Activites, Games & Exercises

Make it easy for employees to provide great customer service with this collection of motivating and skill-building activities. There’s no need for a special training facility, no huge costs involved, or no prior training experience required. All you need is a group of employees who are committed to giving customers what they rightfully deserve—excellent service.

Areas covered include:

• the customer's first impression
• customer paradigms
• listening to the customer
• finding out who the customer really is
• how rumors get started and spread
• the importance of telephone greeting messages
• dealing with telephone tag
• telephone communications
• understanding what the customer really wants
• characteristics of successful customer service
• customer service diseases
• developing your personal improvement plan
• personalities of potential buyers
• types of customers
• customer complaints
• tips for selling your product or service
• positive and negative words
• winning and losing the customer
• logic vs emotion in selling

Includes FREE CD with 25 role plays from the popular first volume-50 total role plays!

Updated with 25 new role plays not covered in the first volume, the latest edition of the popular 25 Role Plays to Teach Negotiation will inspire you to think and act like a negotiation expert. If you're a management training and development specialist who needs one or two role-plays to use in a negotiation program, this book's a must. The book provides the opportunity to practice the behaviors used most frequently by successful negotiators-including questioning, clarifying, checking for understanding, summarizing and active listening.

Each of these role plays is based on a unique approach to negotiation embracing three critical concepts:

• Successful negotiation is not an adversarial process, but a collaborative framework for creative problem-solving
• The needs and interests of both negotiating parties must be addressed if there is to be a long-term solution
• Negotiation is an ongoing process, and today's negotiation will affect the long-term relationship between the parties

Try out new behaviors that will help you:

• Handle situations among co-workers regarding their roles and responsibilities
• Talk with your employees about their performance
• Improve relationships between the purchasing staff and internal clients
• Deal with difficult customers

Sample role-plays:

• The new project manager
• The difficult team member
• The difficult discussion/meeting
• Engineering changes

• 25 Role Plays to Teach Negotiation, Volume 2 $149.99 [Add to Cart]

Flex Style Negotiating is a 360-degree assessment-based performance improvement program for all professionals who rely on effective negotiation skills. It profiles participants' preferred negotiation styles and defines legitimate versus illegitimate behaviors.

Flex Style Negotiating uses a situational model to explain the negotiation process. Participants are taught to diagnose negotiation situations and adapt their behavior to maximize the likelihood of a successful outcome. Not only does the program define the behaviors that make up the participant's style, it suggests alternative behaviors the negotiator can use in order to "flex their style" more readily and in more situations.

Flex Style Negotiating includes two instruments, a strategic job aid, and a combination reproducible Participant's Workbook/Instructor's Manual. The instruments are the Behavioral Style Assessment/Self and the Behavioral Style Assessment/Other. The job aid is the Situational Strategy Selector.

The Instructor's Manual explores topics such as personal approaches to conflict, different styles of negotiation, and advanced techniques for competition and collaboration. It contains experiential activities for exploring conflict and creativity, role plays for negotiation leadership and anger, and, overall, represents a solid game plan for developing flexible negotiation skills.

• Flex Style Negotiating - Instructor's Manual $149.99 [Add to Cart]
• Flex Style Negotiating - Other Assessment 5-Pack $69.99 [Add to Cart]
• Flex Style Negotiating - Participants Workbook 5 - Pack $149.99 [Add to Cart]
• Flex Style Negotiating - Self Assessment: Self 5-Pack $69.99 [Add to Cart]

This collection of experiential activities in game format will enable trainers and facilitators to make effective use of the outdoors as a vehicle for learning. It contains sixty-three creative games that can be conducted easily and safely with a minimum of materials and preparation. Many of the activities can be run equally well indoors.

Each activity is presented in a standard format that includes a summary, a statement of objectives, a note of any materials required, time requirements, and detailed guidance on the effective use of the games in training. The games vary in length from a few minutes to over an hour. Together they provide a rich store of adventure, energy, and memorable learning.

