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Ten Great Reasons to Use a Training Game at Your Next Conference
By Ron Kaufman
A well-designed, well-delivered training game can get your audience involved with your topic – and with each other.
Here are ten great reasons to use a training game at your next conference or special event.
1. Break and melt the ice.
Games give everyone the opportunity to break out of traditional roles and express themselves more freely. New staff can step up to lead. Senior managers can let go and let loose. A great way to begin!
2. Draw out quiet or new participants.
Games can require everyone to contribute in order for anyone to achieve success. New or quiet participants will have to participate 'more than usual' and can quickly become valued members of the group.
3. Reveal hidden issues.
What isn't seen, discussed or understood in 'real life' can come screaming to the surface through a well-designed training activity or game. Expert processing can then help participants recognize the real issues at stake and openly discuss the implications.
4. Reveal hidden talents.
Who knows what skills and talents lie just below the surface of your colleagues? The right game roles, rules and conditions can set everyone loose to invent, create, design, negotiate, set new targets, take bold actions and succeed.
5. Generate a mood of energy and enjoyment.
Conference games let people have fun. A good game will deliver key learning points with involvement, energy, excitement and entertainment. What a great way to launch your program or wrap up the entire event!
6. Establish a reference point or introduce a metaphor.
People refer to effective training games and activities for many years. Insights from your conference game can become a positive anchor for long-term understanding and cooperation.
7. Highlight a specific theme.
Whether your focus is teamwork, leadership, customer service, competition, motivation or innovation, an effectively designed game can bring that theme to 'front of mind' – and keep it there throughout your event.
8. Gather new ideas.
Games put participants in a totally different context. All kinds of new ideas and insights tend to appear. The best ideas can be captured at the conference and pursued long after it is over.
9. Game solutions can become work solutions.
What succeeds in a game may succeed in the real world, too. Lessons learned in conference games can be useful throughout the year. Be sure to note the link between work and games when all the fun is over.
10. Games add energy to the mix.
Every conference should include a healthy mix of methods and techniques: speeches, workshops, exhibitions, demonstrations, meals and breaks, social gatherings, interactive presentations. And, in the right situations, effective, entertaining and energizing training games.
 Ron Kaufman is an internationally acclaimed educator and motivator for partnerships and quality customer service. He is author of the bestselling "UP Your Service!" and founder of "UP Your Service College". Visit www.UpYourService.com for more such Customer Service articles, subscribe to his Newsletter, or to buy his bestselling Books, Videos, Audio CDs on Customer Service from his secure Online Store. You can also watch Ron live or listen to him at www.RonKaufman.com.
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