How to Design a Leadership Game

Work games should allow participants to cooperate, not play against one another.

While some individuals are born leaders, others struggle with the decision-making skills and confidence required to lead others on a team. Leadership games, when played with coworkers, department heads, church groups and other groups of people, help relate leadership roles to metaphorical situations to better understand what proper leadership requires. A good leadership game contains a group dynamic, opportunities for several to lead and a way to relate the game to real-life applications.

Instructions

1. Focus on the leadership principle that you'd like to work on with your group, such as decision-making skills or brainstorming as a team. The principle on which you focus becomes the point of the game, allowing the game to act as the metaphor so participants better understand the relationship between the two.

2. Select an activity that mirrors the leadership skills required to operate in the real world. For instance, to improve decision-making and problem solving, play a game such as human knot, where your participants stand in a circle, then grasp the hands of those standing across from them to create a knot. Appointing a foreman, the group then works together to untangle the knot.

3. Focus on how the game improves the greater good for the team. Proper leadership isn't about allowing one person to shine alone, but to appoint a leader as the ambassador to help facilitate communication and delegate responsibility. Ensure that the leadership game you create requires the leader to receive input from the rest of the team for success.

4. Play the game so that several individuals have the opportunity to be leaders, not just the usual suspects. Even team members who aren't usually put in leadership positions should have the chance to play the game as a leader to experience a new point of view that might help them be more accepting and supportive of real-life leaders in the future.

5. End the game by reiterating the point of the game and what you hoped to achieve through playing. Plan a quick speech where you talk about the leadership that your team has learned through the game and how it can be applied to their jobs, positions and other areas of their lives, then celebrate your success as a team by participating in another morale-building activity, such as a group lunch or retreat.

References

• Seriosity: Leadership in Games and at Work
• McKinsey and Company: Team Leader