Learning Games

© Richard Bolstad

Just For Fun?

In this article I want to introduce a number of NLP-friendly games for playing in a training group. The English word game comes from an old Anglo Saxon word gamen, meaning joy or pleasure. It is truly hard for me to justify not categorising all useful learning experiences as games. There are many other reasons for using games in learning, but the fact that they create fun is not incidental. When I am training, I spend most of the day playing games of one sort or another. As participants go to do an exercise, I tend to ask them “Is there anything else you need to know to have fun playing this game?”

Certainly, a considerable amount of research suggests that strong emotional states such as joy are important for learning. J. O’Keefe and L. Nadel found (Jensen, 1995, p 38) that emotions enhance the brain’s ability to make cognitive maps of (understand and organise) new information. Dr James McGaugh, psychobiologist at UC Irvine notes that even injecting rats with a blend of emotion related hormones such as enkephalin and adrenaline means that the rats remember longer and better (Jensen, 1995, p 33-34). He says “We think these chemicals are memory fixatives…. They signal the brain, “This is important, keep this!”… emotions can and do enhance retention.”

Games frequently provide a number of other characteristics important to learning. They often involve repetition of new material, which is crucial to laying down memories and skills in the brain (Buzan, 1991, p 82-84). They tend to engage all the senses, also an essential way to activate the brain for learning (Jensen, 1995, p 55-69). Games also give metaphorical or simulated real-life experiences demonstrating concepts which could otherwise be mere theories. They thus often persuade learners that what you are claiming is actually true, providing the motivation for them to learn it. Of course, you have already had many experiences using games to learn, because almost all your basic social skills were first explored in childhood games, often developed without adult input. Researcher Catherine Garvey suggests that playing social roles is the primary source of a child’s very sense of identity (Garvey, 1990).

Using Games Effectively

Using games in training requires a number of trainer skills. Because games are interactive, they demand a greater level of skill with motivating participation, with detecting and responding to emotional responses, with respecting cultural and individual differences in behaviour, and with conflict resolution. For example, the game knot (described below) often requires participants to step over each others’ arms and bodies. In traditional New Zealand Maori culture, this action indicates disrespect and diminishes the spiritual power (mana) of the person stepped over. In such circumstances I consider it important for me to allow people to choose how they participate and respect their need to modify the game. Commenting respectfully on such issues actually provides another learning experience for participants, rather than merely smoothing over a problem.

I aim to only use games that fit with my own values for training itself. That means excluding games in which persons are humiliated, laughed at, tricked, or isolated. Generally, I aim for the significance of not winning to be played down, or for the game to deliver a win for all participants. I consider the metaphorical meaning of games, and choose games which seem isomorphic with my values and training content.

In setting up a game, the significance of every word of instruction is often enormous. Often surprise endings must be kept un-announced but carefully set up. Instructions need to be given one step at a time, and I check that each person has understood before giving the next set of directions. I do not usually call games “games”. The reason is that many people have negative associations with the use of games at school or elsewhere. I call these games “activities” (a rather neutral word which has much less associated with it usually). Post-framing is also important. This involves helping participants to notice what the most useful implications of a game are. Bear in mind that events (and games) in themselves do not “mean” anything; they have whatever meaning we ascribe to them. The meaning of the game of Poker could be that we are at the mercy of the hand life gives us… or it could be that confidence creates our results far more than whatever cards we are dealt.

To make sure your games create useful learning experiences, I recommend you practice them with friends before introducing them in a group. This is the simplest way to refine both your introduction and your summarizing of learnings. It also gives you an idea which social-emotional issues are most likely to emerge and need dealing with.

