Less Talking, More Doing: Making Leadership Training Experietial - with Shoshi Rothschild - Camp Code #168

Find full show notes and links at: https://www.gocamp.pro/campcode/lesstalkingmoredoing

Bringing Leadership Training to Life at Camp

In this episode of Camp Code, Beth Allison, Gabrielle Rail, and Shoshi Rothchild challenge a common trap in staff training: too much talking, not enough doing. They make a compelling case that leadership isn’t learned through lectures; it’s built through practice. From marshmallow tower challenges to role playing homesick campers, the episode is packed with hands-on strategies that turn passive sessions into active learning. These experiential approaches don’t just improve retention; they build confidence, strengthen relationships, and mirror the real-life unpredictability of camp. The core idea is simple but powerful: if staff are expected to lead in dynamic, human-centered environments, their training should reflect that same energy.

The conversation goes further by showing how small shifts—like adding movement, using quick decision-making scenarios, or turning feedback into a game can dramatically increase engagement and impact. Activities like “try-teach-talk,” themed training days, and even creative projects like staff-made videos help embed learning in ways that stick. But the real magic lies in reflection. Each activity is paired with intentional debriefs that help staff connect what they did to how they’ll lead. The result is training that feels less like school and more like camp itself: interactive, meaningful, and rooted in community. If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: memorable training isn’t about covering more content, it’s about creating moments where staff actually experience what great leadership feels like.

Best Practice for Leadership Training

From Gabz,

One of the most effective and often overlooked ways to strengthen staff training is through intentional recall, not just repetition. Drawing on insights from Neuroplasticity, this approach emphasizes that learning sticks when people actively retrieve information rather than passively review it. In practice, that means closing the “book” and asking staff to remember, apply, and use what they’ve learned instead of simply hearing it once and moving on.

A simple but powerful way to build this into camp training is through “capsules.” After introducing a concept such as handling camper behavior or problem solving, staff revisit it 48 hours later through new, scenario-based challenges that require them to recall and apply what they learned. These quick touchpoints can be woven into existing moments like meals or by slightly shortening sessions to make space. The result is stronger retention, more confident staff, and skills that actually show up when it matters most during the summer.

Special Guest:

• Shoshi Rothschild, Founder and Principal - in.tent Consulting and Facilitation

Your Hosts:

• Beth Allison, Camp Consultant - Go Camp Pro
• Gabrielle Raill, Camp Director - Camp Ouareau
• Ruby Compton, Chief Exploration Officer - Ruby Outdoors

Thanks to our sponsor…

UltraCamp

Imagine camp registration software that actually gives you MORE time for what you love - CAMP! With UltraCamp, you can effortlessly track attendance, manage staff, streamline registration, and more. Explore now at ultracampmanagemnent.com/campcode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Is your staff training all talk and no action? It's time to get your counselors practicing leadership, not just listening about it. Join us on Camp Code as Beth, Gabs, and Shishy share practical, fun, and totally experiential ways to make your leadership training unforgettable. Running camp should be about people, not paperwork. Ultracamp helps you manage staff, registration, and communication in one place. So you spend less time on tasks and more on camp. Find out more at ultracampmanagement.com slash campcode. Welcome to Camp Code, a podcast brought to you by GoCamp Pro. We have been podcasting for 11 seasons plus. We're almost at the end of season 12, and we knew that we needed to continue because just like people grow and change, so does this industry. So here we are, once again ready to discuss new challenges, new ways of handling situations, and new advice from those doing the work to help us all do our jobs better. So welcome to another episode, folks. Gabs and I got talking after our last episode with our brilliant friend and wise woman, Shashi Rothschild, and decided that we needed her back and that we needed to dig a little bit deeper. We focused a lot on the whys of leadership training during our last episode and some of the hows, but we felt very strongly that we needed to do an episode on very practical tips and tricks to make learning and community building more interesting, fun, and engaging while still covering all of the necessary things we have to do while we're there. So here we are. Gab, would you like to start with the introductions, please?

