try to see how few links (films both actors appeared in) they must use to connect Kevin Bacon to a given actor, demands to be played cooperatively, because the conversation is the gameplay. Doing it separately and competing for the fewest links would be markedly less fun.

3. Force interdependence

The best ‘beat the game’ games often nudge or force co-operation. With different resources, roles or skills, Players must often rely on each other. Dungeons & Dragons is a great example of this, where challenges often require different combinations of individual specialties: fighting, spellcasting, sneaking or healing.

Some games use structure to mandate full co-operation, such as The Mind, where victory is only possible if all players place their cards down in the right order, which in turn is only consistently possible through building understanding of each other’s play. Others force communication from all to win; in Keep Talking & Nobody Explodes, players will only successfully defuse a bomb if they combine the separate information they each have.

4. Maximise ways to contribute

Different players have contrasting styles and preferences. Many great collaborative games allow for this, not making every contribution come from the same place. If collaboration in your game is only about negotiating, or prioritises the contributions of the most confident communicators, some players may well have more fun than others.

Games with separate roles like Dungeons & Dragons, Rock Band and Codenames do this well, as do options with many different ways to play effectively and enjoyably, like Minecraft or Consequences.

5. Anticipate issues

No plan survives contact with reality, and that holds absolutely true for games and game design. Your players don’t think the way you do, and they will find motivators, difficulties, shortcuts and more that you didn’t anticipate. So think (and playtest) around how all your collaborative plans might be derailed. Could a player hog the limelight or be marginalised? Could they go rogue on the collaborative goal?

Take as an example the training game, Red/Blue. Two teams each have the goal to maximise their points (not necessarily to beat the other team). Optimal play requires co-operating rather than competing with the other team, but many teams miss the wording of the goal, play competitively, and both end up on a negative score. If well-framed and debriefed, this illustrates how easy it is to fall into competitive behaviour, but it won’t teach collaborative behaviours, unless teams figure out and agree on the aim. Miss that one point, and they miss all opportunity to collaborate – the facilitator must then rely on bringing learning about collaboration out discussing, in the debrief alone, what they did wrong.

The post Five Ways to Design Collaborative Games first appeared on Ludogogy.

Turbulent times for engagement
The world is going through turbulent times. We are all busy adjusting to unprecedented realities. Companies worldwide have had to readjust to at least one aspect of this ‘new ‘normal’: many of their employees are working remote.

The new situation presents lots of opportunities but unfortunately also many complications. And most companies are not well set up to profit from the positive potential, nor deal with the negative fall-out in the new reality.

Many companies struggle to keep people engaged. This was already the case in ‘normal’ office settings, and is even more important when people do not work in the vicinity of colleagues.

The new business normal: working REMOTE

For some people, working from home is a gift. A recent study found that 99% of all employees would love to work remotely at least some of the time.
However, at the same time, colleagues are hugely important for workers, as the below image shows. More than half of the respondents of this survey rated their colleagues as a 9 or a even a 10 (on a scale of 1 to 10).

For many it is the first time that they are forced to work in a remote work setting. Not having colleagues around is likely to damage employee happiness and motivation.

In turn, not having managers around may damage efficiency and effectiveness. And for these managers, not having their staff physically close, will also be a daunting prospect.

So once the excitement of remote work set up wears off after a few weeks, the question really is:

How do you prevent…

• Degenerating work culture
• Distraction and loss of accountability
• Struggling team morale and emotional commitment
• Reduced team bonding and trust
• Lack of citizenship activities
• Isolation and psychological illnesses

The REMOTE Framework

Yu-kai Chou has recently developed the new and insightful REMOTE framework to highlight how to create engagement for remote workers . It provides a guide to get people working remotely much more productively, strengthen team bonds and culture.

The Framework comprises 6 steps needed to make remote work, work for your company. Some steps are easy to take as they involve putting the right technology in place. Others are more difficult as they involve a degree of cultural and leadership change. But, all of these steps are doable. I know they are, from my own experience in taking these steps.

In my own company (The Octalysis Group) we have built up many years of experience in how to set up remote working. We all work remotely and have implemented a structure that works well. REMOTE is the result of many years of lessons learned. Follow it and your company will be set up to flourish in the new remote work reality, just as we have!

This article originally appeared on the Octalysis Group’s site, as the first article in The Ultimate Guide to REMOTE work series.

The post THE REMOTE FRAMEWORK: Guide to Remote Working first appeared on Ludogogy.

This article shares our experiences and ideas for an effective transformation process from a classic board game setup to online use.

We are passionate facilitators and game designers but not technicians, hence we will focus on the thinking behind changing the environment setup. Our principles of creating a safe space, a playful experience providing the base for valuable reflections and focusing on direct and personal interactions, we wanted to transfer to the online version. We learned that assuring this was a bit trickier than anticipated.

The following key elements were important for an effective transformation:

• Letting loose of your own assumptions as facilitator. We had to deal with our own emotions prior to being ready to change it to an online play test, when we quickly realized that some ideas and tasks could not be converted easily. But reminding ourselves that as facilitators we are the only ones knowing the actual difference, helped us to let go of our own assumptions and dare to look upon this as potentially the start of something new.
• Be curious about the online world. When we started to be curious about what tools different communication platforms have to offer, new ideas started to develop. After finishing the “transformation”, the online version has some specific characteristics compared to the board game. We learned that in order to be successful in the online version, a certain communication structure has to be established as communication differs to communication in “real life”. For example: breaks in interpersonal communication are more or less normal, in online settings they are often associated with lack of clarity or technical problems. Or talking simultaneously is somehow doable in personal discussions and can be easily solved, while it is more difficult to solve it online. Therefore, we included the element of “establishing an internal structure of communication” as task, which the teams have to deal with prior entering “Lord McGroundwork’s Shipyard” and starting the actual game. We decided to give the responsibility to each team to structure their communication because, how they handled this experience can be used perfectly for reflection in case during and after the game. In our experience, even non-remote teams can get valuable output for everyday life by experiencing a new communication structure.
• Define the facilitator role. We included the instructions referring to the communication tools into the narrative given by the facilitator. While in our case the facilitator has the role of being a representative of Lord McGroundwork, he/she also informs the playing team on how to use the technical features (for example: shows them how they can draw or how they can set up surveys). In some tests we used two facilitators: one being responsible for giving the narrative and leading the reflections, while the other one being the technical instructor. This division worked very well for the players involved in the game and for us as well.
• Use the bonuses of online variants. Besides the fact that you can easily play with people all over the world at the same time without any extra hurdles, the following advantages refer to the structure of online setup itself:
  • Two ways of communication: written chat and video/call function. This presents you with some further possibilities to conduct debrief, reflection and feedback methods. Additionally, as part of the game dynamics, we sent private messages with special instructions to individual players without the others noticing it. Thus surprises and challenges can be delivered in an even more subtle way.
  • The personal choice of going on mute and/or switching on or off the camera: When facilitating a relaxation technique or an icebreaker far out of the personal comfort zone, this can help to feel comfortable. In normal settings, participants sometimes have difficulties because they feel “observed”. By having this personal choice, the online setting can quickly create a safer space. On the other hand, we observed also that when some team members are having their camera on and some off throughout the Game, this can have an impact on belonging and psychological safety in a team.
  • Starting together: By experience, in normal settings usually team members arrive at varying times. Some are already present 30 minutes before, maybe try to sneak peek or try to get information through informal talks, while others arrive on point. By giving access to the online room at the same time, starting together can be easily ensured.
  • Clarity: As you only have reduced information on the non-verbal communication level, in online setting an even higher standard of clarity is required. As facilitator you get immediate feedback when your instructions were not fully clear, but also the players easily learn how to be clear and concrete.
• Acknowledge the challenges. Varying technical knowledge and individually different equipment used (for example: one or two screens) lead to the challenge that as facilitator you have to have an eye on the distinction in the reflection on the technical part and the topic-related points (in our case: onboarding experience). Starting the after-game-reflection with a short debrief of how the game experience worked online gives you and the team an indication of the first part. This is essential in order to progress with topic-related reflection points.