Kinds of Games

There are many ways to categorise games. You could categorise them by the amount of time required. In my NLP Master Practitioner training, we learn to three ball juggle. This is a game which takes about four hours altogether over the three weeks of training. On the other hand, the Pointing Exercise (described below) takes about one minute. You could categorise games by the number of people required to play them. Nano Tech and SET (described below) can be played by one person, whereas Knot (also described below) requires at least ten people to work well. You could categorise games by their outcomes or by the training outcomes they support. For example, John Newstrom and Edward Scannell’s first book (Games Trainers Play) lists the following categories:

  • Conference Leadership
  • Climate Setting and Icebreakers
  • Presentation
  • Methods
  • Motivation
  • Self-concept
  • Learning
  • Communication
  • Listening
  • Perception
  • Problem Solving and Creativity
  • Evaluation
  • Transfer of Training

The following categorization uses the overt structure of the games to categorise them. This system is as irrational as any other; it just gives me a smaller list of categories.

1) Co-operative “New Games”. These are kinesthetically active group games where all group members “win” by co-operating together, or where the role of “winner” is inevitably rotated around the group. The notion of co-operation rather than competition is the crucial preframe required to get these to work. After completing a new game, I frequently get the group to congratulate themselves on winning, by clapping.

2) Card and Board Games. Most of these games have been specifically designed to teach specific NLP skills or life skills. They have equipment (cards, boards, dice etc) which is purchased from the developer. The needed preframing for the game is usually provided with this equipment.

3) Demonstration – Discussion Games. These are games which create a metaphorical experience demonstrating some learning point. They require the most careful preframing and postframing. The result is often a surprise to participants.

This list of games merely gives a small sampling of the possibilities in each category. Readers are referred to the reference books below for a wider range of examples.

Co-operative “New Games”

1) Knot. This is a kinesthetic metaphor about resolving conflicts and “tangles”. It requires about ten or more people and at least ten minutes of time. Form a circle and have each person grab hold of the hands of the person beside them. Each person needs to remember who is holding their left hand and who is holding their right hand. Next tell the people to let go of those hands and to walk randomly around the space inside the circle (for about ten seconds –the longer the walk the less easy the resulting knot is to untangle). Once people have walked around, have them link up the same hands with those same two people, with the minimum of movement. The result is a human knot. Explain that the next task is to untangle this knot while keeping the hands connected. Hands can be swiveled, but not let go of. Care also needs to be taken because on the ends of your hands are other human beings. After some time, either the knot will untangle, or you will need to make a decision to break the knot at one place only, and untangle as a “human string”, before reconnecting.

2) Flight Path. A simple kinesthetic sensory overload game that teaches focusing of attention in a group of ten or more people. You need at least six soft objects to throw (eg small cushions or “koosh balls” or even juggling balls). The group stands in a circle, and you start with one ball. Begin by throwing the ball to someone across the group from you, calling out their name before you do (this helps learn names too, and in that case, give people permission to ask the name of the person they are throwing to, and then throw). The person who catches the ball needs to remember who threw it to them, and then who they threw it on to. They throw it on to someone across the group who has not yet had the ball, calling out that person’s name. After each person has thrown the ball, they place their hands behind their back, so the next thrower can see who is left to throw the ball to (each person gets the ball only once). Keep reminding people to remember who threw the ball to them, and who they threw it on to. Once the ball has been around every person, the last person throws it back to you. Everyone takes their hands out again, and you check that they know who they threw it to and who threw it to them. Explain that the game will use this same “flight path” from now on. Throw the ball again to the person you first threw it to, and check that it goes all the way around the group from person to person along the same flight path. Once that has happened throw the ball on again. Now the fun really starts. After a few seconds, throw the second ball along the same route. And after a few seconds more, the third ball… and so on until there are several balls flying through the air.

3) Everyone Who…. This is a kind of co-operative musical chairs encouraging self disclosure. Seat everyone on chairs in a circle (facing inward), and remove one chair, so that one person is standing in the centre. This person then makes a statement beginning, “Everyone who…”, and describing some quality that at least some group members will have in common (for example, “Everyone who is wearing something blue.”, or “Everyone who had toast for breakfast this morning.”). The statement must be true for the person who is standing in the centre too (ie it is a self disclosure). All the people that this statement is true for must then stand up and quickly try and sit down in a different chair to the one they have just been in. The person in the centre is also aiming to sit in a chair at this time. If they succeed, a new person is in the centre ready to think up the next “Everyone who…” statement.

