Toolkit reviews

Citation

Holyoak, L. (2005), "Toolkit reviews", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 26 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2005.02226cae.004

Toolkit reviews

Toolkit reviews

Emotional Games for Training: 15 Games That Explore Feelings, Behaviour and Values

Ken JonesGower2002192 pp.0 566 08497 X£55.00 (Hardback)

Keywords: Emotions, Games

Review DOI 10.1108/01437730510591815

Dynamic Induction: Games, Activities and Ideas to Revitalize your Employee Induction Process

Susan El-ShamyGower2003240 pp.0 566 08544 5£65.00 (Hardback)

Keywords: Induction, Games

The aim of both these books is to provide guidance on activities that can be used with single participants or groups to achieve particular purposes. For Ken Jones that purpose is exploring emotions, both positive and negative, which are sometimes ignored in working life. For Susan El-Shamy the purpose is employee induction: getting new employees to feel like part of the organisation. This is not to say that things suggested in one book could not fit into the other, starting a new job can be an emotional time, after all, but finding a niche for collections such as these seems a good thing to do.

Emotional Games for Training offers (as the title indicates) 15 games, some of which are very detailed, which aim to make participants more aware of their own and other people's emotions. The book starts with a brief introduction to what is involved in running these activities and some suggestions as to how to get the best out of them. A useful summary of all the games is provided: brief descriptions are given as well as a note of the running times for comparison. The bulk of the book is then devoted to describing the games themselves and providing copies of the paper-based materials such as notes for participants, identity cards, and so on. The games are designed to elicit a range of emotional reactions, the identification of which by participants is facilitated by the use of an emotional word list: 164 words that describe how you feel. The list can be used during debriefing to stimulate recognition of feelings. This is a very useful feature as sometimes the emotions can be overlooked or denied (because they seem like dangerous territory) even when the activity is designed to create them. The games themselves are designed to last for one to two hours and vary from the deceptively simple (such as Playing Games) to the complex (e.g. Planet Zita). Obviously individuals will differ in their preferences for games, but I think there should be something in here for everyone.

Dynamic Induction offers 50 games and activities designed to be used during employee induction. The book opens with a discussion about induction, a chance to assess the state of the induction programme in your own organisation, and the scale of the changes that might need to be made in order to turn it something more successful and enjoyable. Towards the end of the introduction, the games on offer are grouped into categories such as “warm-ups and ice-breakers” and “games on getting to know the work environment”, but at other times are sorted in different ways such as those which are good for the first hour, day, week and month, or categorised by activity (such as games to get people moving around the room or their wider environment), and even those which might be adaptable for use on an induction web site rather than in face-to-face sessions. The games themselves have all have a clear purpose, and instructions for running them. In most cases the descriptions of the games are much shorter than those in Ken Jones' book, and, indeed, the running times are shorter, tending to be less than an hour. The games range from variations on a quiz theme (e.g. Once Upon a Time) to the more creative and involved (such as A Picture Says it All). Once again, some of the games will appeal more to some people than others, but there should be something in here to suit.

I had no strong criticisms of either book. Susan El-Shamy seemed at pains to point out that the term induction was mainly used in the UK (and rarely used in the US), suggesting to me that the book was targeted towards a non-US audience. However, the terms used in some games (e.g. closet) seem to suggest the opposite is true. None of the games is rendered impossible to interpret because of the language, so the book should not be damned for this. On occasion in Dynamic Induction, suggestions were made about ways of running the games that I would not be comfortable with (e.g. donning a judge's wig to stand in judgement of answers given in the game to do with health and safety legislation), but there are probably plenty of people out there to whom this sense of drama would appeal. In contrast, at no point in Emotional Games for Training did I feel that I would have problems facilitating any game, although I suspect I might change my mind about this having used them: the superficial discomfort of dressing up and play-acting is potentially nothing compared with handling the feelings that can arise when helping people think about their emotions.

Of the two books I think that Dynamic Induction is the more immediately usable. The categorisations of the games would allow a reader to quickly dip in, select a game from a short-list and (with adequate time to prepare materials) run it reasonably easily. However, I suspect that Emotional Games for Training might ultimately be the more rewarding book. The games are more involved and the trainer would need to prepare themselves as well as the material, but the participants would gain much more from them, which, at the end of the day, is what it is all about.

Lynda HolyoakUniversity of Central Lancashire