Games Teach

• Cooperation
• Decision making
• Ethics
• Goal-setting
• Planning
• Rewards
• Trust
• Inter-team collaboration
• Communication
• Creativity
• Leadership
• Problem solving
• Risk taking
• Team learning

The HRD Press DISCStyles assessment has been crafted specifically to assist organizations in understanding how behaviors impact the success of their employees—and how it all links to the bottom line. Based on theories originally developed by Dr. William Marston in the late 1920’s, and adapted for effortless facilitation and corporate buy-in, our DISCStyles assessments is a highly validated tool trusted by several Fortune 500 companies, the United States Military, and professional consultants worldwide.

This easily administered 30-item assessment includes use of three interpersonal settings to maximize contextual authenticity (work, home, social). Each of the three standard interpretive graphs are plotted enabling a complete view of your preferred style, and since the DISCStyles assessment can be completed in only 10­–15 minutes you gain valuable time for individual coaching sessions or group discussions.

Product Benefits:

• Gain awareness of personal strengths and motivations
• Uncover career development opportunities
• Improve methods for interpersonal communication
• Enhance conflict resolution ability
• Create 360-degree feedback for your leaders
• Build and strengthen teams
• Improve professional relationships internally and externally

This new manual is ideal for a brand new supervisor to a manager with years of experience. It will help them become a more effective trainer. It will strengthen training skills; sell management on its importance, and help you turn out a well-trained workforce.

In just 7 chapters you'll find everything you need to have an effective and total training program:

Includes:

• How to conduct a needs assessment
• How to develop the training plan for your organization
• How to choose the most effective training techniques
• When and how to outsource
• How to prepare for your training
• How to conduct a successful training session
• How to ensure your training is effective
• Plus appendix with sample worksheets and more

• Building The Best Training Program: Your One-Stop Learning Resource $149.99 [Add to Cart]

The perfect opportunity to reflect on yourself and where you’re headed

Strategies, ideas and activities for self-development and learning in the workplace

By Laurel Alexander

We all struggle as professionals to stay on top of our game. Here is a book with hundreds of practical ways to take control of moving your career in the direction you want to go – and of helping your people do the same.

675 Ways to Develop Yourself and Your People reflects the real needs of real people in today’s workplace. You’ll gain exercises, activities and strategies that will help you develop your ability to build positive work relationships, change an aspect of your interpersonal behavior, come across as powerful in meetings, listen, make decisions, survive a downsizing and much more. 

The engaging and hands-on resource provides a set of 50 individual learning opportunities and over 600 ideas, techniques and activities for making the most of the learning opportunities. Each module begins with an overview of the subject and moves on to exercises in easy-to-use categories:

• Individual tasks and reflections
• Working with others – a peer, colleague or partner
• Working with a mentor
• Developing others – exercises for facilitators to use in groups
• Useful Web sites

You can pick up this book and start wherever you like. You’ll be amazed at how many opportunities you face each day to learn with and from your co-workers, facilitate the development process in others and travel purposefully through your life.

New

By Wendy Denham and Jane Jestico

Teaching employees how to deliver effective performance appraisals will pay big dividends in your organization. But, too often, employees perceive the training as uninteresting – even boring.

Here’s a terrific resource full of hands-on exercises that will make training in this vital area enjoyable and extremely motivating. Every employee – regardless of how experienced they are in appraisals – will be stimulated by learning how to question, listen, be objective, give feedback, communicate and manage the process.  

Each activity is ready-to-use and includes a description, when to use it, objectives, materials and time required, and methods. Each activity takes under 60 minutes or so to complete.

Need to find a specific activity quickly? No problem. The activities are categorized into two groups – the skills and the process – so they are easy to select. All handouts are numbered using the same number as the activity. And some you’ll want to make into transparencies for use with an overhead projector.

Whether you’re a new or experienced trainer, you’ll find all the support you need to lead the activities, adapt them to your own training style and give performance appraisal training the priority it deserves.

Sample activities:

• Actions Speak Louder
• Confirm It in Writing
• Do You Really Mean That?
• Just Stick to the Facts
• Praise versus Criticism
• What Do You Think?
• Where Do We Go from Here?

Format: 3-ring binder, 308 pp

• 50 Activities for Performance Appraisal Training $159.99 [Add to Cart]

The Valuing Diversity® Training System consists of 3 parts, each with 10 modules contained in a user friendly manual. All parts are designed to make the facilitator and participants jobs easier. The material is composed of various parts functioning together to achieve your diversity objectives. All parts of the system contain essential steps in the diversity competency process.

