ABSTRACT
Over the years we have become increasingly exasperated by group exercises where the groups end up being highly competitive with one another. This usually results in a ‘must do better than them’ mentality, rather than a ‘what can we learn from this exercise’ mentality. This led us to reflect on how we designed, managed and ran group exercises. In particular we ended up with some clear ideas about how to design and manage group exercises which implicitly and explicitly require group collaboration for successful completion. One interesting and unexpected result of this design process has been a significant increase in the enthusiasm of the participants and the energy level shown by the groups in carrying out such exercises.
This chapter is an attempt on our part to share our observations on group process, the design process we have adopted and some observations on the effects of running exercises in this way.
