Mimeograph – Fun Pattern-Finding Group Initiative

My friends at High 5 Adventure Learning Centre introduced me to this awesome group initiative 5 years ago and it’s become a staple of my repertoire ever since.

First, grab two decks of UBUNTU Cards.

What? You don’t have any decks? Noooooooooo…

Quick, click here to find out more and order a deck or three. UBUNTU Cards are by far the most popular resource in my ‘bag of tricks’ not to mention the playmeo online store, so they are well worth having on hand.

Focus on Effective Communication

As a problem-solving activity, the Mimeograph group initiative features all of the usual suspects – planning, decision-making, leadership and especially communication. Indeed, Mimeograph is the ultimate challenge to cause your group to be really effective in its ability to communicate critical information and ideas.

Most groups need a few rounds to refine their ability to communicate their creative ideas and unique perspectives. You can also expect this exercise to improve their observation skills too.

In particular, I squeeze great value from this team-building activity when I invite my groups to reflect on the different approaches different people take to retain and recall information, ie a critical element to succeed at this task. That is, we all retain, process and describe information in different ways and these unique perspectives can sometimes be challenging for groups to manage gracefully.

As you can imagine, these discussion points transfer nicely to the way groups in the ‘real-world’ so there are tremendous opportunities for learning, growth and group development in these moments.

Try Something New

If you’re looking for something new, try the Mimeograph group initiative today. There are many variations, works with all size groups and happily, it can be adapted to work in a virtual setting, too.

Contributor Mark