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yeah. Hey everybody. My name is Gabrielle, or at Camp They call me Gabs. My pronouns are she, her, El, and I work at Camp War, where we try to create a positive environment for girls and gender minorities. And we do that in English and Francais.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Thanks, Gab. And to our special guest who was so gracious in returning once more, could we have you introduce yourself, please?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yes, of course. And thank you so much for having me back. My name is Shashi Rothschild. My pronouns are she, her, and I am a former camp professional term consultant. I'm the founder of Intent Consulting and Facilitation. And I love working with camps to help them, help make them a better place for staff to work at.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

And that's why we invited her back. And I'm Beth Allison, co-owner of Camp Hacker and GoCamp Pro. My pronouns are she, her, and I'm a consultant and trainer and author who really loves leadership training. In our last conversation with Shoshi, we talked about how to design a staff training schedule, how to think about pacing, what needs to be included, how to build a structure that actually works for staff. But today we're going to go one step further because a good schedule is one thing, but what you actually do inside those sessions is where the magic really happens. So if you've ever looked at your training schedule and thought, oi, this is a lot of talking, then today's episode is just for you. So joining us again, we have somebody who's spent a lot of time helping camps think about how to make training more engaging and more experiential and way more effective. So we're thrilled to have you back. So let's start here. A lot of camp leadership training still looks like people sitting in chairs or on hard wooden floors while somebody talks at them. And it's not because directors want boring training, it's because there is so much information that we have to cover. The intention is good. Leaders want staff to know policies, expectations, safety procedures, values, all of it. But the challenge is people don't learn leadership by listening to leadership. They learn leadership by practicing leadership. And camp is such an experiential place already. We just have to design the training to match that. When staff practice skills during training, three things tend to happen. They remember it better, they build their own confidence, and they start building relationships with each other. And honestly, it's those relationships that are such a big part of leadership at camp. So let's dig in. We're going to put Shashi on the hot seat right away. And you can start by giving us one or two very practical tips that our directors can put into use this coming season. The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Great. Thank you, Beth. And I just, I think this topic is so important. I'm so happy that we're giving some more time to it. Before I get into some really practical examples of, you know, different activities, exercises you can do with your staff members that are experiential, I want to just start by, I think it would be helpful to share how I like to frame a session when I'm developing a session for leadership training. And that is to really think about what skills are we hoping they gain from this session or what skills are we calling on. What information do we want them to learn? And then how what can we, what is there a way for them to learn this information and to call on these skills by doing? And so whenever I'm building a session for a camp for leadership training, I like to start with an experiential exercise. And we're going to get into some actual examples of what that might look like, but an experiential exercise that calls on those skills. So it may not seem in the moment relevant to their jobs or to camp, even, but without knowing, they are actually using the skills that we need them to use in this specific area in doing this exercise. And then following the experiential exercise, there's a debrief where they talk about what they learned and they process kind of the skills that they called on. And then that's when we turn it back to camp. And we maybe bring in a little bit of theory and learning if it's applicable. And then we talk about, okay, let's reflect on everything we just did. How does that play into your role as a staff member this summer? What skills did we just call on during this activity that we can now transfer into our roles at camp? So an example of this is, you know, something I hear from directors and leadership teams a lot right now is that they really need help in supporting their staff members on taking initiative in problem solving, you know, not just saying, I don't know how to do this, or even worse, ignoring the problem and walking away and hoping someone else deals with it, but to really empower them to use their minds, their brains to figure out do I have the resources, the knowledge, the capacity to deal with this issue on my own? And if not, then who do I turn to for for support? So an exercise or an activity that I really like to use to talk about problem solving as that book, that experiential exercise that gets everyone in. And I'm sure as camp people, many people have used this exercise before is marshmallow towers. And so Bath or Gabs, I don't know if you've ever done marshmallow towers, but you know, if you have yeah. So you give you divide into small groups and you give each group a stack of raw spaghetti, you give each group a stack of marshmallows, and their goal is within a certain amount of time to build the highest tower, freestanding tower that can support the weight of a marshmallow on top using only the spaghetti and marshmallows. What I like to do is that halfway through their allotted time. So let's say you give them 20 minutes at the 10 minute period, you have each group draw a challenge from a hat, from a bowl. And that challenge will be a problem they now have to deal with and overcome in order to reach their goal. So the challenge could be it could be for two minutes, no one's allowed to touch anything. You can only talk. The challenge can be we're taking away half of your marshmallows. My personal favorite challenge, because it's hilarious, is that you replace the marshmallow that has to stand at the top with a tiny potato. So it's much heavier and they kind of have to adjust the way they're building their towers. And then the debrief is, you know, not about the marshmallow towers, but it's about the processes that they took and what happened when they were faced with that problem. How did they overcome it? Who did they turn to for support? Did anyone take the lead and then discuss how that plays into their expectations of them as camp staff this summer when it comes to problem solving?