Summing up, changing a board game into an online version can be challenging as non-technical expert, but is a very interesting experience as game designer and facilitator. When accepting that the new game is unique and not a simple copy of the board game, diving into the possibilities the online world has to offer can lead to many learnings. Our main take aways are that the idea of our board game version was successfully tested and such a transition can challenge you as facilitator resulting in valuable learnings for facilitations in general. We are happy how our Business Learning Game “Lord McGroundwork’s Shipyard” made progress and as the playtests were very successful, we now even consider making an online version of it as well.

The post Changing a classic board game to online: A look behind the scenes first appeared on Ludogogy.

In 2019 I had the exiting opportunity to be part of UEK’s programme The Future of GBS (Global Business Services). Students who signed for, and completed this specialisation, had the chance to learn from industry professionals. Myself and five other professionals from Krakow were trusted with teaching project management.

We were all excited and ready to start cooperating with the minds of the future. We were fortunate in many respects, one of such lucky situations was the ability to create the curricula for this course from scratch. I felt so strongly about this activity that I volunteered to teach four subjects. One more aspect of this collaboration that was particularly exciting, and unexpected for me, was the opportunity to teach my subjects via serious games. I designed, developed and played four games – one for each subject I taught. All the games were simulations of real world scenarios where the students had to form teams and collaborate in order to solve a problem. When explaining these games to the lead lecturer of project management at UEK I referred to these activities as RPS (role playing simulations).

Perhaps now is a good time for me to explain why I believe that games are an excellent teaching resource. Long story short, I profoundly dislike ‘traditional’ formal-education. The reasons for this will become clear the more you read my articles, or watch my YouTube videos, but for now it suffices to say that learning disabilities, mixed with an standardise and inflexible education system, cooked at 250 degrees in a third-world oven, is not the ideal recipe for creativity and development. Jim Gee summarises some of my feelings about traditional formal-education when he said “in traditional formal-education settings, collaboration is called cheating. And in the real world, trying to solve complex problems by yourself is not a desirable skill”.

Through studying serious games and game design at EdX’s MIT courses I had a priceless opportunity to learn about the history and psychology of education, and the many challenges faced by those who throughout recent history have tried to change this system. And now I had a chance to use my own serious games to join the fight. I set out to find out, first hand, if students learned more in an active learning setting than simply by passively listening to the teacher talk, memorising facts and answers to existing problems, and then doing the best they could to regurgitate all these data over a standardise test.

One of the classes I taught was Communicating Across Multicultural and Diverse Teams. For this I designed a scenario with low-tech game elements in which the students were randomly assigned to four different teams that represented separate branches of a service centre spread across the globe.

The teams had to hold a project status meeting via a conference call. Online meeting technology and/or etiquette was not one of the main learning outcomes, but I guess we all agreed it should have been. Perhaps from the Time of Corona onwards, Zoom and Microsoft Teams’ technology will be included in all project management training courses -I know, I just couldn’t finish this article without mentioning the “C” word.

The game went on and the players, the students, covered the three scenarios prepared for them. The teams also had some predefined scripts that guided their position in the meeting. For instance, the IT team was sharp, on time and only focused on data numeric figures. The Finance team was bored with the meeting and just wanted to get back to their daily tasks. The HR team joined the meeting slightly late, but they were understanding of both sides of the situation and did the best they could to avoid unnecessary arguments over the conf-call – I know, I was playing with stereotypes, something perhaps a little dangerous, but the rationale for this will be explained in later paragraphs of this article.

The online meeting was interrupted at various stages by background noises such as a dog barking, a doorbell ringing, one team getting disconnected (then trying to reconnect: ‘can you her us? Hello, is the line working now?’ ), and a toilet flushing (the project manager was working from home and forgot to put the telephone on mute while going to the loo). The students laugh at some of the situations and some became slightly uncomfortable with the loo sound.

The core part of the learning activity, as I designed it, was the reflection, or retrospective,  part. Here students were given the opportunity to discuss the characteristics (stereotypes) of the teams in the game, the role of culture in communications, country vs organisation culture, the role of the project manager, among other learning outcomes. I must say, it wasn’t easy getting feedback from the students. Of course, there is the language issue, these young Polish women and men were taking this specialisation, learning material, and playing games in English. Yet, in my opinion the use of English language wasn’t the main issue. The main issue has been documented in academic research on the use of games for teaching. In some cases, students themselves reject games as they want to be told (in written or oral form) what they need to memorise in order to pass the test. And this was one of the questions the students asked me at the end of the retrospective session ‘will it be on the exam?’

I was slightly disappointed. Not at the students, but at the education system. Alas, it’s slightly changing every day a little more. Proof? I’m using my games to teach university students. I’m also learning while teaching and running my games. For instance, one thing that stuck with me after this particular game session was the students’ belief that corporations possessed, and utilise on daily basis, advance technologies to complete each and every job task. ‘For sure these problems do not happen in real conf-calls’ I was told during the retrospective.

Collaboration and teamwork are essential 21st Century skills. And Serious Games and simulations are an excellent way to teach students (at all levels of their education journey) these skills. In the book chapter Why I Love Bees: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming Jane McGonigal meticulously describes how large and distributed teams can tackle gigantic and unprecedented problems. “No one knows everything, everyone knows something” (p. 201). This line stuck with me forever after reading her text.

