Bop It and leadership

We have had some discussions recently about management development and why people still feel the need to head for the high ropes and the empty oil barrels.

Ally and I came up with loads of sparkling manager development ideas that we have used with clients in the past (depending on the outcomes obviously!) without having to go outside at all and I thought I would share one of my favourites.

Firstly I have to give credit to Kevin Cherry at Kaizen Training because I think I pinched this idea off him a few years ago. Thanks Kevin.

It works like this:

You will need a Bop It and a group of managers under development.

Set Bop It up using the group or “pass it” setting.

Get the group into a circle and ask them to pass it on whenever the instruction “pass it” comes from Bop It.

Initially their task is to keep trying and see how far round the group they can go before someone fails.

After a while it becomes clear that some are better at Bop It than others.

Because Bop It speeds up as you go along, the best way to achieve the task is to put the less able boppers in first while it is still fairly straightforward and have the more competent towards the end of the circle when it was more difficult.

The outcome for me was to demonstrate 3 key management topics and to get a discussion going on:

1. Recognising team member’s strengths and exploiting them,
2. How to delegate effectively without affecting people’s sense of value and worth and
3. If something isn’t working, do something different.

Additional key learning points to extract as appropriate could be around:

• Playing to our strengths gives us the best chance of reaching our targets. But people must be allowed to practice and sometimes fail if we are to learn where our strengths are.
• Everyone can make a contribution even if they aren’t the best,
• Prioritising the workload means understanding peoples strengths
• The weaker Boppers can be coached and encouraged to improve
• The stronger Boppers also need some encouragement
• Everyone gets better with practice. For some, Bop-it will be a new skill, for others this will be a refresher – just like real training courses in the real world

Sometimes a natural leader will emerge and it is useful to bring their traits and characteristics to the attention of the group. This can lead in to modelling good leadership.

You could also lead into planning as the group rarely stops to do any. They just get on with passing Bop it. For example after a couple of rounds you could press pause on the workshop and ask them to take a time out for some planning.

You also need to ensure that each learning point is bought back to their world by asking questions like: “We saw how that went. When do you see this in your day to day jobs?”

This is a fab exercise with loads of leadership learning and not a high rope or empty oil barrel in sight.

Bop It image by said&done

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