SPEAKER_03 7:52

I love that. And I also like the extra layer of challenges. That's really great.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Gab, what about you? I was just thinking about I, you know, when we're working with our staff and we're, and that we have staff members that already have um experiences and they already know camp, but they're sitting through similar sessions, they tend to just their brains tend to just turn off. So how do we keep them engaged? And one of the one of the ways that we've done for me, one of my favorites is the camp schedule. So a lot of returning staff members know this camp camp schedule or they think they do. Okay. Some of them I'm like, you don't. And you, you've been here for four years. What's happening? But it's okay. So we we've taken our mega Jenga blocks and have put times. So the times, it's obvious, like what goes after the other. It's chronological. And we have our new staff member, we we give them all the other blocks that have the camp day, and they need to place the that schedule. Now it's new staff members, and we let them know like you're you're doing you, like, try your best. Here you go. And then our returning staff, we desi we divide into two teams. One is to represent campers and what are campers doing during these times, and what do they need, and what do they need to know. And then the other group, which is usually the more experienced returning staff members, is the staff column, and they write out what do staff members need and what do they need to know how to do during these these times. And so you have new staff members are working on the schedule, and it's quite hilarious. I'll let you know. You have sort of new returning staff, but they're kind of still new doing the camper portion, and then the returning staff that have experience are doing the the staff portion. And afterwards, you pair one person from each group, and and they just sort of help correct maybe some of those pieces. And the new staff members are charged with asking questions. So tell me more about this, tell me more about that. But it really helps returning staff members to get dig deep into getting back into camp, but also saying, like, there's a lot of stuff that they know intrinsically, but it's not necessarily explicit. It's more, it's more implicit. And them having to say it is really helpful. I try to pair a leadership team member with each group, and then anything that they're missing, they fill in the gaps. But it's a way of having a multi-tier learning. We typically do a little bit of a chat with our returning staff members and say, like, what usually frustrates staff during the summer is usually returning staff is new staff members not knowing things. These are the opportunities to teach them those things, so you're not going to be frustrated this summer and it's gonna make them feel good about themselves. So that's one, that's one that I I like to do with our staff near the beginning. And it sets set sets expectations for returning staff members that they're there to help new staff members learn and for new staff members to ask questions.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