Jim Gee discusses this concept a step in his chapter entitled Distributed Intelligence and Cross-Functional Teams. People can become smarter when distributing knowledge not only across team members, the author argues, but across technology and humans (p. 32). Workplace researchers are investing time and effort to identify the many ways in which groups that maximise distributed intelligence produce better results than individuals working separately. This intersection between human and technology collaboration has been defined as the socio-technical-system in the M.Sc. In Managing Risk and System Change delivered online by Trinity College Dublin.

All the serious games I have so far designed, developed and facilitated use team work as a guiding game mechanic. I encourage game developers to keep up this principle when designing games for learning and development. Equally so, I push myself, and encourage others, to always keep an eye on what’s to come. Designing games that exploit the benefits of human-machine cooperation could very well be the next big thing.

The post The next big thing: paper planes and bits first appeared on Ludogogy.

What is teamwork?

Firstly, teamwork is usually defined as “cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of
persons acting together as a team or in the interests of a common cause.”(Dictionary.com LLC, 2020)
Seems like a pretty simple way to understand what teamwork is as a term that highlights what it
says on the tin. However, it is important to realise that teamwork isn’t exclusively used by teams and
can emerge through random acts of cooperation between people who may be outside of your own
team.

This leads to an intriguing situation where it is essential for teams to have effective teamwork to
thrive but you don’t necessarily need a team to display good teamwork. One such way of viewing
the idea of good teamwork would be as The Happy Manager describes as a set of behaviours and
attitudes that encourage the desire to succeed through a sense of unity and enthusiasm in sharing
common interests and responsibilities in order to complete the tasks. (The Happy Manager, 2020)
This leads to the more robust and flexible definition of teamwork being “when a group of people
work together cohesively, towards a common goal, creating a positive working atmosphere, and
supporting each other to combine individual strengths to enhance team performance.”(The Happy
Manager, 2020) A bit longer than the standard dictionary definition, but is more useful for our
purposes of figuring out how to best design games that feature teamwork.

Types of cooperation

I found that one of the most important questions that I feel needs to be asked when designing a
game around teamwork is “What kind of reliance on cooperation do I want to put onto the players?”
This question came from when I was perusing my library of team-based games to determine any
differences between them, after a while I noticed that they tend to fall into 2 categories, games that
force cooperation or games that incentivise cooperation.

Forced cooperation games are ones that are rather rigid and go all in with the idea that the players
need to work together in order to achieve success, regardless of their skill. This is typically due to
these games utilising functions which require the assistance of other players to be accomplished.
Whilst these games are satisfying and certainly give the feeling of working as a team to accomplish a
shared goal, it can lead to frustration through the simple act of people on your team not cooperating
with you, ultimately leading to nothing getting done.

One of the main examples of a game that falls into this category would be the Left 4 Dead game
series where if you’re incapacitated by the enemies of the game, you need the assistance of your
fellow survivors in order to get back on your feet or to stop whatever’s attacking you at the time.
Left 4 dead (Valve 2008): Being incapacitated, needing the help of your allies to get back up.

Games that incentivise cooperation are more relaxed in the sense that the tasks within the game are
accomplishable on your own if you’re skilled enough, but are far easier or offer more rewards when
you work with your teammates to complete them. Although this is a far more flexible approach than
the previous category, it may lead to players acting selfishly should they feel that their teammates
aren’t playing well enough or against their wishes.

One example of this would be the Counter Strike game series which has two teams facing off against
each other, one team needing to plant and defend a bomb at a specific location and the other team
needs to stop them from achieving this, all while trying to eliminate each other. These tasks are
accomplishable by a single player, it is much easier if you work alongside your teammates to get the
job done.

Counter Strike Global Offensive (Valve 2012): Counter-terrorists preparing for the upcoming mission.
Interestingly the aforementioned cooperation categories are by no means exclusive to one another
as there are some games that have managed to combine elements between these two categories to
make some interesting experiences to provide players with the best of both worlds. Games such as
League of Legends have two teams of 5 players choose from a wide selection of characters with their
own strengths and weaknesses to push through and destroy the enemy base whilst defending your
own.

These games combine the elements of these two categories in a way where the things that the
player is able to accomplish within a match is determined by many different factors including;

• The character they have chosen, with some characters being able to accomplish tasks that
  others cannot.
• The performance of the players, their allies and their opponents, with strong players being
  able to easily assist weaker players who are being overwhelmed by their enemies, making
  their weaker allies stronger and able to contribute more to the current match.
• Completing certain objectives throughout the map which has difficulty ranging from being
  able to be fought alone, to needing the help of your teammates to succeed.
  League of Legends (Riot Games 2009): Blue team members fighting off red team members after
  destroying a tower.

Although it can be beneficial to develop a game that combines the best of both of the
aforementioned categories, it also has the risk of combining the weaknesses as well, with
despondent teammates able to actively sabotage your team’s efforts by either not assisting with
completing objectives or ‘feeding’ the enemy through deliberately letting them kill the player,
making the enemy stronger to the detriment of their own team.

Whilst this is more of a personal musing that has been acquired through extensive playtime and
observing games being played at both a casual and professional level, I feel that there is something
of value to be shared from thinking about team-based games in this way.

Things to keep in mind for designers

This section is a set of take-away thoughts that may be helpful to you if you wish to develop games
which have players utilise teamwork.

Firstly, this is more of a reiteration on what was discussed in the previous section but I feel it’s
important to reinforce it here. The main thing that you must ask yourself is “What kind of reliance on
cooperation do I want to put onto the players?” This just makes it easier to decide on how much
freedom you wish to provide the players of your game through the mechanics that they interact
with within the game.

Next, depending on how you answer the previous question, allowing players to choose the types of
roles that they wish to fulfil as they play is very important as this will allow players to play to their
strengths whilst giving them the opportunity to improve their skills at a role they may not be
comfortable with. A good example of a game that does this would be League of Legends which
categorises their playable characters into a variety of roles and they have a match making system
which allows players to choose the role they wish to play in the upcoming match. All in all, it’s nice
to give players agency and freedom to play how they want to.

Lastly, you need to give your players the ability to quickly and effectively communicate with their
teammates. Seems simple enough, but many games still rely on either a typing text system which is
antiquated and forces the player to stop what they’re doing in order to type out their message,
leaving them vulnerable, or a voice chat system, which is reliant on the players having either the
necessary equipment or the desire to talk to people, which isn’t always present. However, many
games utilise a ping system which provides a quick and simple message or notification to
teammates, depending on the type of ping used.