4) Trust Circle. This exercise can be done in groups of between six and twelve people, and is easiest done by having the group leader demonstrate it first. I strongly recommend making participation in the centre an optional experience; some people have extreme fears about this sort of closeness and trust. Have the other members of the group form a fairly close circle round a central person. The central person stands up with arms folded or held by their sides, keeping their legs straight, and standing in the same spot throughout the activity. Those around the circle raise their hands, palms facing the central person, ready to catch them as they fall. This will be easier if the people in the circle brace themselves by putting one foot back a little. The central person closes their eyes and, keeping their body straight, falls backward to be caught by those in the circle. The circle then passes them gently around or across to be caught by others. It is most important not to drop the central person, and to be in close enough to ensure they feel safe (you may start right up close and move back a little as they indicate). The sense of trust and rapport which this exercise generates is related to the sense of caring with which people are handled.

5) Rapport Leader. This game for ten or more people teaches the skills for identifying rapport leaders in a group. Group members sit in a circle with one person standing in the centre. That person closes their eyes while the others in the group silently choose who is the “rapport leader”. The rapport leader starts making a repetitive motion that everyone can do (like tapping the top of her/his head or rocking back and forward). The person in the centre is told to open their eyes and while they watch the group, the rapport leader changes their action and all the others in the group aim to copy the new action as soon as it begins. The seated people aim to keep in rapport, and the standing person aims to detect where the (ideally frequent) changes are initiated. Once the standing person catches the rapport leader (or after two minutes) the standing person and the rapport leader change places and the game begins again.

6) Last Detail. This is a visual sensory acuity game. This is played in pairs. Start by having the people facing each other in pairs for two minutes without moving at all. Next, the partners turn their backs on each other and select four details to change about the way they look (details need to be things that can be seen without kinesthetic searches; things like postural changes, facial expressions and unbuttoning buttons). The aim is then to spot all the changed details in the partner’s appearance. Once this has happened, change partners and begin again.

Card and Board Games

1) Zebu. Robert Anue’s Zebu cards are a set of normal playing cards, each of which has an Ericksonian language pattern and an explanation written on it. The patterns are formats for making indirect suggestions (embedded commands). For example, the pattern on the Jack of Spades says “You can ______, can you not?” and the explanation is “Can you not is such a great way to end a statement. It turns it into a question which is less threatening, and its so confusing to try to disagree with. You can appreciate my point, can you not? You can relax into that chair, can you not? You can allow new answers to come to you, can you not?” The cards can be used to play any normal card game, and as each card is played, the participant creates and says a sentence consistent with the pattern on their card. I use these cards on NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner trainings, in groups of 6-8, and allowing 30 minutes for a game. The cards can be used by an individual, simply shuffling them and constructing a trance induction by using one pattern after another. Of course, there’s more to Ericksonian language than embedded suggestions, but then you can already allow for that, can you not?

Salad cards developed by Jamie Smart have a collection of different sets based on these same ideas – coaching cards, Ericksonian cards and Creativity cards, for example. Our own Transformations NLP Language Pattern cards similarly have patterns from the Milton Model, Metamodel, Reversing Presuppositions, Reframing and Sleight of Mouth.

2) Nano Tech. Jaap Hollander’s Nano Tech card deck relates to Tarot cards the way that Zebu relates to playing cards.  As with other card oracles, the element of “chance” (there are 2,142,720 different possible combinations of cards which could occur in Nano Tech) creates the element of uncertainty that is added by having other players in a multi-player game. The deck has four sets of cards  (Entrance, Life Process Oracle, Nano Technique, and Futurepace cards), each shuffled and chosen from in turn. Entrance cards help you choose a life issue to work on, Oracle cards give life approaches which you could do more or less of, Nano Technique cards give you mini-NLP-techniques to use, and Futurepace cards suggest ways of imagining the future changes which will result. For example, The Three Mentors is an example of a Nano Technique card: in it you think of three people you admire and imagine what they would tell you to do, finding the commonalities in their advice. Allow an hour if you are playing this game in pairs in a group.

