How many of you have had an activity that didn’t go as expected or the participants didn’t work as a team and failed to achieve the goal? Great! No I’m not being cynical; I really think that it’s great. You have the opportunity to create learning from a truly emotional moment - real learning. This stuff is rarely scripted in an instructor guide and requires your ability to observe, connect, ask questions and listen. This is the point where learning really happens. You, as the instructor, have an opportunity to make a leaning connection from real behaviors. Talk about your reality television. This is as real as it gets.

In a workshop last month, an instructor told us how her team building activity blew up! It turned out to be the “anti-teamwork” activity with emotions rising mainly due to lack of effective communication in any direction. To this I yelled “that’s great”! The class looked at me like I had three heads. I went on to explain what better opportunity would you have to see how your participants “really” operate with each other?

Three years ago during an Academy Instructor Workshop, a participant debriefing an intact team of 12 instructors in a teambuilding activity got more than she bargained for. The goal of the activity was for her to learn how to run and debrief an activity. Well, the activity turned real and instead of debriefing a contrived activity, this student was seeing real bullets fly. Don’t worry, she earned her stripes and survived. What excited me was how the emotional fireworks provided other learnings that I was able to utilize in the overall debrief. In addition to learning the framework of a debrief, all the participants learned how emotional an activity can become. I was able to help the team refocus and discover what they learned and how they would utilize their discoveries. Modeling how the instructor needs to hold themselves during an intense debrief was an added bonus. Was this planned? No. Was the learning appropriate? It turned out to be more robust than I could have imagined.

Experienced instructors utilize...