The best example of a ping and callout system used in games would be the one in Apex Legends,
which offers players a wide selection of context sensitive callouts which depend on the player’s
actions and condition (such as “I’m reloading” or “I’m getting shot at”) and notifications (such as
“Someone’s been here”, or “I’m defending this area”) that depend on what the player is looking at
and are quickly accessible to the player without breaking their flow of gameplay.

Finally I wanted to share a neat little article by Leszek Gorniak on Gamasutra which covers some very
important topics in setting the foundations of designing games as a team which utilises creating a
‘Design Compass’ which is something that helps a team to share the same idea for the design of the
current project and also utilising a method they call ‘Question-Driven Design’(2019) which has you
focus on asking questions when faced with design problems which helps to easily break down the
problem that you’re facing in a more manageable way.

Definitely an interesting read if you want to have a slightly more diplomatic approach to solving
problems with fellow designers and developers.

All in all, teamwork is a very interesting beast that exists regardless of being in a team and when
utilised effectively, great things can be accomplished. So, get out there and practise good teamwork!

The post Musings on Developing Games Featuring Teamwork first appeared on Ludogogy.

The problem: Meetings from everyday life cannot be directly transferred to the virtual space, because different rules apply for communication via digital channels. If these are not followed, it can easily lead to chaos and losses in motivation and results.

The solution: gamification of virtual meetings through:

• Elements from the psychology of games,
• Principles for clear communication,
• Ideas for team building and
• Guidance on structure.

The goal: online meetings are not only easy to engage in, but can also lead to exciting experiences. Productivity can be higher than in a real-life meeting, without stress or imposing leadership.

In brief: 7 principles for the gamification of online meetings

1. There is a clear goal, broken down into smaller action steps to follow. Every step should be clear to every participant. Ideally, the goal contributes to a bigger picture, also made clear in the process.
2. Enhancing social interaction: opening/closing rituals, digital warm-ups, moments of sharing, smaller working groups and collaboration/competition ensure a warm and engaging atmosphere.
3. Regular phase changes: fatigue & the next browser tab are your enemies. It is therefore important to switch between different working modes, for example by: switching to smaller working groups (breakout rooms on zoom), working together on common documents, inserting video, having regular breaks etc.
4. Storytelling: One or more stories can incorporate important insights, working principles and learning content, or simply serve to entertain.
5. Atmosphere of winning: The progress towards your goal is made visible and celebrated, enhanced by visual aids.
6. Less is more: small number of participants, short working phases, few agenda points can maximise efficiency and maintain engagement.
7. Reward your attendees for actively participating in the meeting. Appreciate the value they have created to level up the joy of the next meeting.

Every strategy should be implemented using clear tactics. You will find 11 specific tactics, ideas, tips and examples for utilising gamification in your next online meeting below, on Zoom, Teams, Skype or elsewhere.

Challenges of online meetings:

Many meetings in person can be annoying, difficult, and boring. However, the following can have particularly negative consequences in digital meetings:

• Distractions: It can be particularly tempting to answer emails or surf the web during a digital meeting. There are even stories of people who began assembling their furniture during a video conference. Attention span in web-based activities tends to be particularly short, especially given the overabundance of information at our fingertips.
• Technical difficulties: Bad connection, noisy loudspeakers, echo from participants leaving their microphones on while using loudspeakers, a frozen video… Technical hurdles are practically in the agenda for digital meetings, so it is particularly important to ensure a high quality of communication and enhance motivation through a clear structure.
• Lack of non-verbal signals: The live feedback we get from real-life communication is integral to how we communicate, even if most of it takes place subconsciously. Gestures, facial expressions and body postures are valuable, yet limited, pieces of information. If we don’t properly perceive the subtleties of facial expressions and tone of voice, they can easily be misinterpreted in a negative manner.

And then of course there are the challenges that are present in all meetings, but which can be particularly difficult in digital contexts:

• Lack of structure and leadership: there should be a clear discussion process. Usually there is a moderator who has an agenda, coordinates it with the participants, and ensures a harmonious and varied flow of discussion.
• Too much or too little commitment: some participants have to be lured out of their insecurity, while others can hardly be stopped with their flow of speech:
  Karl once had a project partner in the Caribbean who turned the 2-minute check-in into a 50-minute (!) monologue and was simply unstoppable. Since then, he’s only been using tools that allow muting participants.

Digression to biology: Why is concentration more difficult in an online meeting?

Human communication is a whole-body activity: there are various fine muscles and parts of the autonomic nervous system that are activated in social engagement, and stimulate the senses of the interacting parties.

Unfortunately, the subconscious perception of body signals is very limited in virtual meetings.

Tip: Be extra-clear in your personal messages and provide participants with a clear agenda and talking rules in order to minimise conflict and promote structure.

Extra solution: Hand gestures are an effective and engaging way to give non-verbal visible feedback in a video chat:

Dissociation and daydreaming in an online meeting

Daydreaming occurs more easily with participants who are more passively involved in a meeting, therefore getting distracted and drifting away mentally can become a challenge. This is not due to bad intentions but happens naturally through the default-mode-network that sets in when there is no obvious task to focus on. This holds true also when there is a lack of clarity in a conversation, where the mind dissociates from it when it gets too difficult to follow. Once you lose track in a complex conversation, it’s difficult to refocus and catch up.

Simple solutions: clear goals, reliable timing, one person speaking at a time, short phases.

Gamification helps: using social interaction elements and reiterating the purpose and progress of the meeting help to keep interaction and concentration levels high.

11 tactics for success & joy in online meetings

Tactic 1: Check-In & Check-Out

A short ritual at the beginning of a session helps everyone to focus on the common process. It can be very simple, for example: a round in which everyone says their name and how they feel at the moment in one word. It should be short and involve everyone.

Closing the cycle: a conclusion as a group at the end of the meeting is just as important to end the meeting positively and exit the no longer necessary working mood. For example, you could say in a round again in one word how everyone feels after the meeting.

Remember to thank everyone for attending before saying goodbye!

Tactic 2: Align expectations

It is the first win-state in the meeting when everyone knows they are in the right place at the right time. Make this clear by asking participants to state their expectations for the meeting in one word. There are some nice digital tools you can use to collect the answers and display them in a word cloud. Some of our favourite tools for this are Mentimeter, Slido and Wooclap. Use these tools to make your events more interactive and engaging!

Tactic 3: Make your goals and intentions clear

This is obviously important for any meeting, but even more crucial when Facebook or Twitter are just a click away. For virtual meetings we recommend having only one overall goal and regularly reaffirm it during the meeting. Ideally, this should happen immediately after the expectations round to reassure the participants they are in the right place.

Why? We often tend to jump straight to work and forget why we do it in the first place. It’s important to remember what drives us to be where we are.

