Employees that possess effective communication skills are less apt to misinterpret information passed along to them by their supervisors, colleagues or clients, ensuring more accurate transactions and higher productivity. Improving listening skills among work teams through various activities can help these teams learn how to better influence, persuade and negotiate amongst themselves and others.
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Story Telling
One activity that can help work teams build listening skills is similar to the games played on the television show 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' Team members should sit in circle and one person should be chosen as the leader of the team. That person decides on a topic for a story and begins the story by providing the first sentence. Going in order, each team member must pick up the story where his colleague left off, which makes it imperative to listen intently and follow the theme of the story.
Telephone
Hearkening back to childhood when this game was played with neighborhood friends, the game 'Telephone' can help sharpen the listening skills of work teams in any industry. Employees must line up in a row and the first person should be given a sentence to whisper to the next person in line. That person then whispers whatever she heard to the next person in line, and so on until the final person in line has received the message. The way to measure the listening skills of the team is to determine how the statement changed as it was passed from player to player.
Building Bridges
Teaching teams how to work together and listen to each other is the objective of an activity that Executive Essentials refers to as 'Building Bridges.' It requires the use of Toobeez or a similar building toy like Legos or Tinker Toys. Teams should be split into two groups and each group instructed to build half of a bridge without looking at the other team's progress. The objective is to be able to connect the two bridges at the end using only one more piece.
Mine Field
One team activity that helps to enhance listening skills while also building trust among colleagues is a game called 'Mine Field,' according to the skills training organization Mind Tools. This activity requires a large space because various obstacles, like chairs, pillows and boxes need to be scattered about, leaving enough room for a person to walk in between the objects. Teams should be divided in pairs and one member blindfolded. This person will be challenged to navigate the mine field using only the verbal instructions of his teammate as guidance, heightening his dependence on his listening skills and trust in his teammates.
References (2)Resources (1)Choose Citation Style
Fagnani, Stephanie. 'Team Building Activities on Listening.' Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/team-building-activities-listening-20014.html. Accessed 30 May 2019.
Fagnani, Stephanie. (n.d.). Team Building Activities on Listening. Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/team-building-activities-listening-20014.html
Fagnani, Stephanie. 'Team Building Activities on Listening' accessed May 30, 2019. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/team-building-activities-listening-20014.html
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Name of Group Game: Telephone Charades
*Special thanks to Chris Chu for providing the group game idea Type: Indoor or Outdoor Number: Small Group (more than 10 people) to Large Group (20 + people)
Age: Middle School – Adults
Time: 15 – 20 minutes
Summary: Funny icebreaker game, especially for larger groups. Easy to learn and play, with little preparation.
Goal: To have the player at the end of the line do best imitation of the original action.
Preparation:
– Print the list of actions below and plan what your actions will be – You’ll be the moderator and judge
How to Play the Telephone Charades Game:
1. Split everyone into teams of five or more (can have teams of up to 10 people each). Ask each team to stand in a line.
2. Explain the game: You (the moderator) will be showing an action scene to the person at the front of the line, with no words or sounds. Everyone else will have their backs turned to you, except for the person at the front.
3. Once the person understands the action scene as best as he/she can, he or she taps the shoulder of the next person in line. The next person turns around, and the person imitates your action scene to that person, with no words or sounds. Once he or she understands and remembers the action scene, he or she taps the shoulder of the next person, and so forth. An action scene can be continually repeated until the person understands the action scene.
4. The last person in the line is eventually reached. You will judge who has the most accurate action scene to what you did originally. The team with the most accurate action scene will get one point. The team with the most points wins the game.
List of Actions:
1. Go fishing in a boat, catch a fish, and fry it 2. Walk to the refrigerator, get bread, ham, and mayo, and make a sandwich 3. Drive through a fast food restaurant, order a large burger, fries and soda, get your food and drive away. 4. Turn on a television, watch a football game, eat popcorn, and cheer for a team’s touchdown 5. Jump out of a ski lift, ski down a mountain, go into a lodge and drink hot chocolate
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To add this game to your website or blog, just copy and paste the following URL: https://www.greatgroupgames.com/telephone-charades.htm
Everybody knows this about telephones: They do not respect privacy. That was true long before the advent of the cellphone and is even more obvious in the movable workplace that is the 24/7 office of the 21st century. To paraphrase Joe Louis, 'You can run, but you can't hide.'
One night, shortly after Elise Lee had begun a job as an executive assistant to a principal in an investment banking firm in Manhattan, she became ill and was rushed to a hospital.
