At a recent meeting, Ellen Grove offered a quick game for the team to play before we dived back into agenda items.  The game was Happy Salmon.  This is a super simple game:  Get rid of your cards first by finding someone else that has the same option (high five, switch, fist bump and happy salmon) – completing the action and discarding the card.

I wanted to share this for several aspects:

  • I won…OF COURSE 🙂
  • I’m so accustomed to tying learning with every exercise that my mind immediately went to various key points that could have been made as we finished the game. Such as, did people impose their own constraints that caused them to go slower (for example one person didn’t move around the room but stood still)?  did people make a point to be inclusive or go for the quick win (I totally went for the quick win – I have no idea who I interacted with)?  and so on. Immediately, in my mind I found value in doing this exercise with these key thoughts and more, plus I had moved around and gained some energy.
  • Yet, we didn’t cover any key points when we were done.  We laughed.  We noted some of the challenges quickly. We moved on to the agenda.  I expected myself to be slightly annoyed with doing a random game/icebreaker with no tie in but I wasn’t.  Now some of that may be due to the thoughts I had listed above provided enough value but most of it was this…it was just different from what we had been doing for a day and a half and I appreciated that.  I appreciated that there was no point but to have a little fun.  I appreciated that I learned a new game I could do at work or at home.

Time to rethink some other games/exercises to include in my trainings!

What random games do you play in your trainings/meetings?

Tricia Broderick

Tricia Broderick

Tricia Broderick is a leadership and organizational advisor. Her transformational leadership at all levels of an organization, ignites growth of leaders and high performing teams to deliver quality outcomes. Tricia has more than twenty years of experience in the software development industry. She is a highly-rated trainer, coach, facilitator and motivational keynote speaker. Beyond her extensive knowledge and skills, her biggest offering is inspiring people to believe anything is possible.

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