Maximise motivation: make sure the goal contributes to a bigger picture. What is the overarching purpose behind this meeting? Does it contribute to a social or environmental purpose? Perhaps it helps fulfil the broader vision of your company (if this is a company meeting). A reminder of how this meeting and your attendees’ efforts fit into this bigger picture will help motivate them and reassure them that their time is well spent. The connection to the greater benefit is also an appreciation of your own time.

Tactic 4: The way to the goal – break it down

Break down the overall goal into small action steps to follow so that it feels feasible. What practical steps are required for your group to achieve the desired goal? The progress of the meeting should follow these steps.

Be sensible with your agenda points: steps lacking relevance can derail the focus of your meeting, while too many steps can affect its effectiveness.

A visual reminder of each completed step can keep the group focused, motivated and engaged! Keep reading for more suggestions on using visual aids!

Tactic 5: Digital warm-ups – 3 ideas for more energy

As important as it is in real meetings to break the ice and build rapport, it is even more so in online meetings. It appears to be a little more difficult without the benefits of physical space and less body language. Here are a few ideas for digitally breaking the ice:

1. Share a spontaneous photo! Everyone will most likely be home anyway. Ask them to share a photo of an object on their desk they feel connected to (a book they are reading, a cup of their favourite coffee, something related to their hobbies, etc.) and say a few words about it. Keep it short and informal – the goal is just to break the ice.
2. Share something personal! For meetings aiming at team-building and sharing: Ask meaningful open-ended questions, eg about their personal relationship to the meeting goal, followed by a round of quick answers. This helps to achieve the goal while creating a safe spacefor opening up. Examples of suitable questions would be “What did you do last week that you are proud of?”, “What are you grateful for today?” or “What daily routines do you follow to keep your motivation up?”. This may not be relevant for a technically oriented work meeting.
3. Be creative:If you’ll be using a whiteboard or similar app for brainstorming or ideation, have a playful on-boarding activity on the same tool before jumping into working with it! For example, ask participants to draw a unicorn together if you’ll be working on a whiteboard, or write down their favourite foods and group them in different cuisines if working with sticky notes. Digital tools for this purpose are the embedded whiteboard of Zoom, Google Jamboard, Whiteboardfox, Groupboard, Conceptboard, Twiddla, Miro, Ziteboard or a shared document on Google Drive or Microsoft 365.

Bonus inspiration: A good friend and fellow facilitator asked his participants during a session on Emotional Intelligence to depict their current emotions with Emoji Maker and then used those depictions as the topic of the relevant follow-up discussion into breakout groups (more on those below). Brilliant!

Editor’s note: Following the publication of this article, I was asked by Leo from Milanote to try it out, as he thinks it compares favourably to Conceptboard (full disclosure: he gave me extra storage so I could take it for a test drive). One of the advantages over Conceptboard is that with Milanote, it’s free to export PDFs and images of mind maps. Its webclipper app makes it easy to grab images to your boards, which makes it ideal for any number of creative applications – storyboarding, moodboarding, product development etc., either solo or collaboratively. I’m also loving its extensive collection of templates – particular favourites at the moment are the worldbuilding template and, of course, the games design templates.  It’s a big thumbs up from me!

Tactic 6: Keep everyone involved

You have put together a group for a specific goal. Use all resources to achieve it, especially the skills of your participants, and ensure they’re involved. Appreciate the competence of your participants: give them an active role during the meeting!

If you have used any of the digital tools previously mentioned, now is the time to put them to practice for each of the steps you’ve defined. How exactly you will do this depends heavily on your goal and content, but keep in mind the following:

• If your goal has to do with discussing a topic, the discussion is more likely to be efficient and inclusive in smaller groups;
• If you aim for your attendees to learn something, they’re more likely to learn it by applying it in practice, especially when it comes to skills development;
• If it’s a working meeting, motivation and productivity significantly increase in small group work sprints. It’s easier to pay attention and be inspired by others in a small group, as well as to feel comfortable sharing any concerns or asking for help;
• The active participation of your audience is fundamental to their sense of achievement;
• But also for your own comfort as a facilitator: an overworked moderator is a bad moderator – so let your participants develop the content!

The digital era provides a wide array of tools to use for collaborative work on the web, from those already linked above, to collaboratively developing documents using Google Drive, Zoho’s office suite, or an  Etherpad.

Even if your goal doesn’t require collaborative document development or brainstorming, it’s always beneficial to come up with activities to keep your attendees involved in the process.

Example from online classes on physics: the students were supposed to find out about voltage on household appliances, during the introduction to electricity. Since they already looked tired, Karl turned it into a competition: who can find the most information on household appliances in 10 minutes? They were very motivated, and the winner found 24 entries!

Tactic 7: Maximise engagement with small groups

Small groups can increase participation, feeling comfortable to speak up and share your thoughts, while maintaining effectiveness and productivity. Think from the perspective of an attendee while designing the meeting you intend to facilitate.

How can you divide a large group into smaller teams using digital tools? Use the embedded breakout rooms from Zoom, the open source Unhangout from MIT or Qiqochat (combination of Zoom, breakout rooms and collaborative document creation).

Tactic 8: The rule of small numbers

A key rule for digital communication is: less is more. Based on our experience, we can recommend the following to increase the engagement of your participants:

1. Keep the overall group small: Up to 12 people if active participation is required.
2. Use smaller groups of 3-5 people for the more intensive work phases.
3. Take a short break once an hour (human needs remain present in digital meetings) and change the working mode every 15 to 20 minutes (introduce group discussions, exercises, work sprints, etc.).
4. Keep your sessions short: Up to 45 minutes for a discussion or presentation, and up to 90 minutes for work, exercises, or skills development. If you have to go longer, use more breaks.
5. One goal per session: Use different sessions for different goals.

Tactic 9: The power of stories

Nothing beats the power of a good story! Personal stories, educational stories, funny stories … Our tips:

• Use short videos to highlight learning points and simplify complex concepts with a cinematic narrative or simply as an entertaining break. A good internet connection and understanding how screen sharing works is necessary.
• Tell a short story or invite your participants to share one.
• Share a story in advance, in the form of a video or text document.
• Bonus suggestion (for advanced facilitators): what if your entire meeting structure follows a storyline?A concept that can help with that is the “Hero’s Journey“. Can you draw any parallels between the action steps on your agenda and Campbell’s stages of the monomyth? See if you can build a narrative around the structure of your meeting. Hint: Check-in and Check-out can easily signify the departure and return to the “ordinary world”.

Tactic 10: Use visual aids

Since we mentioned videos, it’s worth mentioning that enhancing your meeting with visual aids can have a positive impact on the motivation of your attendees. The more senses are addressed, the more active and motivated the brain becomes. How can you do that?