So smart. And I love the you know, the the visual pieces of the the Jenga, you know, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. A little tactile in there too. That's great. Yeah. Um, if I want to get practical, I ask myself, what's one of the easiest shifts a training team can make? Anytime you're about to explain something, I always stop and ask myself, is there a way staff could try this instead? So, for example, instead of explaining how to handle a camper missing home for 15 minutes, give staff a two-minute scenario and have them practice. Role-playing, but you're just keeping it light and short in these situations. And you can say, turn to the person next to you, one of you is a camper missing home, one of you is the counselor, you have two minutes. And then you rotate and suddenly everybody has practiced instead of just one person at the front who's explaining how to do it. And of course, debriefing comes in handy there too. It lowers the stakes because it's quick and it's messy and it's imperfect. Now ask for volunteers to share one brilliant or wise thing that their partner said in those scenarios because this allows everybody in the room to hear great advice, but it also allows time for staff to practice giving positive feedback and it calls out great and positive behaviors for staff members, some of whom may always may not always get the attention and the glory at camp. So offer lots of those kinds of opportunities and sprinkle them throughout the training for just a few minutes each time. Leadership is messy, and I think that training should allow for that. Another quick idea is is the try teach talk models. So very short teaching, lots of trying, and then reflections. So what does that look like in practice? So let's say you're teaching, giving feedback to staff. Step one is two minutes of explanation of what good feedback sounds like. Step two, pair the staff up and practice giving feedback on a small scenario. And step three, reflection. So what made that easier, what felt awkward, what worked well? The reflection piece, you'll probably hear the three of us say this a number of times, but it's so important because it turns an activity into learning. So always try to find some sort of active and if possible, fun activity to either start the session or to pepper throughout the session to keep staff engaged, as Shoshi was talking about, and help cement policies, procedures, or tangible ideas into their brains. So here's one really quick example. If you want to talk to staff about what it's going to be like living together at sleepaway camp for the summer, you can introduce the idea by playing Subway Tag. So in this game of tag, you will only chase your partner and you will choose which one of you will be it first. Um, if you tag that other person, then they become it and they tag you. So you're only playing tag with one other person. You create boundaries in a relatively small space that doesn't have a lot more room than the people you're working with. And then this is the the thing is that we're all playing this at the exact same time. So you do this for a few minutes with fun music playing in the background, like I don't know, the Benny Hill song or the flight of the bumblebees or something. You can then turn it into Cyclops tag, which is exactly the same as subway tag, except each person covers one eye and plays the game again while only chasing that one other person. And everyone's doing it all at the same time. So you don't play for long because they'll get tired of it. But when you debrief, you want to ask things like, why did we play this game? How much will this be like living together at camp this summer? And what lessons can we learn from it now before we go into the summer? So fun activities like that allow your staff to think about things like how busy you're all going to be, how it will sometimes feel like they're running around in a maze and can't find what they need, how during Cyclops Tag, for example, they'll be often laser focused on their own tasks and miss out what others may be doing around them, and so on. So um, you get them to introduce these concepts after playing a fun game and then get them to come up with ways to avoid some of those feelings or issues that could come up. So we will leave it there for our first round, and we're just gonna take a quick break to hear from our wonderful sponsors. For camp code listeners, unlock UltraCamp's operations checklist for new directors, a free download to help you prepare for a smooth season. Find it at ultracampmanagement.com slash campcode. Running camp comes with countless moving parts. Ultracamp helps you stay on top of them. Organize activities and daily schedules, manage wait lists and cabin assignments, automate billing and payments, centralize all camper and staff info in one place. With UltraCamp, camp operations run smoother so directors can lead with confidence. Book your free customized demo at ultracampmanagement.com slash campcode. All right, we are back. So we're gonna head back in to ask Shoshi for some more great advice.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Well, Beth, you had just talked about feedback and I wanted to share like a fun introductory exercise activity that you can do if you are talking to your staff about feedback that I actually think would go really well with the framing that you gave before. So take everything Beth said before. And that's a great way to help your staff kind of better understand how to provide feedback and also the value of that. And if you want a fun experiential activity to go as your hook, as your introduction to that, I have just the thing to do.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