The next morning, she was lying in bed -- her ailment still undiagnosed, her body hooked to an assortment of intravenous tubes, her voice barely audible -- when the telephone rang.
Both her boss and the office manager were on the line, firing questions.
Sample emcee script for seminar. 'What happened to you?'
'Should we hire a temp?'
'How long do you expect to be out?'
Ms. Lee, who lives in Carmel, N.Y., was scarcely equipped to answer. She recalls: 'I was experiencing pain and tried to explain that perhaps we could speak at another time. But investment bankers persevere.
Continue reading the main story
'The two of them continued to press on as they asked me several business-related questions. I suggested again that I was not really in the best of condition to continue the conversation.'
The suggestion went unheeded. Finally, while her two tormentors were still yapping at her, Ms. Lee simply hung up the phone.
She says she drew a lesson from the experience. 'To this day,' she writes, 'I believe the reason I lasted several more years than I should have with the firm is because I always disengaged my inner phone when overwhelmed by the aggressive nature of the players.'
The year was 1973, and Marty Goldman of Bellmore, N.Y., now a computer consultant, was caught in a time warp.
On a three-block stretch of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, eastward from Avenue A at Sixth Street, the year was 1906, because Francis Ford Coppola was filming 'The Godfather, Part II.' The streets had been transformed by turn-of-the-century storefronts and horse-drawn carts and were filled with characters in period costumes. Hundreds of people who might want to take a break from the make-believe Little Italy of young Vito Corleone and communicate with the outside world had to rely on a handful of pay telephones inside the stores.
Mr. Goldman was working on the 'Godfather' location as a horse wrangler and wagon driver. His boss expected him to call to deliver updates on the health and well-being of his draft horses and wagons.
Mr. Goldman, in costume, was inside one of the only phone booths in the area, delivering a tedious report, when he noticed that Robert De Niro, costumed as young Vito and en route to an Academy Award for best supporting actor, was waiting patiently outside for the conversation to end.
At that point, Mr. Goldman writes, the discussion became even more superficial: 'Hey, boss,' he remembers saying. 'Guess who's waiting for us to get off the phone? Somebody who actually has some real importance to this movie.'
Mr. Goldman notes that outside the booth, a placid Mr. De Niro could hear nothing of the conversation.
Now it is neither 1906 nor 1973, but 2003, and a nostalgic Mr. Goldman writes, 'The true equality of the old-fashioned phone booth is something cellphones have irreversibly replaced.'
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In addition to being an author, Karen DeCrow, a former president of the National Organization for Women, is a lawyer who specializes in employment law, civil liberties and issues of age and sex discrimination. Her office is in her home in Jamesville, N.Y., near Syracuse.
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Telephone Game Story
'Like most attorneys, I spend a good deal of time on the telephone,' she writes. 'During the summer, that is where you will find me, in the garden, talking to lawyers on the phone.'
Funny Telephone Phrases
Ms. DeCrow recalls: 'On a sunny afternoon, I am in the middle of a negotiation. Opposing counsel, speaking from her Manhattan office, interrupts her train of thought and says: 'What a terrific bird-song tape you have! It must be very relaxing.'
'When I tell her it is a chorus of actual birds, she laughs. I did not press my point -- it doesn't pay to make them too jealous.'
Some years ago, Alicia M. Kershaw of Manhattan was the director of an investment bank with offices on the 31st floor of the World Financial Center. 'Only a few close colleagues knew that I worked from my home in Westchester County a couple of days a week,' she writes. 'I had a pretty office in a glassed-in porch, with a door opening to my backyard.'
One day, while Ms. Kershaw was on a conference call at home, a bird flew into her office, pursued by her cat, 'shattering the calm in a bloody, violent battle and the all-too-predictable result.'
Telephone Game Phrases For Kids
Startled, Ms. Kershaw let out a shriek. Then, feeling obligated to explain, she said, 'There's a cat killing a bird in my office.'
The brief silence that followed was broken, she said, when one bewildered participant in the call asked, 'On the 31st floor?'
A few years ago, Nicole Giantonio, who now lives in Aspen, Colo., was working as a sales director out of her apartment in an old Manhattan brownstone.
While she was on a conference call with four co-workers from Baltimore, someone knocked on her door. When she opened it, a man announced himself in a loud voice: 'New York City toilet inspector.'
Ms. Giantonio's co-workers erupted into laughter. She recalled one of them as saying, 'only in New York.'
Ms. Giantonio learned later that water efficiency rules required the replacement of all toilets in the building. An inspector called to make sure that the work had been done.
Such experiences yield lessons.
In Ms. Giantonio's case, she writes, 'I learned to use my mute button more often.'
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