This activity is used at the end of the day to put their learning from questioning, listening and customer service all together. Unless they communicate properly with Sandy Shore then they won’t find out what the needs of the fish are and won’t complete an adequate fish tank. This highlights the need for using proper communication skills and the delegates have a lot of fun competing against their colleagues. I did find the calculations a little complicated to work out but enjoyed facilitating this one.

I recently used this as a group exercise for an assessment centre for recruiting Team Leaders in a financial services environment. When looking for an exercise, the learning points in Acquatic Experience corresponded really well with the competencies we were looking for of customer focus, team work, problem solving and decision making and leadership. It then worked really well in pratcice with assessors being able to clearly observe behaviours of individuals to measure them objectively against the competencies. The participants thoroughly enjoyed the exercise, and though we didn't spend time drawing out the learning points as in a training session, the trainer's notes were used to help inform individual feedback given after the assessment centre. A really enjoyable and rewarding exercise for both participants and observors, don't be put off by the list of supplies needed.

Aquatic Experience was a great team building activity, which made the delegates think about their own roles within their group to ensure that after the 45 minute time slot, they had a complete business plan. You may want to extend the 45 minute time slot to 60 minutes because only one of the four groups had actually built the tank in the time given. Extra time for presenting back is important and I gave them 5 minutes each to put their business case across.

I needed an activity at short notice that would give a trainee team leader an opportunity to practice their skills at briefing and managing a small project, and this fitted the bill perfectly.

I adapted the brief, as I wanted the team leader to practice briefing the team, where they have a huge amount of information. The info normally doled out by Sandy Shore was given to the team leader as part of their 'project brief', with instructions to convey this info to the team as part of the briefing. The briefing went well, with the key points being outlined, although a few were overlooked, they were picked up when the team asked questions - illustrating the value of getting other people's perspective on a task - because they picked up on things that the leader had not necessarily viewed as important. This organisation work in a highly regulated environment, and leaders have a tendency to brief teams only on the elements they feel are important, which can lead to costly errors - so this activity really helped them to see the need for exploring all restrictions , and their implications - such as a 'safe egg laying site' that is only big enough for mummy fish!! The implications of the different sizes of the male/female fish were only spotted by one relatively quiet member of the team, and was a big plus.

The key learning came with trying to co-ordinate the range of tasks within the project. Team members came to agreement on a company name as a full group, and were then invited to volunteer for different elements of the task according to where they thought their skills lay. The team leader kept a watching brief, maintaining morale and checking progress (or so they thought!) whilst not being directly involved in any of the tasks themselves.

Unfortunately, the team leader took their 'helicopter view' a little too high above the clouds. When checking progress, it was just a 'how are you doing' surface check. This resulted in the construction phase only beginning 10 minutes before the deadline for completion, and all hands being called to the pump to construct rocks, greenery etc, only to realise that there was a fatal flaw - they were missing one side of the tank, and had no time or materials left to construct it!

The 'sales' team did a fab job of blagging the presentation, with no model to show, focusing on the fact that they did not want to pre-empt Sandy Shore's own ideas, and that the resulting tank would be entirely bespoke!

Great learning, they had fun doing it, were hopelessly devastated when they realised their mistake at the final moment, and huge learning for all, including how they responded with apportioning blame! - great activity - thanks very much!!