Lego design
Featured in the The Team Working Activity Pack training manual
By Rod Storey
Category: Team Building
Credit price: 2 download credits (Single user)
There is always a need for effective verbal communication within teams (and within whole organisations) as a high proportion of all communication is verbal, either face to face or on the telephone. Poor verbal communication can easily lead to mistakes. The old story from the First World War of ‘Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance’, eventually being passed on as ‘Send three and four-pence, we’re going to a dance’, is a prime example. Successful teams and organisations ensure that however complex or simple the instruction or information, it is passed on clearly and effectively and is acted upon as intended. This training activity provides an opportunity to explore some of the problems of verbal communication and to improve it.
The direction taken will depend on the forms of the activity. If focusing on communication within the team, the exercise is conducted as follows: a selected team member designs a building or structure to be made from Lego; the designer then briefs the team verbally; the other team members attempt to make the building/structure, exactly to specification; and the exercise ends with a debrief from the team members to the designer on the effectiveness of the communication. If focusing on leadership, the exercise is carried out as stated, except the team leader designs the structure and briefs the whole team. When focusing on communication between teams, then both teams design and a spokesperson for each team briefs the other team.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers as a practical exercise to enable the participants to understand the difficulties of giving clear, precise verbal instructions and providing clear instructions for team members to carry out.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 8 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:00:00 |
| No of Pages: | 8 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Additional resources: Two identical sets of Lego building blocks, Telephone link between rooms
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers and is relevant to the training of team leaders as well as being suitable for whole teams and for communications between teams. It is useful part way through a training course when the teams or team leaders are operating quite well but still need to concentrate on effective communication. A team may be operating well despite poor communication, but could work even better, or more quickly, or more effectively with better verbal communication, for example, between members working in different parts of the company/office/plant/site or different parts of the country, as in a sales or servicing team.
Download the training activity, Lego design as featured in the Fenman training manual; The Team Working Activity Pack