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Teamwork and Leadership Essentials: The Project I’m Most Proud Of

Marine discusses the project which makes her most proud, a project about teamwork and high performance leadership with one of our biggest clients.

I joined NKD almost 4 years ago and have had the chance to work on some awesome projects, and with some brilliant clients. There’s one project that I’m particularly proud of and I’d like to tell you why.

NKD was approached by one of our biggest clients to work on a programme about Team Effectiveness and High Performance Leadership. We held what we call, a “Design Lab”, which is a day-long brainstorming meeting where all teams (Learning, Customer Experience and Creative) come together and to get the best out of each other’s mind. The main goal of this lab is to come up with a theme that ties the learning to a creative concept that illustrates effective teams and high performance leadership.

We decided that the Animal Kingdom was the most inspiring and relevant theme for us. Animals naturally, and beautifully, demonstrate team effectiveness when they come together to accomplish a common goal. Geese do this when they fly together – they create a V formation that buoys up the weakest geese at the back; Meerkats demonstrate team effectiveness when digging a hole as a chain gang, but also when allocating one of the team members the key task of keeping guard. And so on… animals are fascinating and I could talk about them all day long!

Key to bringing any learning to life is activity-based learning. The learning team came up with some fantastic ideas to bring the content to life, and as a result we decided to create an escape room.

An escape room is a physical adventure game in which players solve a series of puzzles using clues, hints and strategy to complete the objectives and ultimately escape. Players are given a set time limit to unveil the secrets which are hidden within the room. It is inspired by video games and became famous in the US about 10 years ago. They are now popular as team building exercises all over the world.

Creating an escape room that would work in one big training room and that would be transportable was challenging. Our escape room is focused around an app and we also use materials and the environment as clues. The facilitator has the key task of setting the scene and taking the participants through this fun adventure.

I’m really proud of the amazing collaboration between all teams involved in the project. We listened to each other and came up with a theme that inspired both learning and creative teams. Together we created a really immersive experience for people to go on, where participants can learn how to be more efficient when working within a team and how to be better leaders all while learning some interesting facts about animals too.

This theme also resonates with our customer’s commitment to protect animals and support their conservation.

My love for animals, and their importance in society today is beautifully summed up in this quote:

“For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.”  Jacques Cousteau.

Image of participants playing a game as part of a blended learning solution

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