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March 2005
Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter, Volume 3, Issue 2
The Dr. Clue Newsletter is sent only to subscribers. We do not share names with anyone else. To receive your free subscription or to unsubscribe, email to drclue@drclue.com Dr. Clue: Solving the Puzzles of Teamwork This Issue:
Dr. Clue Central Welcome again to the Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter In this issue, we've got an icebreaker to smile about; an article that lets you look at communication through the lens of personality styles, and a puzzle that deconstructs the great Michael Jordan himself. Enjoy!
Dave Blum
Teambuilding Icebreaker Set Up: Participants will be in paired teams. They will be standing and need to have enough room to move around a bit. Process: Announce to the group that you will be testing their psychic ability. Have them get into pairs, facing you. Ask, "How well do you really know each other?" Announce: "You're going to have to trust me during this exercise. I'm going to teach you three different signs. When I do the sign, please repeat it after me. Ready?"
Now direct the pairs to stand back to back. The idea is to start thinking like their partner. Have each person, unbeknownst to their partner, silently choose the sign they will do first. Then, on the count of three, have each person turn around and do their sign. If they match the sign, great! They should continue until they've matched all three signs. Discussion Questions: What made this game fun? Why do you think we did this game? What was it like to give up that much control? The Point: People find themselves working side by side with their co-workers, sometimes for years on end, portraying themselves only in their professional roles only. But everyone has many aspects to themselves, some more serious, some lighter and more humorous. By "letting out" our humorous sides, we get to witness each other with fresh perspectives, a key action in building trust. (Thanks for this one to Dr. Clue trainer David Ferrera) Dr. Clue is the premier designer of corporate teambuilding treasure hunts, nationwide. We start with the cool, historical neighborhood of your choice, near your office or conference locale. We then scout the area to find its fascinating, hidden treasures; we write fun and challenging puzzle-based clues to lead you to each mystery location; and we bring it all alive as a half-day, interactive, "living board game" with an emphasis on teambuilding in business. To read about our hunt packages, click here. To see a list of our current treasure hunt locations, click here.
Feature Article: How is it that we can be so explicit and clear when communicating with someone, and yet they walk away having had a different conversation? How do our teams pull in different directions, all the while thinking that they're on the same page? Do the same words really mean something so different to each of us? Apparently, yes. How we form our words, images and metaphors, and how that impacts our communication, is fundamental. We all see the world through a kind of lens that is our subjective perspective. Understanding this lens enables us to understand the subtext and meaning beneath the words. Is there a way to explain how our language gets shifted by our lenses of perception? Thankfully there is, rooted in an ancient system called the Enneagram. Here's a real world example of its practical use, on a business team level as well as from a more universal perspective. A manager (let's call him Michael) gives his assistant (we'll call him Marvin) very explicit instructions on a procedure. Michael's intent was to make the instructions clear, but somewhere along the line, Marvin missed something. When Michael saw the mishap, he felt that he hadn't been clear enough, and took Marvin aside to go over the procedure in greater detail, with more emphasis, and more urgency. This pattern repeated, escalating the level of stress for both of them, with the situation not being reconciled. Both felt they had good communication overall, and yet both were getting frustrated. Looking at Michael's lens type, we find that he sees the world through the lens of correctness: right and wrong. His language and description are all formulated with precision and accuracy. From Michael's perspective, Marvin's inability to accomplish the task properly must be related to the precision of the description. Marvin, who sees the world through the lens of helping and approval, was looking for language that indicated this kind of connection. There was no such language in Michael's detailed instructions. Regardless of how precisely Michael tried to express the "best way to do it," Marvin could only hear that he had done it wrong, making it impossible for him to hear another method being proposed. This is a common occurrence in team dynamics, and could easily have gone into an endless cycle of frustration with the result being a sense of criticism, the procedure not being corrected, and a dropping of morale. The Enneagram is an ancient, highly pragmatic system that allows us to develop empathy for a wide variety of personality types and communication types (not just the two sampled above). Empathy is an important