And you do.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Yes, exactly. So what I like to do, and I love this because it works both with supervisors who are the ones who are in charge of providing the majority of feedback throughout the summer, but it also works with general staff for them to understand. You know, I talk a lot about how feedback really shouldn't be this scary thing, right? Feedback should be supportive. It should be helpful. It is there to help us do the best jobs that we can. And so often people are so supervisors are anxious to give it. Staff members who are receiving it are anxious to receive it. So I think this also kind of helps to explain that feedback is actually really helpful. It's supportive and is here to make everybody be able to do their jobs better and to, you know, further the impact of the work that we do as camp people. And so this is the game I like to play. So you ask one person to step outside of the room or the area you're playing in, obviously, someone who volunteers to do this, who knows that they're gonna be the center of attention. And then you hide a tennis ball or an object somewhere in the room. And everybody in the room knows where it is. Now, this isn't gonna work with a large group of people. You might want to split this up. I think anything more than 20 could get a little bit chaotic. But the idea is that when the person comes back into the room, you have given the people in the room instructions that they are to help the person find the tennis ball, kind of like a uh hot cold game. But they can in the first round, they're only gonna use negative instructions. So the person comes back into the room, they start walking around, they're looking for the tennis ball, it's hidden somewhere, and everyone is giving them instructions. You're going from a negative perspective. So you're going the wrong way, or it's not over there, or don't look over there, don't look that way, don't do this, don't do that. We end and choose a new volunteer. A new volunteer leaves, the tennis ball gets rehidden. And this time the group of people left are told to only give positive encouragement. So they're saying, they're just saying, Yeah, you're doing a great job, keep going. I believe in you, keep it up, keep it up. Go through the the same exercise. And then in the third round, a third person leaves, and this time you're telling the people left to just give like really clear feedback based on their actions. So more to the left, straight ahead. Yes, that's great. Take five more steps forward, take three steps back, turn around, things like that that are very clear. And in most cases, it is the third person that will find the tennis ball the most quickly, right? And what's really important about this, as you were saying, is the debrief, the reflection is that you asked each of those people what their experiences were in finding the tennis ball. And what you typically hear is all negative, they felt defeated. A lot of the times they'll just give up and be like, I don't know, like I'm just gonna sit down, I can't do this. They, it's not helpful, right? They they have a lot of trouble finding the tennis ball. The second person who got only positive feedback may say a lot of the same, which is, you know, I felt really good about myself, but I it wasn't helpful. I couldn't find the tennis ball. The difference is they feel really pumped up, and the people that got only negative feel pushed down. But either way, they're not finding the tennis ball. The third person is typically going to be the one who finds the tennis ball right away. And the debrief of that is this demonstration of how clear and accurate feedback with clear examples and instructions about what you need to, like what you can do instead of you're doing this wrong, what we would like to see you do is actually very helpful and supportive, both as the people giving it and the people receiving it. And so that's a fun exercise I like to do. It's also really funny. There's always a lot of laughter. And Beth, you would set in the instruction, you know, these shared experiences are gonna create trust and they're gonna create bonding on the staff team. And so I think it's a great way to A, bring the staff members together for a fun activity and B, help them to better understand not just how to give feedback, but the purpose of it and how it can be a really positive thing.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

I love that. That's so smart. So smart. So Gabrielle.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

