Training soft skills via board games
What does “playing board games” associate for you with? A fun and a good time? But is there more to them than just that? As a huge fan of board games and soft skills training I have got interested in the synthesis of those 2 fields: could we improve some soft skills by using empirical experience acquired on the game board?
A game learning and an edutainment are two terms used for entertainment or a game activity aimed at educating participants. However, it is uncommon to have trainings, whose main tool of teaching would be a board game.
Training with BEST Kaunas
Recently, my friend, co-trainer and player, Gediminas and I got a chance to try this synthesis out with the members of BEST Kaunas organization during their Motivational weekend. Training request included a list of optional topics: Teamwork, Leadership, Time management; allocated time - 2–3 hours, 15-25 people (new and experienced).
Instead of choosing 1 topic and a regular theory-practice framework, we decided to turn the training into a simulation with observation (*idea adapted from Leadership summer school) with multiple difficulty levels.
Simulation
For the simulation we used a board game ‘Wingspan’ — an up to 5-players, resource-management and worker-placement board game. During the game, players usually need to strategize, make plans for the future and adapt to a quick-changing environment.
However, to accommodate many people, instead of a 5-players game we made each “player” a team. This change also provided us with flexibility to adapt to an unpredictable number of final participants. Furthermore, a few participants were tardy, therefore, they joined the teams later, which created an additional challenge for the team to incorporate them.
Each team was observed by 1-2 senior members (a more advanced experience for NGO seniors) who paid attention to the team‘s leadership, teamwork and time management skills. After the game the observers gave feedback to the teams on the previous mentioned skills and additional remarks. Finally, we gathered all the participants together and debriefed the training from the participant-player‘s and participant-observer‘s perspective.
Since the game originally consists of 4 rounds and each round is started by a different player, in order to simulate a more dynamic atmosphere in the game, we used these rules to create a leadership role - each round there was 1 leader per team who was responsible for organizing the teamwork, managing the time (participants were informed that they have ~2 min for the turn). The leader was also responsible for the final decision. As there were 4 people per team, everyone got a chance to lead.
Our insights
Empirical experience should be as short as possible in order to have more time for feedback and debriefing as the learning points need to be crystalized. The game on average lasts 40-75 min. In our case, as we had only 3 hours for the whole training session, there was not enough time left for all learning points to be identified. Therefore, a shorter board game or a longer training is recommended.
Trainings should include active movement if possible. In our case, we arranged teams at different tables at the sides of the room, while keeping all of the open information, that everyone needs to know about before making their decision, in the center of the room. As this information was changing every turn, participants (or delegates) were motivated to come and update themselves. This helped to create additional important roles inside the team, as well as helped to keep the energy level high.
Together, push and support, can stimulate growth. During our simulation every participant was assigned to be a leader. We had a situation of 2 participants who joined the group later and needed support for integration. With the right support and preparation one participant bloomed during their leadership round and remained active until the end of the game while another participant did not integrate so well.
A training literally being a game changes everything. During other training sessions with similar goals a common problem for participants is how to incorporate a new, deeper understanding into their lives. However, during our simulation players were literally playing a game while working as a team. Participants were able to and did change their interaction with the team during the simulation due to noticing in action how team members react to their decisions. This was most likely due to most participants treating the training with a stress-free attitude as well as having time (and necessity) to interact with all team members between turns.
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Even though it is almost impossible to pass all the joy we (and participants) had during the training session, we strongly recommend the next time you play a board game to look into that as a treasure with the learning points inside.
