Collaboration Group Lego Exercise

1. Collaboration Group Lego Exercise Team work and Communication!

2. One of the things that challenges our natural resilience as humans is having to adapt ‘our’ way of doing things to someone else’s style, rules and overall approach. • In an organisation this can be experienced during team work and overall organisation ways of working – such a: • internal hierarchies – where people that don’t always have the right capabilities • not always having the relevant information • communication challenges • This exercise will test all of the above and allow you to assess your approach to some of the difficulties highlight with group think and creative collaboration. Introduction

3. This is a group exercise that is scheduled for 10am on Thursday of Week 5. • You will be assigned into teams of 4-5 participant and will be provided with a meeting place based on your location. Note: all your team members may not be physically in your location so the builders may need to use Google hangout to connect to their captain and team leader! • You will receive a pack with these instructions, two Lego sets and blind folds. • Each team is going to build a Lego structure 1 and will have 10 minutes to do thisand 10 minutes to debrief. They will repeat this for Lego structure 2. • However there are a number of constraints associated with this. The Brief

4. Roles in the team. There are 3 roles in each team. • You must decide who is the: • Captain – this person is responsible for looking at the design and communicating the design to team leader. They are also the time keeper. • Team leader – responsible for directing the team in the build based on instructions from captain and observation of builders. • Builder 1 – responsible for building the structure • Other Builders - responsible for building the structure but these must be blindfolded • Note: where team members connect through Google hangouts we suggest the are assigned the Captain or team leader role. You must contact the course facilitator with the name of the Captain in order to receive instructions for the Lego set. Roles in Teams

5. You have 10 minutes to complete to build the Lego! • The captain is the only one who can view the Lego instructions. • The captain can only communicate to the team leader. • The captain and Team leaders may not touch the Lego blocks once the team starts building. • ALL builders must be physically involved in the design of the structure • Team leaders can only explain to the team where each block and colour should be placed. • The team leader and captain must not tell the builders what the structure is! • The Team are not allowed to draw shapes to demonstrate. • One builder must remain blindfolded • The captain must time the exercise and stop the team at 10 minutes. • At the end of the 10 minutes take a photo of the Lego and add it to your blog with the outcomes of your debrief – be honest!! Note: You need to complete the debrief before repeating the exercise with Lego Structure 2 The Rules!!

6. After each Lego build discuss: • How were decisions made? • Who influenced the decisions and how? • How could better decisions have been made? • Did people listen to each other? If not why not? • How was conflict managed? • What kinds of behaviour helped or hindered the group? • How did people feel about the decisions? • How satisfied was each person with the outcome? • What have you learnt about the functioning of this group? • How would you do the activity differently? • How could the behaviours you observed effect the creative process? • After building Lego Structure 2 discuss what was different. Debrief