3) Creative Whack Pack. Roger von Oech’s Whack Pack (the name comes from his book A Whack on the Side of the Head) is a collection of mini techniques like the Nano Technique cards (in fact you could incorporate this pack into the Nano Tech game). For example, Look To Nature is a card that suggests “Imagine that you are an animal (beaver), a plant (dandelion), or perhaps an insect (bee). How would you go about solving your problem?” Like the Nano Tech game, the Whack Pack has suggestions for laying out the cards so that each card suggests an approach to a different aspect of transforming your problem. A simplified version of the game could be played in pairs in about 15 minutes.

4) Trimurti. Charles Faulkner’s Trimurti board game can be played individually or in a small group. In most versions of the game, players use a gameboad with nine squares coded by time frame and perceptual position (see below). The random input in Trimurti is provided by seven sets of dice each dealing with NLP-based variables. By rolling the dice, a specific way of thinking about a specific type of situation is chosen randomly.

a) Time Frames: Present/Past/Future
b) Perceptual Positions: Self/Other/Observer
c) Emotional States: Joyful/Happy/Angry/Worried/Sad/Neutral
d) Representational Systems: Visual/Auditory/Auditory Digital/Kinesthetic-Emotional/Olfactory Gustatory/Sensations
e) Neurologial Levels: Spirit/Identity/Values & Beliefs/Capabilities/Behaviour/Environment
f) Content: Activities/People/Information/Things/Place/Time
g) Number: 1/2/3/4/5/6 This dice is used in a variety of ways in the game

Trimurti suggests several ways to play with these elements. They can be used, to explore and resolve an issue (like Nano Tech), to play at eliciting a specific experience in another player, to tell a story and so on. Like many of these board games, allow about an hour to get through this game.

5) SET. Marsha Falco’s game SET is a game involving visual perception. The 81 cards each have some simple symbols on them. The symbols are either ovals, squiggles or diamonds. They are coloured red, green or blue. They are “shaded” by being either filled in with their colour, outlined in it or striped with it. Each card has either one, two or three symbols on it. To begin a game, you lay out twelve cards. You make sets of three cards. To be a set, each of the card’s features (symbol, number, colour, shading), looked at one-by-one, are the same on every card in the set, or are different on every card in the set. If only two of the three cards are the same in any of the four features, then you do not have a set. For example, this would be a set: one striped green squiggle + two striped blue ovals + three striped red diamonds. In this set, the colours are all different, the symbols are all different, the numbers are all different and the shadings are all the same. Players race to see who can recognize the most sets, or co-operate to see how quickly they can use almost all the cards in sets. SET teaches players to match and mismatch visually. One cannot successfully play by only doing one of these tasks (matching or mismatching; sorting for similarity or differences). I keep several SET games and play it in groups of four on my Master Practitioner course, for about 15 minutes.

6) Scruples. Henry Makow’s Scruples is an innovative way of exploring values and sensory acuity, which can be played in a group of up to twenty players for about 30 minutes at a time. There are three types of cards. Firstly, there is a voting card which has an “I believe you” and an “I don’t believe you” side. Secondly, there are reply cards (either saying “yes”, “no” or “depends”). Thirdly, there are 252 dilemma cards. Each dilemma card describes a situation and asks whether you would behave in a certain way. For example, one says “A former lover sends you a charming gift. You are involved with someone else. Do you accept the gift?” Imagine it is my turn to play, and I have been dealt a “no” reply card for this round. I look around the group for someone who I am sure would say “no” to this question. I ask the person the question, without showing them which reply (“no”) I’m hoping they will answer. If they say “no”, I get rid of my card (the aim of the game being to get rid of all cards. But if the person says “yes” or “depends”, then I may have to pick up another card. I have a chance to win still, by explaining why I think the person would not accept this gift under any circumstances, and then (after they explain their contradictory answer) by opening it up to a vote by all group members. We vote on whether each of us believes the person (here is the sensory acuity bit), and the result of the vote decides whether that person or I get to drop a card.

