Why should senior management play rock-paper-scissors?
Read on and get to know the ancient secret!
Workshops are often used as islands in the corporate environment aiming to take people out of their natural suit & tie habitat to solve challenges in a different way. But changing mindsets from corporate to creative is not as easy as it seems.
I bring you two fun workshop exercises to liven up your events, raise the energy and establish a playful, creative atmosphere.
Happy feet greetings (10 minutes)
This game is golden from a storytelling training.
Use this to raise the energy and loosen people up by gradually raising the level of silliness at the workshops. I recommend to use it at the workshop’s beginning.
This is how it goes:
- Clear out space so people can easily move around. It is also good if people are barefoot.
- Ask the participants to walk randomly in the open space without making eye contact.
- Ask them to walk faster, faster and faster. Also make sure they play safely and don’t bump into each other.
(Through this, you raised the energy of the room, and people got more into their bodies by the movement.) - Ask them to slow down to normal walking speed and as they walk around, establish eye contact with various people, but don’t stop just move on.
- Ask them that when they made eye contact, stop, greet each other with their eyes, then move on again.
- Now, when they made eye contact, stop, shake hands and introduce themselves. Then start moving again.
- Now, when they made eye contact, stop, introduce themselves, then greet each other with their FEET, then start to move again. You can expect some laughs here. 😉
Keep the exercise fresh and spend max 15 minutes on the game.
Feel free to skip some stages or amp up the craziness by adding additional stages, like greet each other with a dance move, great each other with a grimace, etc.
The Rock-Paper-Scissors Championship (10 minutes)
This fun icebreaker game is superb for bringing out people’s playful side at your workshop. One of the best things with this workshop activity is that theoretically, it can be played with hundreds of people at the same time. I tried it with groups of 10-25 participants and people love it.
This can be used as an energy raiser exercise in the workshop’s beginning, or later on in situations when you feel that the participants need a boost, like right after the lunch break.
This is how the game goes:
- Everybody finds a partner to play rock paper scissors with.
- The pairs play until the best of 3, then the winner finds another winner to play against. The one on the losing side must join the winner as a cheerleader, meaning that he or she must cheer for and motivate the winner in the next games.
- So, after the first round there will be winners and cheerleaders, and the winners will play against each other. When someone with cheerleaders loses a game, they will all join the winner’s cheerleader squad.
- The game ends with an epic rock-paper-scissors showdown of the last two people standing and playing a final game, while every other participant are cheering and shouting for their champions.
Summary
Today you got to know two workshop games to raise the energy and maintain a playful, creative vibe. Use the Smelly Feet Greeting for light-hearted workshops, while you can easily lead the Rock-Paper-Scissor Championship in any setting where you have at least 8 participants. I led it to more senior professionals and they also loved it.
That is all for today. Free to tell me in the comments which game you liked the most.
Innovatively yours,
Viktor B.
