Learning Activity: Spoons

Purpose:
To provide a fast-paced review of a topic (such as Leadership or Project Management).

Materials:
One deck of cards for each small group (about one deck for up to six people)
Plastic spoons (one for every person in each small group, minus one spoon)

A deck of cards for each small group (about one deck of cards for each four or five people.)
One plastic spoon for each person in each group, minus one spoon. (For each group there is one less spoon than the number of people.)
Place the spoons in the center.
Deal six cards to each person
The person to the left of the dealer begins by drawing a card from the center. They either keep that card or discard it to the person on the left, or discard another card from their deckto the person on their left.
The object is to gather six cards in the same suite.
When you have six cards all in the same suite, grab a spoon.
Once a spoon has been grabbed, any one else can grab a spoon until there are no more spoons. This will leave one person without a spoon.
That person must now answer a question on the topic (Leadership, Project Management, Communication...) from a deck of question cards. If they answer the question correctly, they can continue to play. If they answer incorrectly, they retire from the game and one spoon is also retired (so that there is always one less spoon than the number of people playing.

Sample Leadership Questions:

Which is more powerful, transactional motivation (things that cost money) or internal motivation (things that make you feel good about yourself?)
Is leadership mostly about authority or is it about influence?
True or False: your personality type is who you are and how you must always be
Four core leadership strengths include clarity, courage, creativity, and ____________
In effective meetings, every agenda item must have a goal, and every agenda goal needs a ___________
To prioritize a workload, it helps to align your work with which of these: your mission, or, your boss's personality.

Comments

Connect With Respect

It's the start of a better, deeper, more productive conversation. It's the small effort to make a big impression in establishing relationship. Connect with respect. You don't have to love the person you're interacting with (although, wouldn't that help?) but if you make the effort to demonstrate respect whatever you have to share will land with more credibility. It is a leadership strength. Connect with respect. Smile. Make eye contact. Listen. Honor customs, traditions, even organizational hierarchy. The choice of course is up to you. It's a very personal choice to connect with respect. If you make that choice, I think you will like the results. -- doug smith PS: I didn't expect to use a picture featuring a horse for this posting but when I saw it there was a deep feeling a respect showing. Action Step: Find a picture that represents respect for you and for a week, keep it close enough to look at it for a bit every day.

More Service Please

Would you agree that what we need is more service, not less? And yet, everywhere we look we see service slipping away, drifting into some lip-service pretending or worse yet, not even pretending. It is often a financial decision: you can have it nice or you can have it cheap. Over and over and over again people will choose cheap, even when that is not what they really want. We are better than that. You're better than that. I certainly hope that I'm better than that, too. If the level of service you provide depends on the payment you receive you are doing it wrong. Everyone deserves the very best service that you can possibly provide. -- doug smith

Serve With Love

Leaders must serve. We don't all like that. Sometimes, we'd prefer to be served. But, think about it. We serve our customers. We serve our boards. We serve (yes, we do) our team members. We even serve our peers and of course we serve our bosses. That gives us an important choice: we can serve gladly, or we can serve madly. The work is the same; the emotion is different. The difference between serving with resentment and serving with love is the difference between hardship and happiness. Doesn't happiness feel better? -- doug smith

Angry Leaders Fall

It is scary to watch someone lose their temper. Yelling, screaming, slamming, isn't it all unnecessary? Calm it down. Breathe. Relax. If you burn too hot you burn out fast. - - doug smith

Roots of Their Own

What looks like the root cause of a problem may have roots of its own. Keep digging. The rush to solve may leave things unresolved. -- doug smith

Instant Coach

Ask someone about their goals. You'll be doing them a favor. -- doug smith

Who Defines Your Goals?

Maybe your goals are assigned to you from someone else. If you have a job, that's probably true about many of your goals. But in the end, isn't it really up to you? What you do, when you do it, how you do it, no matter how formalized the process you are still involved and deciding. You define your goals and you define when those goals are done. Finish what you started, or kiss that goal goodbye. -- doug smith

Enjoy The Outcomes

Every problem leads to an outcome. Some you want and some you definitely do not want. You're going to prefer the outcomes of the problems you solve. Don't you think so? -- doug smith

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