Imagine a room filled with 40 National Guard officers, experienced military leaders who also serve as managers, directors, and vice presidents. What would attract them to a team-building workshop? The answer lies in the opportunity to learn something new and discover a fresh approach. Culture Kitchen, a workshop that utilizes a unique cooperative video game, offers leaders the chance to enhance their teamwork skills in a hands-on and engaging environment.

How It Works

Culture Kitchen employs a three-phase approach facilitated by a special cooperative video game:

Phase 1: Concept – Leaders learn key principles and concepts related to effective team collaboration.

Phase 2: Practice – Participants apply the learned concepts in the cooperative video game, experiencing the challenges and dynamics of teamwork firsthand.

Phase 3: Reflect – Leaders reflect on their gaming experience and how it relates to the challenges they face in their professional lives, fostering valuable insights.

What Culture Kitchen Teaches

Modern leaders recognize the need to adapt their motivational strategies, particularly with the shift from a muscle economy to a knowledge economy. Culture Kitchen equips leaders with the skills to create an environment where individuals can motivate themselves. By exploring the impact of emotions on performance, understanding the reasons behind emotional interference, and discovering actionable solutions, leaders learn how to foster a self-motivated workforce.

Practice handling Uncertainty and Urgency

The video game’s design allows participants to navigate cycles of competence and stress in a controlled manner. Challenging levels progressively introduce changes that challenge players’ confidence, exposing them to uncertainty and urgency. By experiencing and managing these emotions, leaders gain valuable insights into their impact on performance and mindset.

Why a video game?

Culture Kitchen employs a video game to create an inclusive and leveled playing field. With simple controls and no specific skill requirements, every participant can contribute. The game’s open-ended nature encourages debate and collaboration, mimicking the complex problem-solving scenarios professionals encounter in matrix and flat organizations. Teams learn to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, embracing adaptability and resilience.

Culture Kitchen delves into applied psychology and techniques that make it easier for teams to learn and grow together. The workshop equips leaders with tools and firsthand experience to cultivate psychological safety within their teams, fostering an environment where people feel safe to take risks and contribute their best.

Conclusion

Culture Kitchen is designed to let leaders learn about and practice creating
psychological safety. People lead better when they are proficient in
teamwork skills. These skills can be hard to build as normal business cycles
take months or years to complete. These long cycles only give your
employees a few repetitions a year. The power of the video game is that
project cycles happen in minutes. Participants gain many more
opportunities to practice working and communicating together. Professional
golfers hit hundreds (sometimes thousands) of golf balls before they step
into the tee box when it is game day. Culture Kitchen provides a similar
opportunity for the professional development of leaders.

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