Leadership Games to experientially understand the beliefs of facilitative leadership

On this page we will be looking at leadership games to understand the underlying beliefs of :

• Trustworthiness
• Trust
• Win-win

Refer to the Training Games page for some basic rules on facilitation

Let's now look at the first of the games.

Leadership Game 1: for trustworthiness - 'Blindfold'.

Material needed:

• Blindfolds

2. Lead one group out of the room. Hand them the blindfolds and ask them to blindfold themselves.

3.Tell them that their colleagues will come and take them by the hand and lead them to two objects in the room which they are to identify. Their partners however will not talk to them but communicate to them through touch.

4. Assure them that their colleagues will ensure that they will be safe.

5. Instruct the participants in the room to step out and lead one person each. They cannot talk to their blindfolded partners. They can only use the sense of touch to communicate to their partners.

6. Yet through this sense of touch they should lead them safely about the task. The task is to lead their blind partners to any two objects in the room and help them identify the objects.

7. Start this leadership game.

8. You'll notice quite a few things which aresimilar to how people behave in real life. The blindfolded participants are very unsure of themselves and yet are willing to be led.

9. Among those who can see, some will barge towards the closest blind person, grab them by the arm and start to lead them along, forgetting that they cannot speak. When they come across the first obstacle the blind partner is stumbling along. Suddenly they realise the caution of leading them safely. After that one slip they become more careful.

10. Some others are sensitive and communicate through touching the elbow or the knee to nudge their blind partners around obstacles.

11. The blindfolded partners easily identify two objects and are led to their seats and their blindfolds removed.

Debrief of Leadership game 1, 'Blindfold':

The debrief questions:

• How do you feel?
• What are you learning?

Among feelings of anxiety, insecurity, responsibility and empathy with blind you'll need to draw their attention to the following learnings:

• Leaders always have the bigger picture
• The rest of the them have different pieces of the picture clear
• To follow a leader confidently, the leader needs to be trustworthy and communicate her trustworthiness to the person following her.

For other categories of training games go to the Training games page and follow the links.

If you would like to know more about leadership games go to the Contact Us page.

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