7) Magic Land. This board game was developed by Françoise Dorn, John Klein and Yves Besson and is presented in French, so I haven’t used it. It sounds great though: Players choose a limiting belief which they then step by step get the tools to change (each represnted as a jigsaw puzzle piece building up a picture of a magic land). Players move through places on the game board where they choose an alternative belief, set a well formed outcome, reframe the old belief, assist each other to change using NLP techniques, and finally do an ecology check and futurepace.

8) The Transformation Game. Joy Drake and Kathy Tyler’s Transformation board game is a complex and involving game played by 2-4 players. Too long for most trainings but great for longer private sessions, it has several hundred cards and tokens of various kinds. Players choose a personal issue to focus on in the game. They have a Personal Unconscious envelope in which they accumulate and from which they release life angel cards, life insight cards and life setback cards, climbing through levels of understanding (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) until they are free from “pain” and their issue is resolved.

9) NLP Tarot. Our Transformations NLP Tarot set is a way to learn new fast change patterns at the same time as installing the overview model of RESOLVE as taught in my books. The 78 cards are designed with the traditional symbolism of the Hermetic tarot tradition and have meaning at this deeper level as well. As with the Nano-Tech set, each card has instructions for a mini-process, but they also combine to form instructions for full sessions, and can be used by coaches working in this way.

Demonstration – Discussion Games 

1) Pointing Exercise. I first read this in Tony Robbins book Unlimited Power, and use it now in every training I do, and with all individual clients. It’s a demonstration of the power of internal representations, of the importance of goalsetting and of the body-mind link (ie most of the core ideas of NLP). Have the group spread out across the room and stand with feet slightly apart. Each person brings their left arm straight up in front so it’s parallel with the floor. Emphasise the importance of keeping feet in the same place throughout the exercise. “Now, keeping your feet still, turn your body to the left, pointing with the finger as far as you can turn, until it gets tight. Notice, by the point on the wall, how far round you are pointing.” Ask everyone to turn back to the front, and have everyone close their eyes and make a picture of themselves turning again, but this time going much further. What would they be looking at if they went 30 centimetres further? Tell them to sense what it would feel like to be that much more supple, and turn that far easily. Also, what would they say to themselves if they could do that easily. Would they be surprised? Now have them open their eyes, and physically turn again to the left. Demonstrate first, going further yourself and saying “See how far you go, using that same arm, now.” Smile!

Check how much further each person has turned. Explain the difference as due to programming the brain to achieve—the same process we call ‘goal setting’. When people don’t achieve in life, it’s not ‘laziness’. It’s just a lack of adequate, compelling goals. When people turned the second time, they had given their unconscious mind (the part of their mind which runs their body) a set of instructions; by making pictures of their goal, feeling what that goal would feel like, and listening to you and their own internal voice talking about the goal. These “internal representations” (internal pictures, sounds and feelings) are treated by the unconscious mind as if they are real. If someone doesn’t get the experience, reframe as follows “That’s right, it didn’t work; because you didn’t do the process the way I told you. I said to imagine what it looked, felt and sounded like to go further, and you talked to yourself inside about how this probably wouldn’t work for you….Right? And that’s probably the way you’ve been doing a lot of other things too. You’re already good at talking sceptically to yourself. If you want to get a different result in your life, then it’s worth using these exercises the way we describe them, and only do what we describe. You just did more work than you needed to. Now lets do that one more time, the new way.”

2) Equilateral Triangles. Since learning this game from Joseph O’Connor, I’ve used it with groups ranging in size from 10 to 130. It takes about ten minutes to do and process. It demonstrates a number of important things about working in groups, and about the nature of systems. First, have the group stand in a circle and invite each person to silently choose any two other people at random from the circle, not including you. Explain that there are two key rules to this game. Firstly there is to be no talking at all. Secondly, the aim is for each person to be standing in an equilateral triangle with the two people they have chosen. They will be the same distance from each of those people that those two people are from each other. Demonstrate this with two people from the group. Then point out that as they go to do that, the two people may of course also start moving. In that case, they should continue adjusting until they are able to stay in the equilateral triangle. Once you have set up the game, step back and time the result. Chaotic waves of movement will rise and fall for between 3 and 6 minutes. Eventually, providing people do not talk, the situation will resolve.