The Valuing Diversity Training System includes the following three, 3-ring binders:

• Facilitator's Resource Guide - This Resource Guide is a complete reference guide that provides you with full understanding of complex diversity issues and a secure knowledge base to develop and deliver effective training. Critical to the successful diversity process in any organization, this guide offers essential diversity learning concepts for the beginner and thought-provoking reading for the experienced trainer. It provides essential information in the form of key diversity questions, learning points, and notes which correspond to each module and block on the map. (275 pages)
• This Facilitator's Handbook - provides you with instructions for how to use the training system: how to get started, how to develop a diversity strategy, how to develop a diversity training program, and how to conduct activities related to each of ten modules shown on the map. (500 pages)
• Participant Workbook - This easy-to-use workbook cuts the facilitator's preparation time in half by providing over 200 prepared handouts, exercises, checklists, worksheets and assessment tools. All materials correspond directly to the learning blocks in the Facilitator's Handbook. These highly interactive materials are specifically designed to increase awareness, provide current diversity information, facilitate skills acquisition and provide participants with invaluable experiential learning. (260 pages)

Valuing Diversity Training System also includes: A Diversity Journey Learning Map which maps out a complete diversity training strategy in a style which enables internal managers and trainers to complement whatever is already being done and 'take what you can use and leave the rest'.

• Valuing Diversity Training System (3 Manual Set) $500.00 [Add to Cart]

Best-Seller!

Communication plays such a big part in our lives today. Yet sometimes we get busy and forget just how important communication is to our success, relationships and happiness.

Communication Activities, Icebreakers and Exercises is a great way to:

• Increase participants' awareness of how they communicate
• Help them to build expertise in a variety of essential skills and competencies
• Prepare them to deal effectively with the many types of communication challenges they face every day

Each activity focuses on some facet of communication and includes a description, time guideline, purpose, resources, presentation, debrief, difficulty rating and variations to make implementation easy.

The 50 activities are organized into three, quick-reference parts:

• Communications principles
• Communications icebreakers
• Communications exercises

Are you interested in focusing on silent messages, listening bad habits, the meaning of words or interactive listening? You’ll find powerful exercises in Part I that will help. Do you want to explore new icebreakers? Move on to the Part II activities on vanity name cards, introducing each other, nickname game and repeating introductions. The final part includes skill-building exercises on following directions, communications shutdowns, rumors, communications styles and other topics.

Each individual activity takes only minutes to complete. Together this collection contains a wealth of insight, tips and guidance to prepare employees to become confident communicators who enjoy stronger relationships and greater success and satisfaction on the job.

“Parker and Kropp have done it again. This is another great resource of powerful and easy to use teaming exercises. This is a must for anyone facilitating team building sessions. Update your library today.”
Steven L. Phillips, Ph.D.
Co-author of the best-selling The Team Building Source Book and Team Training: From Start-Up to High Performance

“Team Workout: 50 Interactive Activities provides a wealth of team activities that are both engaging and insightful. Be sure to add it to your list of favorite resources.”
Lorraine L. Ukens, Teaming With Success;
author of All Together Now! and Energize Your Audience

Two of the world’s leading team building facilitators bring you their best icebreakers, assessments, games, and exercises in a user friendly format. Team Workout is for facilitators, team leaders, trainers, and managers who want all the necessary materials and a step-by-step protocol for fast and easy implementation of effective team development. It’s all here?the goals, time required, room set-up, materials, and detailed instructions to ensure a no-fault experience. There are even debriefing questions to facilitate the transfer of learning back to the workplace.

Selected Contents

• Customer Delight: A data collection tool
• E-Handles: A closer for a mature team
• Respect: A feedback tool
• Virtual Brainstorming: Problem solving for a geographically dispersed team
• Characteristics of an effective work team
• Creating a team mission
• Forming new teams
• Improving team meetings
• Virtual brainstorming: problem solving for a geographically dispersed team

By Sarah Cook

One of the many challenges you face as a trainer is getting employees to look at themselves, their skill gaps and their attitudes. This collection of 43 fun and creative quizzes is just what you need.

You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to find the perfect quiz. The quizzes are organized in alphabetical order. They also are grouped in nine easy-access topic areas: Communication skills, customer service, health and safety, leadership, performance management, personal development, teamwork, recruitment and selection, and training and development.

