Gamified team development

Research based team development tool

Make your team more effective in a fun way

1. Set aside two hours of time on your calendar for either face-to-face meeting or video conferencing.

2. You can choose a simulation manager among you or use a professional facilitator.

3. During the simulation, your team plays through a game with a story. You learn about your colleagues, they learn about you and at the same time you hear how others see you and your strengths.

4. Finally, you will receive illustrative reports about your team to support your further development.

Powerful, easy and fun!

9 simulations for different situations

We provide nine simulations, each with their own background story and factors related to different theories. Find the simulation that is most suitable for your team.

Tackle the challenges in remote work

Simulation: Remote work

Biases in our thinking

Simulation: Sailing to self-understanding

BELT Bootcamp

Winner 2018

9

Arctic15 & FIBAN

TOP-30 Nordic/Baltic startup 2018

9

Research based

Koskelin, M. (2017). Master’s Thesis (in Finnish). The University of Helsinki.
Nokso-Koivisto, H-R. (2016). Master’s Thesis (in Finnish). The University of Tampere.
Nokso-Koivisto, A., Heikkilä, J., & Luoto, L. (2018). SNA data collection through gamification: an example. XXXVII Sunbelt Conference, Utrecht, Hollanti.

Principles behind the tool

Feedback is an essential factor in development. It gives us a realistic picture of our skills, strengths and areas for development. A realistic picture helps each team member to find a role where the skills are best utilized.

Talking about team members ’aspirations, strengths, and personal qualities changes the way team members interpret each other’s behaviour. Better knowledge makes it possible to avoid misunderstandings and undue tensions, while improving the unity of the team and its willingness to cooperate.

Studies show that team effectiveness depends on, among other things, trust between members, relationships, a positive atmosphere, team unity, and its transactive memory, that is, the perception among the team of who knows what. These evolve through working together, but their development can be accelerated effectively with SmoothTeam. With the help of the simulation, the team’s self-knowledge increases and many insights are created to develop the team’s activities.

In the SmoothTeam simulation, the self-assessment of team members is compared to the perceptions and assessments of other team members in a gamified environment. As a result of the exercise, team members and the team leader learn how each team member sees themselves and each other. Through discussions during the exercise, the team is able to find their strengths and areas for development.

SmoothTeam is suitable for both remote and present teams.

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Customers

“We are developing our own team on a regular basis. It is part of our strategy. We were looking for new perspectives for understanding each other through SmoothTeam simulation. It was fun! Thinking about each other’s strengths worked very well through the story. The simulation took the discussion to a profound level in a fairly short time. It provided a sufficient structure, but also enough space for creativity.”

Piritta van der Beek

CEO, Grape People Finland Ltd

“All the assumptions about coworkers’ job preferences were not correct, and in normal everyday work one might not have even realised that the assumption was wrong. The task aroused good discussion right from the start, which would be almost impossible to achieve, for example, in a regular team meeting.”

Participant

Bitwise

“We work partly remotely, so everyone doesn’t know each other so well. The simulation taught us some surprising things about the other team members and shared tacit knowledge of each other’s strengths. Better than personality tests, as the findings relate to practical situations and can be instantly discussed in a positive manner.”

Tanja Korvenmaa

Ehta Raha

“I learned new things about my colleagues, especially about their work, their working habits and what they like. The SmoothTeam exercise created a platform for us to communicate and ask several questions that are important for creating a working team. Fantastic! The result reports with their charts, statistics and summaries were great.”

Areski Stichweh

SwingStep