1. Interdepartmental Communication
Right from the start of Hells Bells, members from each
team are required to share information and work with each
other (whether they realise it or not!). To do this successfully,
they will not only need to identify participants in other
teams who have crucial clues or information that they require
for their task, but also be prepared to identify where skills
or information that they have at their disposal may be required
by others in order to complete a task or set of tasks. As
the game progresses, this becomes more and more crucial,
and employees from different departments in a company can
find themselves sharing and communicating information to
move the project forward to conclusion, to a degree that
may surprise and delight management!
2. Bonding National Offices
The Hells Bells game is so designed as to generate high
levels of energy and activity within and between teams, which
very
quickly
break down barriers that may exist within factions of a workforce
and provide instead a risk-free and fun environment for staff
to pull together and collaborate whilst working towards a
common goal. As hells Bells progresses and the team dynamics
start to emerge, there are numerous opportunities to recognise
the power of the game in forging working relationships between
participants who hitherto may have had no knowledge of each
other.
3. Effective Communication, Co-operation and Co-existence
Hells Bells will naturally bring to the fore leaders and
would-be leaders, as well as identifying the ‘doers’,
the ‘thinkers’ and the ‘butterflies’ (those
who flutter around looking busy and try to have a go at everything!)
In so doing it will encourage and foster the development
of clear and strong communication and teamwork skills, the
effectiveness of which will determine how quickly and successfully
the various challenges are met, and how well all the different
participant profile types manage to mould together under
pressure.
Benefits of using Facilitation with Hells Bells
4. Developing Leadership Skills and Management
When Hells Bells is taken with the Facilitation and Feedback
option, it is possible to identify ways in which teams could
have approached the various tasks differently (and maybe
even more successfully!), and the game provides many possibilities
for coaching Leadership and Team Management skills, through
observation and feedback, to demonstrate areas for skills
improvement, which can be effortlessly transferred to the
work environment.
5. Understanding and Defining Objectives
Key to the success of any project or work process is the
full understanding of the task undertaken, and how that task
will move a project or work process forward and closer to
it’s objective or successful conclusion. This is as
true for major construction or product development projects
as it is for simple bread and butter work processes like
order taking, despatching, invoicing and collection. In Hells
Bells, the plethora of information and data available to
the participants can mean that objectives become at best
blurred, at worst lost or forgotten! As in the workplace,
this can lead to project slippage, business inefficiencies,
customer dissatisfaction and team motivation issues. The
hells Bells game provides a very powerful environment to
demonstrate the importance of keeping focus on clearly defined
and understood
objectives in order to overcome these problems.
6. Planning and Time Management
Hells Bells tends to follow the classic phases of any group
activity, starting with the quiet assimilation or Forming
phase that is rapidly followed by the Storming or Headless
Chicken phase, during which delegates show a tendency to
run about in all directions at once! At some point, sooner
or later, a stage is reached when various plans and strategies
start to emerge. These provide excellent Learning Points
during feedback and evaluation, giving team members the opportunity
to reflect to what extent their various approaches to strategic
planning and time management contributed to the final successful
completion of the project, and what areas for improvement
can be developed to reduce the ‘Storming’ phase
and drive to the final ‘Performing’ stage of
a successful team.
7. Assessing and Utilising Available Resources
All the answers to all the clues and riddles can be found
in the material provided. However, as in the workplace, it
will be the group that best matches skills to tasks that
will move forward successfully. Team members who are capable
of identifying skills best suited to a task or set of tasks,
and then recognising those skills in others, will find that
the tasks proceed to completion much more smoothly than those
who fail to recognise and utilise talents in their colleagues.
And as with every other aspect of Hells Bells, this ability
is supremely important in any work place, where so often
employees are called on to use initiative and available resources
to overcome pressing work issues.
8. Lateral Thought
Certain aspects of hells Bells are extremely logical, suiting
the more rational and analytical ‘left-brained’ team
members. However in addition, there are puzzles to challenge
the more random, intuitive, creative ‘right-brainers’’ minds,
requiring application of cryptic solution and lateral thinking
techniques that push people beyond the boundaries of ’the
square’, encouraging people to take holistic views
of the task in hand and push back on what seems the more
logical and obvious path ahead.
9. Changing Old Habits and Embracing Change
With a direct quote from the tome “Who moved my cheese?” the
game encourages participants to adopt new ways of working.
These may include dealing with work groups and colleagues
for the first time, seeing existing colleagues in a new light,
and adapting behaviours to ensure the success of the group.
For some participants, this may be the most difficult part
of the exercise, particularly at first. However because of
the high energy levels and fun generated by the activity,
invariably participants will discover ways of working together
that they would never have dreamed possible.
HELLS BELLS FACILITATOR
Michael R Tierney
MBA, MCMI, M Pract ABNLP,P cert Mgt(Open)
Qualifications:
Certified Master practitioner Neuro Linguistic Programming
- American Board of NLP - 2004
Certified Practitioner Neuro Linguistic Programming - American
Board of NLP - 2004
Master of Business Administration (MBA) - University of Glasgow
- 2002
Member of the Chartered Management Institute - MCMI since
2001
Professional Certificate in Management - Open University
2000
Experience:
Mike has 15 years experience in designing, delivering and
facilitating organisational development and training in interventions.
He has worked with all levels of organisational hierarchy
and in all sectors; from government cabinet ministers to
shop floor operatives in small and medium sized manufacturing
organisations.
Through insightful observation and an engaging practical
approach, Mike's facilitation creates the circumstances which
are the catalyst for behavioural change and commitment to
improvement at an individual level which result in enhanced
business performance with measurable results.