I love I love that too because I think, again, because it's experiential, instead of telling somebody it's really important that we give clear feedback. And we hear, you know, often we hear that clear is kind, and that's that's a Benet Brown thing. And I'm like, yes, but when you're in it, it's difficult. So these these that experiential activity will be featured at Warrow this summer. I really appreciate that. So happy to hear that. Yeah, no, I'm like that just sprites all the ideas down again. That's why I do the podcast. I'm like, it's how I keep us fresh, you know. So keep talking about keeping us fresh. Last year we did, we had our returning staff members do TikTok videos again for new staff members for them before they came to camp. And we got little mics, like the little kind of cheesy mics that you can clip onto a card or like like a mini microphone. They loved having that. Gave them very specific topics. And we asked the question to our returning staff members how will a new staff member knowing this will make your jobs easier at camp? And so whatever topic that you chose, like running, you know, dealing with a camper at the dining room table or a bedtime routine, or, you know, what whatever, whatever was, you know, paperwork, they got to choose what subject would make their lives better if new staff members knew how to do this better. And they created little TikTok reels. And they did it while they were at camp. We took them out of certain sessions that we already knew that they knew quite well. And uh they had a a a leadership team member attached to them and they create they created the TikToks. The The the TikTok videos or style, TikTok style videos. The debrief piece afterwards was very introspective into their experience. So what are some things that you learned about this topic? What are some things that you weren't real you didn't realize were the real were the reasons behind doing X, Y, and Z. And again, being paired with a leadership team member or somebody that had guidance on what on what we were actually aiming for, there was absolute course correction. It wasn't like we just said, here, here's a cell phone, here's a mic, go and do it. They really had to, they had to present their idea to me. I had to approve it. But the the strong feedback was, wow, I didn't realize how much effort and thought goes into how we, you know, choose who's going to eat where in the dining room. I didn't realize how much it is important to plan your group night well, et cetera, et cetera. So our returning staff really got to the why. And this is where we see a lot of leadership team members. They get to the why because they get to do the their trainings and they and we teach them the why behind what they're doing. And staff members sometimes miss out. They don't have that opportunity. So having them do these videos, some of them we used, some of them, some of them we didn't. We were frank with that. But our our new staff members now can pick and choose what videos they want to watch. They don't have to watch any of them. But what we're getting as feedback is they're they're loving the videos. It's fun to see who's going to be on staff. And and it's a pride project, too. Our our staff members feel proud and pride, proudful about what they did. So I recommend if you're able to do that. Didn't cost us very much at all. And and it's it's we're getting some videos that we can share with new staff members and they're feeling more prepared for the summer.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

That's great. And you can build a library over time, right? And they're using technology and all that kind of stuff, which is great. Love it. Yeah. I would highly recommend that you build movement into leadership training sessions. So leadership training, as Gab and I have discussed many times, should not feel like school, but movement changes energy instantly. So a very simple way to do a debrief or to have a discussion about something is to do four corners of a room and make sure staff understand that this corner will be agree, that corner will be disagree, the other corner, I'm not so sure. Maybe this corner is, it depends. And you can change that wording up to suit whatever it is you're talking about. And then you read leadership statements like a counselor should always solve problems themselves before asking a supervisor and get staff to move to the appropriate corner of where they believe. And then they talk about why they chose that spot. So you just ask for maybe one volunteer from each corner to choose why they chose that spot. And the reason that I love it is because it gets people thinking about leadership philosophy and it helps them hear different perspectives because leadership is rarely black and white. And one of my rules is always that if someone says something that makes you go, oh, I didn't think of it that way, you're allowed to change corners while they're talking. And that's always a neat thing to see. Another thing, and Gab and I are going to do an entire podcast podcast on it coming up, but one thing new leaders struggle with is making decisions in the moment. For now, what I would just like to share is that we need to give them chances to practice making decisions in the moment. So you could try something called a camp crisis lightning round and put staff in small groups, give them a quick scenario like a camper refuses to participate and just starts yelling and screaming, or a staff member is late coming back to cabin after hour off, or two campers accuse each other of stealing. I mean, just pick one. I'm sure you have lots. Um be careful not to pick ones that your staff will know who you're actually talking about. But groups have two minutes to decide what you would do first. And then each group shares. And they're not just learning policies, they're learning practicing, learning how to think. So I would really do those because you're just two minutes to decide what's the first thing you're gonna do. And I think that helps them a little bit so they don't freeze up. And then one of my favorite activities that I just started running. So I ran it last summer at one of my trainings, but I also did it at the OCA conference, and it works perfectly. But you get the staff to create several lines, maybe 15 people in each. So again, it will depend on the numbers of your staff, but you want a good 15 people in each line. If you have 15 staff or less, then you just do it and tell them you're gonna time them so that you can do it a few times. You're not really gonna do it a few times, but that's what you'll tell them. Okay, so the first person in line puts on a very oversized t-shirt. And when you say go, the person behind takes the t-shirt off the person in front by pulling it up and over their head and then puts it on themselves. And there's no need to turn it right side out. And so it goes all the way down to the end of the line. And the first team to get it to the end wins. Of course, it's a fun activity. There's cheering, competitive spirit, fun music in the background. And when you have a winner, you thank everybody for participating, and then you ask them, how many of you asked permission before you helped or touched the person in front of you? And that is your introduction to your consent session. The looks on their faces will be quite interesting. All right, Shushi, we're back to you. What else have you got for us?

