Playing Games

One of the things we do at workshops is to run games and simulate situations. Why do we do that?
Many a time where we work, we establish routines that we follow without thinking and just as a roller running back an forth on a surface begins to follow a groove, we begin to follow these routines, unable to change and no longer seeing the benefits and drawbacks of doing such.
The roller that has grooved itself so deep that it cannot change directions anymore, and the only way we can see if its still ok is to take it out of its groove and test it outside. Similarly, people don't like to be told that they are wrong, so we take them out of their office environment and test them in a similar fashion and see how they respond.
People get defensive if we start putting them through the very same routines they do in the office, so we find a game that is similar in nature and we run them with these people. Because it is a game, people respond to it positively, if not for the learning, for the "fun" factor. Also becasue we select games with a specific learning factor in mind, we can then look out for specific behaviors in response to the game (i.e. leading, learning, sacrifice etc). As we highlight these behaviors, we engage the participants by asking them why these things were done, and as they answer we help create the understanding by guiding them to the learning objective that we began with.
People with empathy are really good at guiding participants towards the answers. Lesser mortals like you and me require a conscious effort at applying empathy. But knowing the learning objective helps very much as it provides us with a set of behaviors to look out for, and of course, a pencil and a piece of paper definitely helps!