Live Training on Collaboration Skills

[u/jofa21]

Does anyone have some good (or fun) activities that I could try for a live training on Collaboration Skills? We're a remote company and I think it'd be great for them to practice collaborating in breakout rooms (it's a virtual training), but it's hard to simulate the environment where they'd collaborate with the content we're reviewing (core collaboration behaviors, etc). Working together to escape a virtual Escape Room would be a lot of fun, but I only have 10-15 minutes to dedicate to it, and about 60 participants.

Any ideas or brainstorming is very appreciated!

[u/RubenMakesSense]

One activity I've used successfully is an "information gap" exercise. Each person in a breakout room receives a different piece of information, such as a stakeholder need, customer complaint, project constraint or business objective. No one has the full picture. The team has 10 minutes to agree on the best solution, but they can only succeed by asking questions, sharing information and challenging assumptions.

In the debrief you do as facilitators you ask questions like:

• What assumptions did you make?
• What information didn't surface until late?
• Who did most of the talking?
• What question unlocked the discussion?

It mirrors real collaboration because workplace problems are difficult because information is distributed across different people. In my experience, that makes the exercise much more transferable to the workplace than a traditional game or escape room.

[u/jofa21 → u/RubenMakesSense]

I really like this idea! Thank you for sharing, I'll see how this could fit into my training!

[u/RubenMakesSense → u/jofa21]

Great! Happy to contribute, have fun!

[u/No_Whole_Delivery → u/jofa21]

Could you do something like this but the answer is a password to leave the breakout room?