part of excellent communication. Once you can understand the listener's experience from within, you can present and receive the communication more easily. Armed with his Enneagramatic knowledge of Marvin's desire to help and please (both Michael and their clients), Michael thus re-addresses the issue with Marvin's primary motivation at the start. Rather than tell Marvin that he did it "ABC way" and he should do it "XYZ way," Michael moves both of them back from the issue and onto the same side (empathy). "Marvin, y'know what would please our clients, and would really help me out too?" Okay, now Marvin is listening intently, and not feeling defensive, because all his hooks are now present. "If we did this procedure XYZ way, can you see how helpful it would be?" Because Marvin is not starting out defensive, he is able to hear the procedure this time. Knowing that it will please his boss and the clients gives him all the motivation he needs. Michael's original (common) assumption - that another person's brain would take in and sort information the same way he does - caused his communication to be driven by his own proclivity for clarity and precision. This was lost on Marvin, whose lens only allowed in the criticism. When Michael re-phrased the communication within Marvin's framework of helping and approval, he was heard. We each have these lenses, filters, and proclivities, and they impact our language. By understanding how each lens shapes our language, we can make the adjustments necessary to work together more effectively and efficiently. You know that you need to adjust your level of jargon or technical wording with your listener to help them understand your point, so why not adapt your communication style to align with their entire world view? Understanding your listener is a prerequisite to your listener understanding you. What drives your listeners? What do they feel connected to? What is important to them? What is their focus of attention? How does this shape their language? This is what the Enneagram can help you to understand. Our lenses or Enneagramic Types are like a form of encryption; we create our words, images and metaphors in a kind of code that represents our experience of the world. Knowing your listener's lens is like having a decryption key to their code. When you use the key that fits their lens, your communication is smooth, effortless, accurate, and devoid of miscues. And isn't that a worthy goal! (Ian Blei uses the Enneagram to improve the effectiveness of organizational communication and the quality of relationships. Read about him on the web at http://www.optimized-results.com, or check out his Dr. Clue Workshop.)
What does a teambuilding treasure hunt look, feel and sound like? Puzzle Answer to Last Issue's Puzzle In our last issue, we asked you to solve two puzzles. The first one provided the following string of letters: FISILXLLEMTOTERERS. Your task was to remove "six letters" to then reveal an American president. Rather than losing a total of 6 letters, the trick was to drop out the actual letters "sixletters". This would have given you the name "FILLMORE", as in Millard Fillmore. Fillmore was your answer. For the second puzzle, you needed to solve the Cockney Rhyming slang. If you had solved it correctly, you would have revealed the secret message "Baseball Iron Horse", referring to Lou Gehrig. Lou Gehrig was your answer. (For the complete answers to the rhyming slang clue, email me at dave@drclue.com. DR. CLUE HONOR ROLL This month's sole puzzle solver was Colleen Leonetti. Congratulations Colleen!
Today's Puzzle Challenge Fill in the rest of this insightful quote (advice from Coach Dean Smith to Michael Jordan in his freshman year at UNC) by answering the questions below. "Michael...
(Answer next issue. As always, we'll list the first five puzzle solvers in our Dr. Clue Honor Roll!) What does a typical Treasure Hunt CLUE look like? click here. to follow along with one. Dr. Clue's News January/February was a great start to the New Year for Dr. Clue, with terrific treasure hunt programs in Las Vegas with Price Waterhouse Coopers and Orbitz; in San Francisco at the Exploratorium with SAP; in San Jose at the Tech Museum with FineGround and BEA Systems; and in Orlando at Universal Studios with Genworth Financial. Spring inquiries are flooding in for our FOUR NEW INDOOR HUNT VENUES!
No need to let the unpredictable winter weather hold you back. We've got a full-range of fun, fascinating, "climate-controlled" treasure hunt locations, ready to roll. To read more, click here.
Link Swap
Big Spring Discount: Our clients, including Oracle, Yahoo, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Apple, and Wells Fargo agree that Dr. Clue is cutting-edge teambuilding.
Reader Contributions We'd love to hear your comments about the newsletter. And we welcome contributions! Please send us your ideas, articles, icebreakers and puzzles. And remember: If you liked this newsletter, please forward it to a friend or a colleague. Information is meant to be shared! Watch for the next edition of the Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter in May.
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Dr. Clue Treasure Hunts
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