People have interesting reactions to training “games” in the workplace. And interesting varieties of history with them, often predicated on whether or not they have “won” a particular game, and whether games were effectively used as learning tools in their formative years. In the professions – depending on the industry, people seem disinclined to accept “games”… shrugging them off as frivolous distractions used mainly to break the ice and make people feel good. I’ve been advised to de-emphasize the word in developing Shift POV for market and have experimented with “structure” or “strategy” or “tool”. ShiftPOV is all of these things – but it uses cards and timers and is designed for high interactivity. It’s a Game, people. It’s time we expanded our experiential vocabulary.
There will always be those who roll their eyes at anything that smacks of the “un-serious” or the “un-professional”, as if the only options for learning in a professional environment are laden with data, seriousness and yet more talking heads.
I suspect our allergy to games comes from a deeper place though, and dismissing them on charges of frivolity is a cheap shot. “Games” challenge us in ways that are uncomfortable. Games threaten us with circumstances we can’t fully control, where:
1. We may be forced into the Binary dynamic of Winner (usually singular) or Losers (often plural – eliciting cringe-worthy memories of middle school soccer) or
2. We will have to raise our emotional stakes relative to the outcome or
3. We will let our corporate armor slip just enough to reveal some piece of authenticity we may wish to keep under wraps.
Let’s look at these possibilities more closely:
The Win/Lose Binary: What if we change what “winning” in a business sense really means when applied to a team, department, workforce? What if the only “Win” is one that includes everyone? The usual winners in our culture are rolling their eyes right now., and we all laugh. Well of course we do. Reinforce the status quo if it works for you, but it’s a short term gain at best. The change “tsunami” is heading toward your company….. we ALL need to win if we are going to survive.
Raise Emotional Stakes: If we engage passionately, things start to happen, heat up, combust. Nothing worthwhile really happens without being willing to get all worked up – but this means we make people, and ourselves – uncomfortable and things may feel like they are out of control….
Reveal ourselves: How scary is it to be authentically who we are – mistakes, faulty strategies and thinly supported opinions included? No wonder we would rather take a pass then enter into a training game in our workplace.
It’s so much easier to let these possibilities stop us from engaging in an interactive game structure. But here’s what we lose. We know that games stimulate and challenge. We know that they also have potential to level the “playing field” among participating hierarchical strata.
But additionally, The Right Game can:
1. Get People mentally focused and emotionally engaged
2. Become a working metaphor for real life interaction
3. Encourage deeper trust as more authenticity is shared.
Games are already familiar in business training as millennials increasingly embrace responsibility for curriculum design and implementation. With more working teams fractured into pieces spanning the globe, (over 79% of 1,700 knowledge workers working “always or frequently in dispersed teams” according to Ferrazzi Greenlight), gamification moves increasingly into online learning applications. And these are not your tired trainer’s ice-breakers. Businesses are challenged to build trust, focus and engagement quickly and efficiently across multiple cultures and languages. Games and gamification mediums can be hugely helpful if used with precision, clarity and intention. The time to shake up our outdated perception of games… is right now.