Games for Legendary Away Days

Citation

Currant, N. (2005), "Games for Legendary Away Days", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 111-111. https://doi.org/10.1108/00197850510584278

This book is the follow‐up and companion to Legendary Away Days: The Complete Guide to Running Successful Team Events by the same authors. From Legendary Away Days you will have organised the venue, decided upon the purpose and have an outline plan for your team away day. Now with Games for Legendary Away Days you can start to put together the details of your away day.

Games for Legendary Away Days is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the issues behind running the games successfully and the second part gives details of each of the 33 games.

Part one gives a straightforward explanation of how to run team games and the pitfalls to avoid. Experienced trainers and developers will find this information simplistic and will know most of it already. A lot of this information is also a repeat of material mentioned in Legendary Away Days. The really useful section of the first part is “Choosing the right games”. This section enables you to choose the right games based on a range of different criterion; mood of group, organisational culture, type of away day.

Into the second part of the book and we get the details of each of the games. For each game, there is a description of its purpose, how the game works, any preparation required, timings and any potential problems that could be encountered. For some of the games there are suggested variations as well. You also get photocopiable handout sheets for some of the games, which include instructions sheets for participants or sheets that need to be filled in during the exercise.

There are four types of games; icebreakers (four games), energisers (three), team games (23) and individual exercises (three). Will you find any games that are useful for your purposes? For new trainers, these games will save the hassle of devising your own until you feel more confident in adapting them or doing your own. For the more experienced, a lot of the games will be similar to games you already use but there is sure to be some useful ideas that you have not come across before.

It is only when you compare Games for Legendary Away Days and Legendary Away Days that you get a little disappointed because one‐third of the games are in both books, which is probably why you get a £30 discount if you buy both books together. Given that both books are so closely linked, it is probably worth buying them both, or neither.

The book finishes with two appendices, one of which is in the companion book as well, and the other offers six tips on effective consultation.

Like its companion book, this book is much more valuable to someone new to training and development, or to organising away days, than those with more experience.