You don't have to leave Earth for stellar skill development
Long gone are the days where collaboration served as an intermittent, as-needed approach to conquering company initiatives. Employers have become increasingly aware of its widespread benefits and have grown to value it as a constant in the workplace—encouraging collaborative behaviours and even going so far as to redesign workspaces to stimulate it. However, some people need to see it in action and practice it for themselves before they can fully embrace its benefits.
Mars Rover Challenge (formerly Mars Surface Rover) provides a powerful, unique hands-on experience that allows participants to connect with the concept of collaboration at a deep and personal level. Participants are immersed in a team construction activity, whereby they are tasked by the World Space Agency to build a prototype rover for traversing Mars? rocky terrain.
Facilitative leadership has become an important force in the move to team-based organisations. But before traditional leaders can change, they need to know what facilitative leadership is, and how it differs from what they have been practicing in the past. The original, award-winning Mars Rover Challenge is a great training game for teaching facilitative leadership skills.
Learning Outcomes
• Experience the concepts and benefits of facilitative leadership
• Learn how a ficilitative leadership style generates an atmosphere of teamwork
• Discover the drawbacks of traditional or passive styles of leadership
• Recognise the balance between too much and too little authority.
Facilitative Leaders:
• Concentrate on teaching rather than directing others
• Focus on helping others learn and develop
• Provide guidance when a group is struggling or needs direction
• Lead by asking questions rather than giving orders
• Manage interactions between groups to provide their group with the best work environment.
How the Mars Rover Challenge Leadership Edition is played:
Three teams are assigned the task of building a prototype vehicle for ferrying astronauts across the surface of Mars. Using private instructions, team leaders lead their teams either passively, traditionally, or facilitatively. At the end of the game, teams race their finished vehicles. The fastest, most efficiently built rover most often belongs to the team with the facilitative leader!
Participants work in three teams to construct a rover, led by a team member who (unknown to the rest of the team) adopts one of three contrasting leadership styles—traditional (command-and-control), passive, and collaborative. Each of the three styles engenders very different feelings and emotions among team members. And together, they provide a very real demonstration of the effects different styles can have on morale, motivation, and performance.
Participants will:
• Learn how a facilitative leadership style generates a team atmosphere of trust, respect, open communication, and productivity
• Discover the drawbacks of traditional (autocratic) or passive (uninvolved) styles of leadership
• Understand the important balance between too much and too little authority
Use the Mars Surface Rover Leadership Edition to:
• Help new leaders incorporate facilitative leadership into their developing style
• Retrain traditional leaders
• Assist managers who oversee several teams or coordinate teams.
What to Order
Order one Mars Leadership Kit (Code 260) for up to 15 players or 3 teams of 5 players each. The Mars Leadership Kit includes: 3 boxes of reusable parts (batteries included), 3 stopwatches, 15 Participant Guides, 4 calculators, 1 tablet of 30 price sheets, 1 set of 3 reusable leader roles, Facilitator Guide, and convenient tote box. For more than 15 players at once, you should order: Set of 5 Participant Guides for Mars Leadership Edition (Code 260A), Extra Parts Box (Code 260B).
