Are you trying to get your team to work effectively together? Well team-building
activities are a great way to do it, and the marshmallow challenge is one that I
absolutely love. With any team-building activities, to get people to work
together, you need meeting ground rules, stay tuned to the end of this video and
I'm going to show you, and tell you how you can get a copy for you. Hi if you're
new here welcome, for more videos that are gonna help you excel in your career
and slay your projects, subscribe to my channel, hit that button, and a new video is
gonna come to you every Wednesday. The marshmallow challenge is a fun and super
easy exercise, and I get tons of great feedback from my clients whenever I do
this particular challenge, and it is packed with tons of great stuff, it shows
collaboration, it teaches people how to be innovative and creative, but most
importantly, shows people how they truly work together, so let's get to that fun
team building activity, the challenge, the challenge is to build the tallest
freestanding structure with a marshmallow on top, now the kit that
you're going to give out to the team, they can use as much of it, or as little
of it as they want, and you have a total of 18 minutes to do it, now what's really
cool is this is a lot of fun when you have multiple teams, and you have a
multiple challenge going around, and people are competing against each other,
but I've also done this with single teams, because there's great information
that you get when people actually do this challenge, the kit, so what do you
need in order to give to these team members, well, you need 20 spaghetti, dry,
20 of them, 20 of them, just don't do what I did,
you need masking tape, one yard or one meter,
you also need string, one yard or one meter, you have to give everybody
scissors, and don't forget, very important, this lovely marshmallow, don't do the
small ones, do something big, all right, so this is a kit that you're
gonna hand out to everybody, now as a facilitator you're gonna need a few
things, you're going to need a stopwatch, so for your 18 minutes, and last but not
least, if you have multiple teams, you need that good old measuring tape to see
how high people are actually creating their structures, deliver clear
instructions, so let the team know that they
have to use the full marshmallow, no biting, no tearing it apart, the full
marshmallow must be on top, in regards to the spaghetti, they have the ability to
break them up if they want, that's not a problem, again, the goal is the tallest
freestanding structure, even with the tape, and the string, they have the
ability to cut it up, so even though you're gonna give them one meter, or one
yard, just give them the full length, they can do whatever they want with it, they
can cut it up, the goal is, as long as when time is up, everyone backs away, and
the structure is standing on its own, start the challenge, all right, put your
timer on, and go, ready set go, and have everyone get at it, you may even want to
put some music on in the background, something light, maybe with a little bit
of a Boppy beat, to allow for people to kind of get into that move, the big thing
here as a facilitator, is listen and take notes, you are gonna get tons of golden
nuggets as you're observing teams, and what they're doing, but it's not just
about listening and taking notes for your wrap-up that we're gonna talk about
in a moment, but it's also for you to kind of get the team going, let them know
hey, this other team is building theirs higher, or even letting them know
the countdown out of it, just walk around and keep everyone engaged, finish the
challenge, alright this is where if you have a whistle blow it, stop time is up,
and have everyone back away, because that is the key, hands have to be up, no
one can be touching that structure, and as a facilitator this is where you get
to walk around with your measuring tape and see how tall people have created the
structure, as a collective group it's hilarious what you see that comes out of
this particular exercise, and if you want, if you have multiple teams, and you
decided prior to that you want to give out prizes for the tallest structure, go
for it, there's a lot of cool things that you
can do for that, like lottery tickets, or even candy, whatever it may be that's
acceptable within your organization, wrap up, this in my opinion, is the most
important part of the challenge, yeah the challenge is fun, it gets people together,
there's some great lessons learned from a standpoint of creativity, and
innovation, and how people work together, but it is the conversation that you're
gonna have with the group, and this is where you were listening and walking
around, and taking notes of, how did people work together,
so this wrap-up is critical, have everyone sit back down and debrief, hey
so how did that go, how did you feel, where's their pressure, what really
worked well for you, okay winning team, why is it that you did really well, did
you do a lot of planning, there's, dependent upon what you're
trying to achieve with this exercise, because as an exercise it's not just
about the team-building, there's lessons behind it, so as a project team you want
to perhaps really focus on how the team was working together, if it was other
ways of other departments working together, you may want to see how they
were sharing of information, but it really is going to be dependent upon
what your goal is, and you can set aside some specific questions to get that
conversation going, okay, now I know there's a lot that I gave you so don't
worry, because, if you actually want these written instructions, I have a
participants and a facilitators guide for you, that you can
grab from the link below for this particular marshmallow challenge, now
hold on, because I have something else for you too, remember at the beginning of
the video I said if you stay tuned to the end I'm going to share with you
meeting rules that are really critical to make sure the people are working
together, well here they are, and you can grab them from the link below as well,
please subscribe to my channel, like this video, and share with all the
professionals that you know, now if you've ever experienced this game, or if
you're gonna try it, let me know in the comments below, until the next video see
you later