Small Steps and Broken Stones

There is nothing new about learning and development professionals, be they coaches, facilitators or l&d managers, borrowing ideas and techniques from the sporting world. The most obvious example is business or workplace coaching, which has a good portion of its roots in the practice of traditional sport coaching and has been heavily influenced by the thinking of people like Timothy Gallway (author of The Inner Game), who successfully transferred their thinking from pitch or court to the boardroom.

To be honest though, the business world has been looking across to sport for inspiration for decades, be it in the hope of finding new ways of influencing, motivating, developing or inspiring their employees or perhaps just to have a reliable way of providing hospitality events for their clients. The traditional, male-dominated workplace saw itself reflected in macho sporting environments and felt comfortable leaning across and plucking out endless inspirational quotes and team building exercises.

But this isn’t a diatribe against the macho workplace, this is an attempt to pick out the most positive aspects of the sport/workplace interface, which I think are plentiful. In my own experience, what I’ve learnt as a football coach has had a fundamental effect on my abilities as a learning facilitator and a workplace coach. Designing and running training drills with a collection of unruly footballers has taught me so much about group dynamics, learning structures, delivery styles and self-confidence, and I savour the opportunities I have to take new ideas from one field to another. Football has heavily shaped my thinking in the workplace and I strongly believe that looking to another environment, any environment, is critical for anyone who wants to be better at what they do.

As a football coach, I’ve been very aware how attitudes to the ‘matchday warm-up’ have changed over the years. Back in the day, before a game the coach or team manager would send the players out for a few laps round the pitch and a bit of shooting practice and that would pretty much be their lot. Ideas around this area quickly began to develop, as the thinking was driven by the visionaries constantly looking for new ways to seek an advantage over their opposition. It soon became apparent that players would benefit from a warm-up that included a range of exercises, some designed to stretch the muscles and some to get their heart-rates up to the level they would be experiencing in the match. Coaches had begun to recognise that if their players were to be truly ‘match-ready’ and able to make an impact from the first whistle, then they would need a warm-up that involved exercises which replicated the kind of movements they would be making in the game itself.

If this weekend you were to go and watch a Sunday league game of football at your local path, you may well see a team warming up in the more traditional way, running few some half-hearted stretches before standing in line and taking turns to take an unopposed shot against their own goalkeeper, despite the fact that it is highly unlikely that they will face a similar situation in the game. If however, you go and see the Arsenal, you will see a warm-up which incorporates a succession of high-intensity drills where every player is able to replicate the movements and situations they will soon be finding themselves in. One team is warming up in a thoroughly amateur way and the other is pushing boundaries and finding new ways to continuously improve.

I think that the classic ‘icebreaker’ exercise should be viewed the same way. These kind of exercises are classically used at the beginning of a group learning session, they can have a variety of purposes, but usually it is to engage the group, bring them together and get them ‘warmed up’ for the activities that will follow. Unfortunately, it is precisely this kind of activity which we have often seen being parodied in programmes like ‘The Office’, trite and embarrassing games which the trainer has picked out of a ‘1001 Icebreakers’ book. Learners often dread them and see them only as an opportunity for unwanted exposure or a necessary evil that need s to be endured before the proper stuff can get underway. For my own part I now feel compelled to start every warm-up exercise that I deliver with a ‘I promise that this won’t be too painful or cheesy’ line, in an attempt to limit the pre-conceptions and anxiety that I know exists.

These kind of exercises are used for a good reason, it is important to get the learning group engaged, relaxed and focused on the work ahead, and a short sharp and effective drill is often the best way to do that. My contention is that to get the most out of this kind of activity, you should design a warm-up exercise in which you give the learners the opportunity to replicate the skills they are going to be using in the work ahead. If for example, you are delivering an away-day for a team of directors, in which they plan to be analysing the external environment and identifying possible risks, then create a warm-up exercise that includes those skills. You can (and should) keep it simple, you can keep it light, but whatever you do, make sure that it’s relevant. Even if your warm-up exercise consists of nothing more than the same question directed at each learner, then tie that question in to the aims and objectives of the entire session.

The reason that the icebreaker has become so poorly thought of is that too often trainers and facilitators have used exercises that have no connection to the rest of the learning event. Delegates aren’t dummies, if they can see that (for instance) your carefully constructed bingo exercise has no link to the networking skills course you’re delivering then of course they’ll view it as nothing more than a frivolous bit of fun. And that’s at best, at worst they’ll feel condescended to and may start to disengage.

I prefer the aim high approach. Challenge your learners and get them focused and sparking off each other from the moment they enter the classroom. If you can get them match-ready, then they will produce the results you are looking for.