The quizzes are easy to administer in the classroom, too. Accompanying each quiz are suggested responses to the questions and helpful background information.

You’ll find quizzes that ask participants to fill in the blanks, choose from several answers, rank items and pick between true and false. Action plans can be developed immediately after most quizzes are completed and then evaluated. You can adapt each quiz to meet the specific needs of your group simply by changing wording, phrases or questions. You don’t have to be a professional trainer to use these quizzes. You could be a line manager, team leader – anyone who wants a fun and effective way to inspire learners to look inside and get to know themselves better.

Sample topics:

• Action-centered leadership
• Body language
• Delegation
• Diversity
• Influencing skills
• Meeting skills
• Performance appraisal
• Stress management
• Written communication skills

248 Pages

Today most executives and managers need to have an international business and cross-cultural perspective. Global Competence includes 50 training activities and self-development exercises to prepare your personnel for international assignments, and develop better understanding of cross-cultural communication. Compiled by a team of experts from around the world, these ready-to-use activities have been tested and refined for a wide variety of international businesses and organizations. They are ideal for both preparing people to work, market, negotiate, and otherwise do business with people in Asia, Latin America, and Europe and to prepare foreign nationals for working in the U.S.

• Global Competence $149.99 [ Add To Cart ]

When some people hear the word teamwork they immediately think of games--team sports: yet, teamwork is much more than this.

In businesses today the teamwork concept, rather than the old pyramid-shaped organization-chart-process, is what makes them successful. Ideas and decisions are generated within teams and not from the top down as in the past. With the Effective Teamwork how-to video training program you'll learn:

• How to make the team concept work
• Why teams are important to you and your organization
• How to write a team constitution
• How to develop ideas and make decisions that the team can stand behind
• How to run a typical team meeting
• How to deal with conflict and team problems

After watching this video, and completing the exercises both on the video and in the book, your entire work force will know how to maintain a cooperative, creative and highly productive team environment. The skills learned will lead to greater success for you and your organization.

Length: 39 minutes.

This enhanced DVD edition of Effective Teamwork is part of the In An Instant Business Training Library. It comes complete with a DVD, video, audio CD and a post-test that may be reproduced. It also includes a copy of the book Effective Teamwork by Michael D. Maginn, which is part of the Business Skills Express Series.

• Effective Teamwork Instant - DVD $149.99 [Add to Cart]

This course is also available for online training, see details below.

This highly motivational program takes you behind the scenes at Midway Field in Minnesota, where fun is encouraged daily. Visit a workplace where a costumed pig tosses out the balls, "ushertainers" serenade you in the stands and games are always sold out. See firsthand just how much fun, when combined with commitment, relates to organizational success and personal satisfaction.

Sure, a day at the ballpark might sound like a good time. But when it's your job, it can mean a fifteen-hour day of hard work, whether you're cleaning the bleachers, keeping the books or taking care of customers. How do they do it?

For the people who work here, fun is an attitude. An experience. It's why everyone from head groundskeeper to the president and co-owner is passionate about coming to work. Having fun on the job makes these employees more creative, more productive, and ultimately more satisfied. They don't take themselves too seriously. They treat each other with respect. And they make every day an event.

Key concepts in the video can bring this mindset to any workplace:

• Discover Your Passion
• Bring a Positive Attitude
• Show People You Care

Program includes: VHS or DVD, Leader's Guide, PowerPoint Presentation on CD-ROM with film transcript, 10 Participant Workbooks, 10 Reminder Cards. Bonus extended-cut DVD version of show included with either video format.

Online Streamed Video Training Option:

• Pricing - $9.95 per user
• Minimum order - $500
• Users receive a post-test and certificate of completion. You set the test’s passing grade.
• You get an Administrator’s Page that shows who has logged on to take the training and the test score of each viewer.

Please contact us by email if you have more than 1000 users for special pricing options.

Note: When you order the online training version of this program, our shopping cart will show 50 items listed (minimum number of participants) for $500, each additional participant/item added is $9.95

Free Online Preview

Great companies are built upon great decisions. Unfortunately, many organizations are held back by "mind games" and divisive debates that get in the way of great decision making. Don Maruska has developed a ten-step plan that helps you break through the corporate gridlock to find lasting solutions on even the toughest issues you face. Instead of the confrontation, frustration and inaction that often stymie high-level meetings, Maruska's well-tested process makes it possible to reach superior decisions based on accessing every participant's best thinking and greatest hopes.

