I’d like to introduce our PIFPAL (Pay It Forward Pal), Sohail Ahmed, who is Director of Mentor My Way.  Sohail lives in Delhi, India and his passion in work is in creating and fostering entrepreneurship among the youth and helping people realize their real self and helping them work to reach their true potential.

Outside of work, Sohail likes to spend time with his family and his 10 month old daughter.  He also enjoys exploring new places, meeting new people and understanding their behaviours, culture & values.

Sohail’s claim to fame is that he featured in Marquis Who’s Who in the World 2014, which is regarded as the foremost chronicler of Human Achievement.

You can find out more about Sohail via his LinkedIn Profile

Which of the 16 Team DyNAmics© Elements does your post support?: TRANSFORMATION

How Will It Help Others?: If teams are to continue to succeed, they must regularly review what and how they work together to understand what is working well and not so well.  As communication between team members plays such a vital part, this activity focusses on this and helps foster discussions around what could be done better in the future.

How long will it take?: 30 minutes

Resources required: Building bricks (Lego or similar) with at least 3 different colours (i.e. red, white and blue). Instructions for each of the participants (as described below).

What to do: 

Participants must build a shared tower using the building blocks provided. Each member of the team is working from their own instructions that the others are not aware of. They cannot talk throughout the activity.

The instructions should be placed on a separate piece of paper for each participant and should either be from the list below or variations on the same theme.

Person 1: Your tower must be fourteen blocks high

Person 2: Your tower must be built with blue and white blocks

Person 3: Your tower must be built with blue, white and red blocks

Person 4: Your tower must contain at least 20 blocks

Person 5: Only you may build the tower

Person 6: The third row of your tower must be blue

Depending on how may are in your team, you may need to add further instructions, or you could always have some of the team observing their colleagues and making notes.

The Rules:

Participants must not share their instructions with each other at any point.

Participants must not talk throughout the activity.

At the end of the 30 minutes, have the team rate their effectiveness on a 1-10 scale (1 meaning you didn’t work well together, 10 meaning you were extraordinary). Discussion should then be opened up about.

How did they communicate?

Were there any leaders throughout the activity?

What difficulties did they face?

What frustrations, if any, were there?

How did they feel throughout the activity?

What worked? What didn’t work?

What would they do differently next time?

Finally, and this is where it links with Transformation, the team should generate ideas on how their communication could be made more effective by using the lessons learnt from the activity.  Ideas should be expanded upon and can be challenged by other team members.  If the team agrees an idea is good then they discuss who will lead it being implemented,  how and when they will implement it, how will they know it has been successful and when will they review it.

Many thanks to Sohail for Paying It Forward.

If you’ve found this article of interest and value, please use the Follow option in the right side panel to ensure that you are informed of future posts plus, help others and Pay It Forward, by sharing it with those who may find it useful.

Would You Like Help Others And Feature In Pay It Forward?

If you have some effective learning that would help either individuals or a team and want to be featured in the Pay It Forward Initiative, I’d love to hear from you.  The only criteria are (1) the learning is effective, (2) it takes no longer than an hour to undertake, (3) you don’t need too many resources, (4) you are able to share it freely.

If you do, please email me via   or give me a call on 00447966306903 or use the Contact Form

Wishing you continued happiness and success in both work and life.

Yours behaviourally, Nick