“Why did we do that?”  It was the first question the group of 15 teenagers asked me after investing 90 minutes into completing the Spider’s Web initiative. 

My response?  I bumbled around for a minute or so mentioning buzz words like “teamwork” and “leadership” and I tried to explain how they would use this stuff once they returned home. 

They didn’t buy it – and I must confess, neither did I. 

The year was 1987 and I was in my first year working for the Camp Woodson program in North Carolina – a wilderness based therapy program serving adjudicated youth.  Our job as camp counselors was to help the program participants learn and practice important life skills that would keep them out of jail and maybe even turn their lives around.

Like many new to the field of adventure learning, I found myself leading teambuilding activities that I had just learned (from a book or from another staff member). 

My greatest challenge was that I had very little knowledge about how to effectively help the participants learn from the activities.  It was unclear to me how to “debrief” or “process” these activities with any degree of confidence.

One day I was leading another teambuilding program with a group of students and it hit me.  I realized how I could explain why we were participating in the teambuilding games AND what these games meant in the "real world".

I came up with something I now call the "Results Diagram" which empowers people by recognizing they are always "at choice" and their choices always produce a result.

I've trained facilitators around the world to use this process with great results.

When you subscribe to the free TeachMeTeamwork.com teambuilding ideas e-newsletter you'll receive the detailed lead-it-yourself instructions for leading a debriefing session using the Results Diagram.  To receive immediate access to this write-up purchase the TeachMeTeamwork.com 3-CD bundle of teambuilding games and you get lots of bonuses included free and immediate access to an online archive of teambuilding game write-ups including this particular Results Diagram write-up.  CLICK HERE to learn more.