I wanted an exercise to embed the importance of effective meetings that took delegates outside of their normal working processes and helped them to identify the importance of understanding others, questioning skills to identify facts and listening skills in order to interact within a successful meeting environment. To meet my needs I chose Murder at Glasstap Grange.

As this was the first time I had used such a significant piece of work in a course I was nervous at whether the key messages would be landed. What I found was a robust piece of training that was simple to facilitate and backed up with quality guidance in implementing, as well as support in unpacking the exercise. I would not hesitate to use it again or recommend this material. Excellent.

Murder at Glasstap Grange can be used as both team building exercise and a way to identify leadership skills with individuals. I used it as part of a leadership workshop. Once the delegates had worked out [the twist] a clear leader came out and took direction of the group deciding what should be done. If you split the delegates into two groups it can become quite competitive. It is also useful to see how a team works together. Some people just guess at the answer and others spend time trying to work out logically who is the murderer.

The exercise was well explained and extremely adaptable to any situation. I work in a Mental Health Care setting, and in addition to the team/management issues already covered by your material, my staff came up with new and very pertinent ideas, such as the role of Stigma in society. In this exercise, many were convinced that the secretary was the killer, and most cited her criminal record as being crucial in convincing them that she was the killer. This taught us a very relevant point, that even in settings where people believe themselves to be aware and immune to the danger of stigmatising people because of their past, we are also in danger of falling into that trap. It also gave us some insight into the thinking of people outside our organisation and how they may tend to judge our patients because of their history.

We have used Murder at Glasstap Grange a number of times in college and our staff love it! They turn into detectives and get very involved in the task. The feedback we get is that they enjoy the task and also realise the rationale behind it and the fact that they have got to communicate to work together to be effective.

We have used Murder at Glasstap on several ocasions for events such as away days, team building and communication events. It is an effective tool which enables the group to learn key points on communication and team working in order to solve the mystery. This exercise is one that we will continue to use due to the positive feedback and comments we have received. The exercise can be used for various group sizes.

The plenary sessions after the exercise have been extremely effective. We have focussed on areas such as communicating with peers and the the differing roles that people play within groups. It has also been effective in looking into people's styles such as reflector, activist etc.

I would recommend this to any organisation.

I recently used this resource with a large team on their first team development away day. It was hugely successful and great fun to do. The team was a large one, newly created and not very familiar with each other and each other’s style and preferences for working. The exercise provided ample opportunity to get into all of these issues.

I split the group into four smaller teams of 6 to run the exercise.

The timing suggested was perfect and kept the teams interested and working well. The hand-outs were clear and easy to read. All four teams got into the spirit of it right away.

One team solved the murder - just in time. One nearly got there and the other two were way off. None of that really mattered though, it was the discussions we had afterwards that really emphasised the value of the exercise.

We covered:

1) Communications and communication style.
2) Influencing others and allowing oneself to be influenced despite one’s better judgement (going with the flow, going with the majority).
3) Sharing of information and making assumptions about everyone’s level of knowledge and understanding.
4) Problem solving approaches.
5) Time and process management.

That’s pretty good value from one exercise. In addition though, I had done a Belbin team role exercise earlier in the day and it gave everyone the opportunity to spot the different team roles in action and provided food for thought about how the team could use its Belbin profile to best advantage.

At the end of the event, the team all went to the pub and took me along with them. It was interesting how much the conversations related to the exercise and the fun they had whilst working on it.

A by-product of all this is that I’ve been asked to run it again for a number of other teams in the organisation because they’ve heard the team members talking about it in the workplace since they got back from the event.

So, thank you for an excellent product which helped me to deliver a first class event. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone thinking of using it.

Recently we were asked to facilitate a session for a large team and were given very little detail as to what was required apart from that it should take around 1.5 hours and it should be interactive and fun. I stumbled accross the Trainers Library and was instantly attracted to alot of the icebreaker/team building activities. We were able to narrow down the many choices we had available, and our "client" loved the idea of the Murder at Glasstap Grange. The session was a huge success and the feedback we got was that the activity "met the brief of been fun and had some great team working lessons. It was also an excellent choice for groups that don't always work together as it got them working together quickly." This was something that we had never tried as a Learning and Development Team, but we are very pleased we gave it a go. Word has spread because we only just recently were asked to faciliate the session again to another team in our Organisation! Thanks for a great site and great ideas..it makes the process of finding something unique and fun much easier for us.