Magellan Healthcare Workshop in St. Louis, Missouri
It was a sunny day toward the end of summer when we did the Magellan Healthcare workshop. It had cooled off a bit with fall coming, but it was warm enough to enjoy an outdoor workshop in a great location like Creve Coeur Park.
There were 50 people from Magellan in attendance, each one of them ready to learn, compete hard, and do some good for the St. Louis community.
The charity this time out was the Missouri USO, a well-known group that works hard all year round to make sure military families get the support and counseling they need. Our end goal was to assemble 25 care packages that they could distribute to some of these families. And after we got things going with a little competitive and goofy fun, we accomplished this goal easily!
Working Toward Shared Goals
We also made the Magellan management team happy along the way. All the companies we work with are absolutely thrilled to do good work for charities, but they also need us to teach their team members skills they can take back to the office.
For this workshop, Magellan wanted us to work on their team’s levels of trust, communication, and planning abilities. They also wanted to see the individual members get comfortable voicing their opinions and concerns in a group setting, which is a big part of the collaborative problem-solving skills that every company needs to thrive.
We decided to start off with a series of short games like Say What I Say, Air Counting, and Circuit Ball. Then we had them work together on producing some miniature “commercials” before finishing off with Blindfold Backpacks.
We could tell that the team members had a blast playing these games, but we were also after something a little deeper.
Fun is a Side Effect of Skill Building
These “warm-up” games were actually a big part of the instruction we gave the Magellan Team. These games, like everything else we do in our workshops, are a subtle way to increase communication, improve problem-solving, and enhance the amount of trust team members have in one another.
The warm-up games work so well that by the time we started assembling the care packages, it was like we were working with a different group. They succeeded magnificently in getting the packages together with time to spare and The USO people left as happy as we did.