• When you share a presentation, make sure it’s well designed, with minimal text and appealing graphics. Use templates on PowerPoint or Google slides, or use Canva as an alternative way to design them.
• A picture is worth a thousand words: add graphics, infographics, mind maps and other visual elements to your presentation. This allows to convey your message in an efficient, convenient and aesthetically pleasing way, which will help maintain your attendees’ motivation and attention.
• Particularly valuable: visualise the progress of your meeting! Hopefully you have already broken down your goal into achievable action steps. After completing each step, present clear visual cues for the proximity to the goal. The sense of accomplishmentcreated will increase the motivation of your participants and ensure a smooth transition to the next step.

Tactic 11: Reward at the end

Continuing the use of visual aids, you can of course use a nice thank-you illustration, but more importantly, you can give your participants something that will feel more rewarding and is relevant to their needs. We have two suggestions for that:

1. Use digital open badges to recognise the participants’ achievements during the meeting. This is particularly relevant if the purpose of the meeting is related to learning and/or developing skills (badgecraft is our favourite tool for this purpose). It may be less relevant for a simple discussion, but everyone is happy to have their efforts recognised.
2. Reward the participants with something of practical value, e.g. a discount on a future course, a voucher for an event or a donation to a charity of their choice. This can link the intrinsic value of their efforts during the meeting to an external purpose that matters to them and/or is linked to the vision of your company (remember that bigger picture from tactic 3?).

Here we go! From theory to the practice of gamifying online meetings

As you may have noticed, most of our suggestions can also be utilised in real-life meetings to make them more engaging. While communicating through digital means may magnify some challenges and ease others, there are many parallels to their real-life equivalents, as we’re dealing with human communication in both cases.

What is your next important online meeting? How can you make your time as valuable and entertaining as possible for your participants?

Don’t be intimidated by the wealth of ideas and tactics: every little step counts for a better meeting culture. Nobody is perfect! Making mistakes is allowed and desired! How else can you learn and develop? This attitude can keep you relaxed and confident during the meeting. A couple of final considerations:

• Team-building: Make sure everyone feels seen and heard, is involved in the group process, and knows who they are dealing with at all times. Communicating the current mood and sharing personal experiences is valuable for this, throughout the entire process. Make sure to devote enough time for this.
• Mindfulness: A minute of silence at the beginning or after a break can help to focus on the conversation and become aware of your own inner distractions.

We hope our suggestions will make your next online meeting interactive and motivating! And if you’d like to chat about it or get support on your design or facilitation, feel free to contact us!

Check list for a successful, effective online meeting.

You can find a version of this article on Medium as well, and a German translation on Karl’s website!

The post Online Meetings Effective? 11 Tactics for Gamifying your Next Zoom Meeting first appeared on Ludogogy.

A brief introduction to the game

The game is called DSbuilder and it is about building the Death Star in the Star Wars universe, just after the “Rogue one” movie. We have the plan of the weapon and we need to build it. Simple? Actually this is the most complex ever (in the future too). Some numbers: Six initiatives, Six sprints +100 components to build. This game is for TEAMS, and will involve between 18 and 30 “builders”.

This game has been successfully presented at Play14 in London, and we have already played a few engaging sessions in some meetups and in real companies. In these sessions I have collected a few interesting learnings on team dynamics and I was really impressed by how the game was able to expose them. This article is about these outcomes.

Start the activities

In the image below you can see the first two sprints and the points that immediately emerged.

Three  teams were not able to deliver anything in Sprint 1 because they were so focused on the dependencies that they missed the timebox.

Two teams have been impacted by the above problem and, practically, even if something has been delivered, nothing was working because of the missing internal dependencies (the tapped cards).

One team was able to deliver something coherent with their own internal dependencies but failed integrating with others and nothing was working.

Sprint 2 was much better. Now all of the teams were able to deliver something, and only one team missed the dependencies.

Unfortunately integration was still completely missing and actually nothing worked.

I would like to highlight the reduction of the velocity in two teams. This was due to the lack of external dependencies not managed by other teams. You can see this very well counting the number of cards on the board.

At this point something happened

People started to analyse the goal in detail trying to figure out how to achieve it, and reflecting on how this might relate to their real-life work.

They started more effective conversations (the game uses a full team retro, a Scrum of Scrums and PO sync during the sprint, to facilitate collaboration), focused on the integration more than on the backlog consumption.

They started realising that they have to work together to effectively integrate.

They worked together as a “team of teams”, and a collaboration model started appearing. They found how to interact (respecting the rules of the game) and above all to define a way to help each other.

So we moved to the next sprints

Below is the image of sprints three and four.

Here you can see the magic happening.

In Sprint Three one team (the bottom one in the picture) was completely devoted to other  initiatives’ backlog (no story in their own backlog) because they realised that short term goals were not impacting them. The other three teams worked in similar way, minimising activities on their own backlog. Everybody was focused on helping team 3 because they were impacting all other teams (you can verify this from the number of cards, more than twice as usual in points).

Even if they were able to solve most of the dependencies (only two were actually missed), they missed the short term goal, but the status of the project was much more stable than in previous sprints.

On Sprint Four they received a new short term goal, in addition to the previous one, so they needed to work to achieve both. Unfortunately because of a single missing dependency they were not able to achieve the goals and they all suffered a terrible death at the end of Sprint Four by the Emperor (using his evil powers).

Game over!

Conclusion

In this 100 minutes we were able to see in practice how collaboration is a concept that is well known by all teams, but actually few of them have a clear idea of how much collaboration can impact performance.

Another learning is that this complex project cannot be controlled at team level (confirming the system thinking view) but builders can win only if they worked all together for the effective common goal that is not the consumption of their own backlogs. It was absolutely clear that, even if each team could be able to complete their work, the fact of working together (scaling) with other teams introduced an unexpected level of complexity.

Also they have proven how sub-optimisation could help to achieve the effective result, even if this requires a further level of collaboration (sacrifice?).

The game is able to provide a backlog with dependencies (internal and external) and with integration requirements, very close to a real complex software project typical of large enterprises. This simulation has been considered by players pretty realistic of the effective difficulties found by teams working together. The game is not about building (I always trust the ability of a team to build stuff), but about planning and is absolutely unique in this genre.

The mechanic of the game is impacted by events, happening every sprint and the teams must be very careful to understand and adapt. The goal is not simply to complete the backlog in the given time; better, completing the backlog is not mandatory if the goal is achieved. And this is a lesson for business people too.

The post Collaboration gaps enhanced by a game? Yes, we can first appeared on Ludogogy.