$129.99 [Add to Cart]

Use these physically engaging activities in a fresh air, outdoor setting as a stimulating change of pace for your training sessions. Complete set-up instructions and game guidelines are included for all 36 exercises.

Excel is a collection of 12 half-day off-the-shelf workshops, each dedicated to the development of a single critical competency. Each workshop is detailed below. These 12 competencies group in four distinct clusters:

Administrative Cluster: Managing Your Job

Communication Cluster: Relating to Others

Supervisory Cluster: Building the Team

Cognitive Cluster: Thinking Clearly

Review all workshop training topics

Development of the MAP/Excel Competency Model

Dr. Scott Parry, founder of Training House, Inc. and 1999 inductee into the HRD Hall of Fame, developed this competency framework by first analyzing the results of a series of large competency studies conducted by a number of major U.S. corporations. These studies were conducted to determine which competencies highly effective managers and supervisors possess to a greater degree than average performers. The 12 competencies selected for inclusion in the Excel series were identified by all these studies. They are fundamental building blocks for becoming an effective manager and are preconditions for effective leadership.

INSTRUCTIONAL METHOD

The instructional design of the Excel workshops is based on several important principles of adult learning, -- the most important of which is that learning occurs best when it is related to past experiences and current goals.

Learning Objectives for each competency focus on the attainment of new knowledge, attitudes, and skills. These behaviors are learned, practiced, displayed and evaluated during training through experiential activities that include hands-on exercises, role plays, script analyzes, games, and self inventories. Learning objectives support a central behavioral model for successful mastery of the competency.

Action Plan:

Every workshop participant creates an individual action plan shared with their managers, work team, and stakeholders. This is the vehicle for transferring learning to the workplace. The planning focuses on performance criteria: the application of competencies to organizational problems and situations. Excel has been designed to provide training that leads to “terminal behavior change” or in layman’s terms, learning that will be applied on the job.

Instructional Materials

Each Excel workshop includes:
 

• Instructor’s Guide: The Instructors Guide bases the detailed lesson plans and content on learning objectives. Participants interact in activities and discuss information presented in the workbook.
   
• Power Point Presentation: Slides provide the instructor with an easy-to-use, flexible way to liven lectures and discussions.
   
• Video: Short video segments from MAP, the number one video based assessment in the world, are used to illustrate the 12 Excel competencies in use on-the-job. The (MAP), Managerial Assessment of Proficiency was developed concurrently with Excel to assess a managers strengths and weaknesses in these 12 competencies in addition to providing information about a manager’s personal style, communication style, and managerial style. Film sequences show managers using both incorrect and correct techniques related to the Excel competency. Participants evaluate and discuss the techniques observed.
   
• Participant Workbook: Workbooks provide learners with additional lesson content, as well as experiential activities, handouts, and action-planning forms required to complete the course. Participant booklets for each workshop are sold separately for $20 each.
  
  Train-the-Trainer: A nationwide network of professional Training House Associates is available to deliver Excel workshops or provide training for your internal training staff.

Authors: Jonamay Lambert, Selma Myers, George Simons

An outstanding source for training activties relating to employee empowerment.

Today most executives and managers need to have an international business and cross-cultural perspective. 50 Activities for Achieving Cultural Competence includes 50 training activities and self-development exercises to prepare your personnel for international assignments and develop better understanding of cross-cultural communication. Compiled by a team of experts from around the world, these ready-to-use activities have been tested and refined for a wide variety of international businesses and organizations.

They are ideal for both preparing people to work, market, negotiate, and otherwise do business with people in Asia, Latin America, and Europe and for preparing foreign nationals to work in the United

50 Activities for Developing Critical Thinking Skills contains 50 fully reproducible training activities to develop quick thinking, creative thinking and analytical thinking skills. This compendium of activities will add real value to your training by taking critical thinking skills out of the box and into the workplace. Learners will sharpen their critical thinking skills and develop a thought process that are creative, accurate, and assumption-free.