Have you ever been TOO SMART??

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Have you ever been TOO SMART??

As a trainer and facilitator I am often on the lookout for new activities and games to incorporate into my training programs to keep participants engaged. Now, the idea of games for games sake can be fun but also a waste of time. I’m very conscious of finding activities and games that emphasize a particular point for discussion or reinforce learnings…it’s ALWAYS about that ROI (Return on Investment).

Needless to say, I came across an interesting game for my graduate cohort recently. Each month I meet with the group of graduates for a few hours on a Friday afternoon and we touch base with everyone’s work, what they’ve learnt, one of them will deliver a presentation on their client and perhaps we’ll be so privileged to snag 30minutes from someone in our senior management group to present too. Of course I like to throw in an activity or game to keep it light hearted – as we all know, for most sane people, Friday afternoons are not the most productive time in the week!

The activity was this:

I wrote ‘NEW’ and ‘DEER’ on paper and asked my graduates to rearrange these words to spell one word. Once achieved, they stood up. After about 1 minute, two of my six graduates were standing (it was that Friday afternoon time again! They weren’t their usual sharp selves!)

Of course the correct answer to this was ‘RENEWED’.

I then wrote ‘NEW’ and ‘DOOR’ on paper and provided the same instruction – rearrange these two words to spell one word. Once you’ve done this, stand up.

STOP! Before reading any further try to solve this puzzle…

It is very unlikely that you will be able to do this.

And here’s the solution I provided to my graduates:

‘ONE WORD’

Now apart from the fact some of the graduates felt a bit jipped and almost deceived by this activity, it proved a very interesting point in that sometimes we are, or try to be, too smart for our own good. Instead of approaching a problem in a direct manner we assume the solution is

a)      Complex, convoluted and difficult or

b)      Will achieve the same result as last time if we apply the same principle.

It was interesting to note that during the first part of this exercise the graduates asked questions for me to clarify expectations of the activity. However, during the second part of the exercise not a single question was asked. They assumed by applying the same methodology as the first part of the activity they would arrive with the same answer as before. However they were quite frustrated when the same outcome was not achieved!

The fact that we are creatures of habit is often to our own detriment.

Where are you too smart for your own good?

-Anna McConnell