One of the key factors of high performing teams is the ability to understand each other, even to the extent of understanding the non-verbal messaging.  It could be how you understand underlying tension in a meeting when someone is reacting uncomfortably. It’s picking up that your team is getting restless due to a possible problem with their workload. These unspoken team dynamics are developed from socialising and engaging with each other on a personal level. Social interactions are crucial for a team to work together effectively, it creates bonds of trust and collaboration for achieving goals. More so, cohesive and in-tune teams have developed the trust to be more creative and innovative having the confidence to introduce new ideas and methodologies to the table.

A global pandemic has seen the world disrupted, with many group and face-to-face engagements, being placed on hold. Overcoming physical distance, business has leveraged teleconferencing technology and the internet to continue work, collaborations and meetings in the virtual world. It may take a bit longer and more effort …however we are seeing that it is possible and a viable alternative.

Physical contact and interaction strengthen teams and ability to complete complex tasks. In our next step of this virtual evolution will be exploring how to recapture some of this sociability and interaction of the old physical workplace. Now that we know our teams can work virtually, how do we enable them to thrive virtually ?

We have three ideas which can help you bring back the social aspect to virtual meetings and collaborative sessions.

1. But first – Coffee

Instead of starting a meeting at full steam, ease people in with inviting them to make tea/coffee and maybe grab a snack. Have a question of the week; favourite series, least favourite food, last meal they ate out, last place they travelled.  If you want people to focus in your meeting, get them involved in the meeting. Much like with a game, people actively engaging and contributing on a personal level, leads to more commitment to the rest of the meeting.

2. Short Check-In Events

Gamify your digital workplace, provide a set of cues for team members to share artefacts or mementos in their “work-at-home” space. Give rewards out for those who engage and participate. Focus on shared interests and sharing over the virtual medium you are using.

3. Virtual Game

Thanks to the evolution of technology, virtual games allow you to host a highly engaging session.  A virtual game which is relatable, such as online pictionary or a trivia quiz creates a burst of high energy and instant connection to any team meeting. There are plenty of available games which can be selected to match the tone and team members preferences. The exciting part is the simplicity of incorporating into a meeting. Another bonus is it happens in real time!

In the beginning of our lockdown, the Game2Change team started experimenting with virtual games in our internal team meetings.  We appreciate the value of games to foster team dynamics and improve relationships. Our internal pilot was so engaging and successful that we have also extended this to our associates and our current clients.

We have observed the following benefits to achieving a more humane and engaging virtual session with this approach:

1. Contribution

Games give everyone an equal opportunity to contribute. Every participant is a player and partakes in game play. One of the challenges of engaging virtually, is the ease of checking out and not being fully invested in a session. When a session requires participation by all in the team, it is simpler to set a precedent upfront with all round participation in a game. We can then extend this commitment to contributing towards the work tasks down the line.

2. Ease into new technology and practices

A team game is low risk and encourages people to engage and interact. This focus away from performance and task, leads to a sense of comfort. This is particularly useful if a team member is new or may be apprehensive about using technology – especially for those interacting on a new digital platform. Unknowingly the brain overcomes any psychological hurdles or fears and places its attention on the game and actively participating. A great hack for speeding up adoption of new technology.

3. It’s not about the work

Most face-to-face meeting incorporates an element of connecting and socialising beyond business issues and tasks. With a sudden move to the virtual world, it is easy to forget about this human touch. While we adapt to this new way of connecting, the incorporation of virtual game can encourage a more social aspect to virtual meetings. It can also be a great energiser for sessions which require concentration and tackling challenging content afterwards.

If you are considering including a virtual game in your next session, you may be wondering how to get started ? Do you need a technical wizard to set your team up for a virtual game?  What technology and platforms make this option feasible? The good news is that there are easy- to- access platforms which only require a teleconferencing platform (with screen share capability) and stable internet connection of each team member.

Some great websites to explore are:

• www.geoguessr.com
• www.yucata.de
• www.tabletopia.com
• en.boardgamearena.com

The post How To Foster Virtual Environments For Your Dream Team To Thrive. first appeared on Ludogogy.

We are all online on Zoom now. Yet too many events are pre-recorded webinars or slide based presentations. Stop! That is not how to excite and inspire people.

I’m pretty proud of the real-life conferences we hold, ensuring no speaker presents for longer than 9 minutes without involving the participants. But, of the recent two-dozen or so conferences we’ve held, this Zoom-based one detailed below was our 3rd highest ever for interaction and involvement and top for work relevance.

The secret was that it was teaching online Liberating Structures by getting everybody to use Liberating Structures.

What are Liberating Structures? They are a set of formalised techniques that, instead of having meetings dominated by one or two people, involve everybody.

We had offered the session free to NHS staff (and others battling the virus) so a large proportion of people there were health workers, but from trusts across the country. As well as participants from China, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Egypt and more. Here are the structure we used:

Spiral Journal: A mindful start

Take a piece of A4 paper and fold it into 4. Spend two minutes drawing a spiral, as slowly and as tightly wound as possible, out from the centre. In response to four prompts, give your answers in each of the four quadrants. Then discuss in (breakout room) pairs.

This is a chance to reflect, and ground yourself. The prompts that we used were: “Right now my body is feeling……”, “The challenges I’m bringing with me to this workshop are……”, “Something I have been paying close attention to is………”, “Lately it’s been important for me to…..”

“Loving the space to talk about personal feelings in a professional space.”

“I liked being able to focus. Being present for yourself and everyone. Knowing what may be on people’s minds ahead of the day. Giving everyone a voice.”

“It is calming and helps to concentrate.”

Conversation Cafe: Going deeper

Conversation cafe is one of my favourite techniques when facilitating live. It gives a chance of everybody to contribute and, through successive rounds, think more deeply.

The key to the live event is to use a “talking object”, so you can only speak when you hold it. This avoids the way people want to jump in and often don’t listen as a result, and ensures every single person in the room has a voice.

There are four rounds, one for initial reflections on the prompt (in this case “what is emerging for you, your work and society in the current crisis?”), one for further thoughts, an open discussion (without the “talking object”) and then a round of what you are taking away.

How to take the talking object online? People were split into breakout rooms of 5 to 6, and all but the speaker muted their microphone. One the speaker finishes they say who will speak next and that person unmutes. It worked well.

“Brilliant way to enable everyone to share!”

“The impossible is possible. It just needs a powerful enough trigger.”

“It started light, and then we went quite deep and opened up a lot of convo.”

“We are all facing similar challenges but have very different perspectives.”

“Summing up at the end – take-aways – rather than leaving a meeting thinking ‘so what?’”

