Team DIY activity: Simbols puzzle: Improve communication skills, team planning, implementation, process improvement and team leadership

Simbols can be solved with good communication skills

Simbols is a great team exercise! Simbols addresses communication skills, team planning and implementation, process improvement and team leadership in a lively, although at times frustrating, way. Simbols works well with groups of between 5 and 15 people and lasts 45 minutes.

As they work together to assemble a visual puzzle, team members need to do three things:

• Set up and manage an effective communication system that everyone understands and can use efficiently.
• Develop a dialogue which will lead to a common understanding of abstract concepts
• Deliver, against very tight time and quality targets, a successful solution to the problem they face.

Excellent communication is not enough: the team must also demonstrate excellent project planning and process improvement. Teams respond to the challenge the activity offers, enjoying ‘pitting their wits’ against the problem and seeing tangible proof of improving performance. In addition, they develop key skills that are of significant value in team briefing, coaching, instructing and delegating task responsibility to others.

Here are some recent applications of Simbols that we know about. We hope they will give you some ideas about how you could benefit from this lively and effective learning tool:

• Preparing for a product launch.
• Allowing managers to develop a strategic plan for their teams to implement.
• Identifying different learning and thinking styles in a team.
• Working in three remote sub-teams to complete a joint project.
• Making transitions between large and small group working.
• Refining a process to improve operational performance.
• Recognising diversity in teams, the different perceptions that people bring to a situation and how easily this can cause misunderstanding.
• Reaching agreement about a strategy in a situation in which many viable options exists.

Watch this film about the exercise https://vimeo.com/174671638