Names: Marianne and Simone
From: Denmark
Today’s high: Simone was completely satisfied with the morning workshop: their group had just come up with a complete description of the perfect leader… She was therefore very surprised that another group’s leader was totally different… Both girls thought that these kind of workshops are great for creating awareness for all the important qualities a leader should posess. Marianne also enjoyed the bridge-assignment*…! Today’s absolute low: The amount of cake had decreased to dangerously low levels when these girls arrived.
Favourite facilitators: Markus and Nils, which seem to morph into each other seamlessly.

Name: Mohamed

From: Egypt

Today’s high: The fake bridge-assignment*: using such a stressful situation is a great way of bringing the discussion alive!

Today’s absolute low: The pace of things, which had a negative effect on Mohamed’s social life.

Favourite facilitator: Frej, always listening well and asking the right questions…!

*= In this assignment, participants were tricked into a stressful assignment, in which they had to build a paper bridge. They were given vage and contradicting instructions, which made the assignment practically unpossible. Afterwards, the group reflected on the way they reacted to stress.

Name: Laura
From: Spain
Today’s high: Today, Laura realized that you can actually learn a lot from each other, instead of falling asleep inside a Spanish lecture hall (An answer our lovely facilitators will appreciate…)
Today’s absolute low: Doing things all the time!
Favourite facilitator: Not yet (Laura wants to get to know them better)

So, what did we learn about good and bad leaders this morning?

A big discussion was whether a leader is a male or a female. One thing that stands out straight is that a leader should definitely wear hot pants. So, does that count for both male and female leaders?

One thing that must count for both of them is that he/she should be good-looking, otherwise it’s unfair!


A riddle for you:
How do you recognize a good leader by looking at his/her stomach?
If it has the shape of an ice-cream waffle, you can be calm because you are in good hands. If not, run away, the ice was either never there or it has been melting.

If the bad leader doesn’t come up in your mind, just imagine the devil thinking about naked girls!

Let's STRESS!

We all often go through stress situations, such as arriving late for the last train, when thinking about the future, job situations etc. Today we were taught about leadership roles and how a leader should always be punctual. However, our facilitators arrived late for the afternoon session. They seemed annoyed because they had an issue to be dealt with at the facilitator´s prep-meeting. They banged the door behind them and acquinted everyone in a harsh tone when assigning us a task of building a bridge symbolizing the good leadership. This made us frustrated, desperate, uncomfortable and confused! They were coming in and out of the room saying "you have 15 minutes to finish the task, you need to improve a lot on that".

The group started a brainstorm, even though we didn't know what we must do and felt no motivation, we found ourselves coming up with ideas quickly: "...two of us can paint symbols, other two can cut papers and the rest tie the bridge". Sadly, at this point Markus, one of our facilitators, showed up with a negative attitude, letting us know that he had quit the seminar because there had been an argument between the facilitators. Now we realized that it was just a role played to demonstrate to us and give us a case to reflect upon afterwards.

The discussion afterwards gave us tools to handle stressful situations.

Questions such as these came up: "how can you see the different leader roles manifest themselves in a work situation under pressure?", "how can a leader role be efficient in stressful situations?"
Being a leader you´ll be confronted with stress which can cause a lot frustration.

Therefore, be watchful!!!

"Energizers" and games from Wednesday and Thursday

We have had a lot of fun playing these crazy games, and therefore we would like to eternalise the ones we have played until now, so that we will always be able to look back and maybe use them again in other situations!

THE CIRCLE BALL-GAME

What you need to play this game: 2 juggling balls

All participants stand in a big circle.

Every second person takes a step into the circle. Now we have an inside and an outside circle. They step back again. We are aware of the two teams (“inside” and “outside” circle).
The two balls are handed out in opposite sides of the circle. One to each team.
The balls are now handed on (in the same direction of course), to the members of your own team only. “Inside circle” ball handed on to only “inside circle” team members, and vice versa.
The goal is to catch the other teams ball, by handing the ball on faster than the other team.
If the ball is dropped or handed on to a non-team member, your team looses a point.
You may not stand in the way of the other team and their “handing-on-the-ball”.


THE SOCIAL CHAIR

You don’t need anything else but good and strong people for this game.

Everybody gets together in a circle, with the same side facing the centre (fx their left shoulder). They have to stand very, very close to each other – it only makes it easier.
Slowly everybody sit down, at the same time.
When everyone is sitting comfortably, everybody claps their hands over their heads to celebrate a fantastic social work experiment.


ROCKS, SISSORS AND PAPER – SPECIAL EDITION

You only need people how are willing to say weird sounds and act quite strangely.

The plan is to evolve like in nature.

- You begin in the stage of the egg: squeezing your body together, all most sitting on the floor, like you are fitting yourself into an egg. The sound to the egg is “knock, knock, knock”, like you’re knocking on the inside of the shell.

- The next stage is the bird: you stretch your body a bit, still with bended neck, having one arm in front of your body (the beak of the bird) and the other hand on your lower back like the feather “tale” of the bird. The sound of the bird is: “squik, squik, squik”.

- The third stage is the bear: you stretch all the way up with both hands up by your head going “rarh, rarh, rarh”.

- The last and super winning stage is… SUPERMAN!!! Here you jump up and fly around the group celebrating, with one arm over your head chanting the wonderful melody of our Mr. Clark Kent. “Dam, da, da, dam, da, dammm” over and over again and celebrate!

You start with everybody gathering on the floor in the egg stage. By doing the rock, scissors and paper (1-2-3-now), you find out who will grow a stage and become first bird, then bear and at last SUPERMAN!
If you loose the rocks, scissors and paper, you will just stay in the stage you are in.
At the end of the game there will always be an egg left, whom all the others beat.

Good luck!

MOSQUITO, FISH AND BEAR

You need to be in an area where you have plenty of room to run away.
You start with two equal teams, standing in two lines facing each other.
They are going to do the classic rock, scissor and paper (1-2-3-now), but different… Now it’s called mosquito, fish and bear!
Being the mosquito you make the sound “bzz” while your right index finger wriggles in front of your face. Being the fish you gather your hands in the front of your body and move them like a fish swimming against a stream while mumbling “blob, blob, blob”. Being the bear you raise your arms threatening over your head and snarl “rahr, rahr, rahr”.
The mosquito bites (eats) the bear. The bear eats the fish. The fish eats the mosquito.
So the two teams first find out what animal they will be – with out the other team finding out. Then they get up on the two lines, facing each other. Then they count 1-2-3 and on now they do their animal. Depending on which animals they do, if one eats the other the winning team runs after the loosing team, and however they catch from this team has to go over to the winning team. And then you do it all over again until you can’t do it anymore.
A must is to have a sacred line behind each team, to which they can run and beyond this not get caught of the other team.

It's fun for all.

Check out our pictures.
We are so exited for more games to come.

Testing

Yet another test post ;-). It might look nicer to be able to post with your own name in the header so here we go.