Marshmallow Visions

TITLE: Marshmallow Visions
CATEGORY: Team-Building, for 8 or more people, age high school & up
MATERIALS: Mini-marshmallows, toothpicks

This is a game we often use for leadership training, specifically in the area of vision-casting. It's a fun group competition with lots of different possible application points.

Divide the group into equal-sized teams of 4-6 people, and give each group a box of toothpicks, a bag of mini-marshmallows, and a table (or flat area to work). Their job is to duplicate as closely as possible a 3-D model marshmallow-toothpick structure (that you've made ahead of time). Each team will have a leader who will come to study your model for 30 seconds (out of view of everyone else). They will then go back to their teams and tell them how to build it. The catch is, the leader is the only person who is allowed to talk on the team, but the leader cannot touch any toothpicks or marshmallows. After 2 minutes of building time, a different person in the team becomes the leader. The new leader gets 30 seconds to study the model, and then becomes the only person who can talk but cannot touch the materials. The old leader becomes a regular worker and can touch the materials but can no longer talk. The game ends after you've had enough rounds of this for every person to have a chance to be the leader (4-6 rounds). Make everyone put down the materials and stop touching their structure. Then one to three judges (you, and if you have any other observers available) judge each group's structure to see how accurately it matches the model structure, giving a score between 1-100. You can give out awards for the group with the highest score, and then have a discussion about aspects of leadership and vision-casting during the game.

The main point is to observe how the teams and leaders interact with each other, and learn how to better communicate vision in groups. The model structure represents the vision that the leaders have in their head that the rest of the team can't see. Then the activity mimics how a leader would describe that vision and pass it on to their rest of their team members.

SAMPLE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
-What made it hard for the group to create the leader's vision? What made it easy?
-Was the leader big-picture oriented, who describes what the entire structure looks like ("We're building a house.")? Were they detail-oriented ("We need four squares on the bottom.")? How did each help?
-Did anyone feel like they were left out of the building process? How did that feel?
-Was it easier or harder after more people on the team had been able to look at the vision?
-How did it feel as the leader to not be able to touch the materials and have to rely on others to enact the vision?

TIPS:
-Make sure each team decides ahead of time what order they will rotate the leader role, so they know ahead of time (since the rest of them are not allowed to talk during the game).
-To build the structure model, spend about 20 minutes before the group arrives. One person working for those 20 minutes makes the structure complicated enough that they probably won't be able to copy it exactly, but simple enough that it's not overwhelming. Decide what the overall structure will be (Ones we've done before include an airplane, a sailboat, a shoe, a house...), then create it using the marshmallows to hold the toothpick structures together (stick the end of a toothpick into a marshmallow, then another toothpick in so that it forms a joint, and so forth).
-Try to use only whole toothpicks or half toothpicks. Having too many different sizes makes it too hard for them to duplicate. It will take them long enough to figure out that some of the toothpicks aren't whole.
-Make sure the teams can't sneak a peek at the model ahead of time. Then keep it out of view of all the groups, making sure the leaders can only see it for the 30 seconds they're allowed. We've done things like hide the model under a big carboard box, or keep it on a table behind some partitions.
-If you have room, spread out the teams enough so that they can't look at each other's structures. A room that partitions into different sections would be great. If not, just try to spread them out so they're not too close.
-Using cheap table clothes, or cutting a big trash bag up and laying it on the tables makes clean up easier.
-We usually use flat toothpicks, though I suppose round ones would work ok too.
-If team members are talking that aren't supposed to, you can warn them, and then if they continue, dock points off their final score.