Once the movement has stopped, ask how many people were convinced that it would never stop. Point out that you set up a system, like any organization or group. Each person in a system acts to meet their own individual needs (in this case represented by the need to be in a triangle). Unfortunately, as they try to meet their needs inside the system, every other person is also trying to meet their individual needs. It is easy for people to become convinced that “If only so-and-so would stop moving around we’d be able to sort this out.” People become quite frustrated with individuals, not realizing that they are only acting to meet their needs, and that the changes that prompt them to keep moving in this annoying way may even be linked to the movements that you yourself have made recently. Actually, the adjustments are systemic, and not caused merely by individual needs; they result from an interaction of individual needs and system rules. Amusingly, the temptation in an organization is for the person in charge to think that they can sort things out better. They take over and start telling each other person where to go. But in a large system this will take far longer than allowing the system to self-organise. In fact, in a large enough system, it is quite impossible. This game demonstrates how challenging it is to trust the system, and yet how effective the group itself can be. It also demonstrates the importance of basic expectations in a system. If this game was played on an open playing field, it would be almost insoluble because people would be tempted to move further and further out to meet their needs. The room in which the game is played acts like the ground rules or “culture” of a system in real life.

3) Colours In The Room. This is another great demonstration which is used by Tony Robbins. It can be used with any number of people, and it takes about 5 minutes. It shows very clearly the power of expectations, or of metaprograms, or of values, or of the core questions we ask ourselves. Have the group look around the room while asking themselves the question “What in this room is red?” Wait for a minute. Now have everyone close their eyes. Once you are sure everyone has their eyes closed, ask them to check “How many red things can you remember from this room?”. Wait 15 seconds. Now emphasise that they need to keep their eyes closed because you have a couple of other questions for them. Ask “How many blue things can you remember from this room?” and then “How many brown things can you remember from this room?”. After 15 seconds, have them open their eyes.

Point out that the core question they ask as they experience life, the way they filter their sensory experiences, or the things they expect from life are powerfully determining which things they will find, and which things they will learn.

4) Mind Reading. Get people into pairs. In each pair, the participants take turns making statements to each other beginning with the words, “It’s obvious to me that…”, and describing something they have actually seen or heard of their partner (eg. “It’s obvious to me that you are wearing a red jersey.”). Next, participants take turns making statements that begin, “I guess that”, and describe something they could guess about the other person based on what they’ve seen or heard (eg. “I guess you’re feeling tired.”). Then participants make statements beginning, “I guess you can tell…”, and describe things they think the other person knows about them (eg. “I guess you can tell that I’m aged about twenty.”). Finally, participants make statements beginning, “I hope you can tell…”, and describe what they would like the other person to know about them (eg. “I hope you can tell that I’m interested in getting to know you.”)

Discuss, in the pairs, what this exercise was like. Come back to the main group and discuss the following:

  • were people’s guesses always correct?
  • if not, in what ways did their guesses vary from reality?
  • how might this affect our meeting people?
  • what effect did making these statements now, in your pairs, have on your feeling of closeness to the other person in your pair?

Go Forth And Play

I mentioned before that the above 18 games are merely examples of a vast range of choices available. If you want to get more new games, I recommend either The New Games Book or New Games For The Whole Family. If you want more demonstration games, I’d suggest getting one of John Newstrom and Edward Scannell’s books. For card and board games, check out local Games shops. A game does not need to be officially an “NLP” game to provide astonishingly NLP-specific learnings. Most of all, games don’t just help your participants. They help you. Here’s one that gives you that experience metaphorically. Use it next time you’re in a training experience and feeling less relaxed, and notice how useful it can be:

Circle shoulder massage. Stand in a circle. Have everyone turn to the right and take a step in to the centre with their left foot. Have them give the person in front of them a shoulder massage (if they’re not sure how, tell them to check what the person behind them is doing).

Richard Bolstad is an NLP Trainer and the author of several books on NLP. He can be contacted at learn@transformations.org.nz

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