youth leadership games

[Carol Achziger]

We just had a leadership training session.  Here are some "games" we 
played.  Our focus was communication and team building.

1.  Strange Animal

In this game, the members of a team are all assigned to be different parts 
of an animal.  Just as different parts of our body can communicate in only 
certain ways, so could the body parts.  For example, if you were the 
"head" you could use your voice to communicate (but only in a whisper). If 
you were the shoulders, you could only communicate by movement of upper 
body muscles, and so on...  The goal was to get the "foot" of the body to 
pick up what was desired by the head and put it in the container for the 
team.  Since feet do not have eyes, the person at the bottom was 
blindfolded.  The ultimate goal was to grab a variety of things from the 
floor (we used stuffed animals) to meet criteria (color, taste, texture, 
type of animal, etc.) that only the head knew.  After the game, we 
debriefed by talking about communication difficulties, working as a team 
with different strengths/weaknesses,  and how to check for effective 
communication.

2.  I don't know the title of the second game.  However, the idea is for 
team members to move each other through a hall filled with tennis balls. 
This can be set up like a relay - move one member at a time from one end 
to the other.  Team members must move through the hall without touching a 
tennis ball.  As they move through the hall they are blind folded.  The 
confusion comes in when more than one person from a team communicates 
information or when communication from your team gets mixed with 
communication from the other teams.  Again, debriefing was held about 
communication in "noisy" environments,  responsibility of every member to 
communicate and respond to communication, and how to make sure your 
message is heard and understood.

This was very helpful for us as we had some communication and team 
sustainment difficulties.  It allowed us to discuss them in light of the 
tasks that were fun and light hearted.  I have done training like this for 
several years and the success always depends on having a purpose for the 
game and quality time to discuss the results afterwards.  Hope this helps 
you.

Carol Achziger
21st CCLC District Coordinator
Logan City School District
(435) 755-2370

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