I have now used Jack Fruggles Treasure more than 30 times over the past few years. As well as using for team building/development events, I have also used the activity in training sessions on topics such as problem solving, decision making, and leadership modules. It has also been a great activity to build into my Belbin Team profiling sessions, as it clearly highlights different ways in which individuals contribute towards a team. What a great activity it is and it is so versatile, fun, challenging and can be adapted in so many ways.

Many thanks for a super resource; it has brought me and my delegates many hours of fun with so many valuable learning points…

I have used this exercise twice, firstly for Teambuilding and Leadership and secondly for Time Management. On both occasions the participants enjoyed the exercise and learned valuable lessons from the experience.

The instructions provided are excellent and the questions under the various headings, such as Leadership, Teambuilding etc are a useful support for the trainer. All the participants have stated that the time goes very quickly during this exercise, so it is ideal for use to highlight planning and organising of resources for any task they may encounter back in the workplace. Regarding Teamwork and Leadership, the participants learn about how they react under pressure in a new situation, which reflects well in the workplace as we are often faced with new challenges! I would recommend laminating the cards as in their enthusiasm the participants tend to write on the cards (even when asked not to!).

I used exercise as part of a team day for a new team of student’s wardens here at York St John University. The group had only come together that week and many of them didn’t know one another prior to the training. After the week long training programme they would be located remotely from one another but would still be expected to work as a team.

The exercise was met with some frustrations to start with but it went down well and the element of competition really got the smaller teams bonding. There were so many relevant learning points to draw from this exercise; approaches to team work, utilising individual skills, different approaches to problem solving, different personalities, not always having all the information upfront, making sure everybody is enabled to engage in the process etc. etc.

In facilitating the exercise you need to do your preparation, and make sure you are clear on your role, once people start asking you questions you have to be on your toes!

I would definitely use this exercise again, its good fun!

I've used Jack Fruggle's Treasure and the team LOVED it. Great fun. Challenging. And lots of observable behaviours for discussion.

We have used this team building activity as part of a team building event with a very broad team of 40, some of whom have minimum contact with each other. Despite one or two initial reservations by the group about team building activities in general, it was well received and even the most reserved member of the group was passing cards around and puzzling over the answers. I would suggest reading the questions carefully before the start and hanging onto the answer sheet for the later parts of the exercise. It is also important to avoid 'helping' teams stuck with the numbers for as long as possible. It was very positively evaluated.

It is an excellent exercise if you are looking for something that can be easily tailored to cover subject specific knowledge in a fun way as you have the opportunity to replace some or all of the general knowledge questions with ones that relate to the topic in question.

I had a team leader who is incredibly task focused, but could not see the effect their hands-on involvement was having on the team. This activity really helped.

The team leader, having briefly seen the activity and flipped through the cards, briefed their team. The briefing was very rushed and gave little opportunity for questions, and the team had not seen the cards, so were unable to 'see' what had to be done - a huge learning point in terms of helping teams understand their brief.

Logistically, this task caused the task-focused team leader big problems. They wanted to (and did) get stuck into solving the clues themselves. The difficulty this posed was that there was no actual 'management' of the task - no planning or organisation. Everyone took a batch of clues and did their best to solve them, sharing their answers with whoever would listen, with the result that some answers were not heard, and no-one kept track of what had been solved and what hadn't - utter chaos!

Once they realised the significance of the numbers on the cards, there was a great opportunity to pause and re-organise, but this was missed. Work continued in fragmented style, with some people solving clues that had already been completed. Towards the end, as time pressure was mounting, the leader began attempting to fill in the blanks in the verse 'hangman' style. The team made a significant leap forward at this point, but did not check their answers against the clue cards to see if they fit - with the unfortunate result that one key word was incorrect, and this threw the whole verse out.

Great learning, as they realised that there are a range of ways to solve problems, and the importance of cross-checking info to validate their ideas. Thanks for another great activity.