Mad Tea:

You form two circles, so everybody is facing another person. Prompts are presented and each person responds in turn in just 30 seconds. (eg, “The current crisis is making me feel ….” and “Things that are more important for me now are… “) Then one circle moves round and you face another person.

It is a high energy activity, giving a chance to meet people quickly. In Zoom, you display the prompt in Chat (and on Broadcast) and split the room into pairs for 90 seconds, sending out a broadcast at the half way point. It still produces a buzz:

“It was AWESOME ENERGIZING.”

“Truly mad.”

“Enables structured clear conversations.”

“Creates energy.”

“Ice breaker – meeting new people and creates a talking points.”

“I feel re-energised.”

“Could be used for random idea generation when you get stuck.”

“Very rapid but actually a good way to meet lots of people rapidly.”

Ecocycle Planning

Here you explore where your different activities are, or the different elements of a project. The first time I did it, I was troubled that my activities were all on the gestation and birth side. Now I’ve come to realise that is where my strengths are, and what I need to make sure to do is pass activities on to others on that path from birth to maturity.

“So much wisdom in these rooms!”

“The impact of Covid has put lots in either the poverty or rigidity trap – we have an opportunity to do some creative destruction and give birth to new things too!”

“Brilliant way to involve your team and educate others who may not be invested in a team’s work.”

“It’s a good way of finding out where on the cycle different people perceive the same thing to be.”

W3: What? So What? Now What?

W3 is a great way to reflect on a discussion or a process and step away from self-generating beliefs. It simply consists of asking three questions, each to be considered first alone and then in pairs, to reflect on a process or shared experience:

What? What did you see, feel, hear, think?

So What? What are the implications?

Now What? What to do next?

“It ensures we think beyond what happened and into its implications and action steps.”

“Active reflection. An opportunity to focus on what this activity meant and was useful for.”

“I already use W3 in my teaching and in prompts to write reflection… but maybe doing it in smaller groups is better than whole class.”

Triz: Whats the worst that could happen?

In Triz you look at the worst possible outcome (eg, what would make this project fail?). Working first alone and then in groups, you examine what could lead to that result. Then, again working first alone and then in groups, you explore which of those things your organisations is doing.

Our prompt was “how can you ensure you respond to this crisis in a way that is reliably disastrous for yourself and others”. There was a lot of talk of Trump and injecting Dettol, but also of issues like “failing to adapt”.

“It helps NHS staff who are used to risk avoidance to bridge the gap to fresh eyes.”

“Enables honesty and openness in a safe way.”

“Finding solutions to some wicked issues.”

“A safe way of surfacing behaviours that are not serving us well.”

“Psychological safety- gives people permission and space to be creative/wild which then leads to productive reflective action plans.”

124All: Rapid engagement of everybody

124All is, in real life, the most commonly used structure. If you are discussing a new topic or issue or problem, ask each person to reflect on their own for a minute. Then join them into pairs. Then join the pairs into fours. And then a general discussion. It ensures everybody gets to talk, including those who are more reflective.

Online, especially with 102 people, the move from pairs into fours is tough. It can be done as Host in Zoom Breakouts, and is fairly easy for less than 20 people, but it would take a long time for 100. So we randomised the move into fours. Opinion was split on whether this worked better or worse than keeping the pairs together when they went into fours.

“Allows for a range of views to be shared.”

“A real chance to be heard.”

Troika: Consultation in threes

What challenge or issue would you like help on? Troika groups three people together. Each in turn raises their issue and explains it to the others. In real life, they then turn their back (so the others can’t see their response and facial expression) and hear the other two discuss their issue for 5 minutes.

Online, you can turn your back. But for me it was actually more effective than normal to turn off my video and be able to not just hear my two colleagues but see them too. It is remarkable how often real insights result from this process:

“I am amazed by usefulness of feedback in such a SHORT time!!!!”

“I think Troika is awesome!”

“How did that magic happen???”

“I didn’t think it could be so powerful.”

“I will use Troika again in my team as it gives perspective and fresh thought to things considered impossible.”

Drawing Together:

Take a piece of paper and, using the five set symbols, answer the prompt. In this case: Tell the story of your learning journey today and what has been sparked in you as a facilitator. Then join a pair to have them interpret it.

“A sense of shapes and the shape of the day.”

“Really enjoyed that, was a powerful tool.”

“Adds a creative element to storytelling through each other’s eyes.”

“It was really helpful for me to reflect and go through the journey using pictures. I thought sharing was fun and it was interesting to hear the other people’s interpretation.”

“It helped me see where I started from this morning and where I am now at the end of the day.”

The Overall Verdict

This was a hugely engaging event, the opposite of so many Zoom-based conferences. Many of those attending found it transformational:

‘I feel liberated! Fresh insights. Like the anti-goal! Zoom functionality is great – didn’t realise!”

“Must have required a lot of prep from the hosts!” Mo

“It was a lovely event and although we connected remotely, we achieved great discussions. Thank you everyone” Evi

“Loved it loads, was feeling ill, now better” Fiona

“very interactive and dynamic, loved it, thank you” Tatev

“Super day – lots of new neural pathways!” Hannah

“enjoyed every bit of the day. Lots to explore further” Sophia

“It worked very well on Zoom. Feeling very energised and excited..” Al

“Lovely spending a day out of the Covid madness” Martyne

“One of the best things about LS is that it creates the opportunity — and expectation — to LISTEN ACTIVELY to others” Jeff

“Inspiring seeing how successful the tools are in a virtual environment” Sally

“This was immersive, and even though really intense and I had a headache half way, I enjoyed it a lot. Also meeting so many people” Angie

“Today has been knowledge filled and it was a wonderful day-thank you” Fidelia

“I’ve got lots of tools to use with my team and those who are attending our leadership training. I am really energised by this and thinking of all of the possibilities there are with these tools. It has been great to meet so many people virtually and see how you can use Zoom to make meetings much more interesting.” Rosie

“Excellent day, never used Zoom before. Thank you for a great learning day” Anne

“Such a wonderful day. Exhausted from so many brilliant ideas, tools and thoughts. 🙂 Lovely to meet everyone!” Jenny

“It’s really opened my eyes to all the possibilities of how we can work virtually but keep creativity.” Danni

‘I’ve got lots of tools to use with my team and those who are attending our leadership training. I am really energised by this and thinking of all of the possibilities there are with these tools. It has been great to meet so many people virtually and see how you can use Zoom to make meetings much more interesting.’ Rosie

Reflection

These structures require minimal facilitation. The role is to decide which structure is appropriate and which prompt to use. It brings me back to Lao Tzu’s statement:

“A leader (or teacher) is best when people barely know they exist, when their work is done, people will say: we did it ourselves.”

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