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah, well, one of the things, Beth, when you reached out to me with kind of the overview of this podcast, is you talked about making training more experiential, but you also talked about making it more memorable. And that's something that stands out to me. I think that there are so many ways we can take our sessions just to the next level and and kind of give them like a little bit more oomph so that they stick with the participants. And so a few examples of this, you know, I've done sessions before we're talking about dealing with difficult conversations or like conflict resolution. And part of that is I like to have everybody in the group share something that they are anxious about having to deal with this summer when it comes to a difficult conversation. It could be supervisors with someone they're supervising or supervisors with a parent. It could be between two co-staff, it could be between a staff member and a camper, but something that they are like anxious to deal with. And we would go through and and we would, we would do, you know, it's a that's a great opportunity to do role play and to figure out how you might have that conversation. But the piece that makes this memorable is what do we do with that fear after we have discussed how we would address it? So there's two ways that I like to do to do this to make it more memorable. So the first is to have everybody write their their fear or the conflict that they're worried about facing over the summer on they blow up a balloon and they write their fear on the balloon with a permit marker. And then you throw all the balloons in the air and you start kind of batting them around and bouncing them around and it's fun. And then, you know, you can play music and you call it stop, and everybody's left holding a balloon that's not theirs. And then, either depending on your size, either in smaller groups or in one big group, you would go through and you would call on the skills that you hopefully had just been gone through in the session, and you would use those to kind of role play or explain how you might deal with that conflict. And then once it's done, there's a little push pin and you pop the balloon. And it's this kind of like metaphorical we are saying goodbye to that fear because now we know how to deal with it. The other opportunity to do that, if if it works within what you are, what you have access to at your camp, is to do it around a bonfire. So everyone writes their kind of fear on a piece of paper. And the same thing, once we've addressed it, that goes into the fire. And I really just love this symbolism of we are all a network here to support one another. You may not know how to overcome your own challenge or your own fear, but this group, somebody in this group will, or this group together can work to support you in that. And then we are saying goodbye to that fear. It's been addressed. You don't have to think about it anymore. You now know how to handle that. We are popping the balloon, we are putting that fear in the fire, and we are moving on. And I really love the representation of everybody working together to support one another and also being able to let something go because you've addressed it in training and you no longer have to worry about it.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

I love it. I love the visuals. Anything to do with campfires. I'm in. I'm in. So good.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Gabrielle. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go off of the visuals because I am such a visual learner. This is this is a different type of experiential, but I would consider trying to theme certain days or certain topics with like with colors. So a picture, picture your Monday being camper focused day, and everything is written in purple. You have purple posters up, you have purple text, you have purple highlighters, and it's your purple day. And then next day is your green day, and that is for green day. Look what I did there, is and that's for like safety, or or maybe orange is for safety. Having having colors or certain symbols being present and representing can really, really help with information sticking in your brain. It's it's something that you can build a theme around. And I have found we don't do it every single year because it can get redundant, but when we do do it, it is impactful. And we typically do it when we have a higher new staff return and it not return, but if we have higher new staff coming to our camp, we'll use the color themes to help with information sticking. And that that we've had quite positive feedback for from it. And it is, it is fun, like it's really fun, and it's a fun way to get your leadership team involved in being creative with different color themes.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Brilliant, brilliant. All right, so building community while practicing leadership. So something we talk a lot about on this podcast is that staff community matters and that leadership training should also be relationship training. So you can try an activity called leadership stories, have staff pair up and answer the question tell me about a leader who made a difference in your life. So they share with each other and then ask, what did they do? How did they make you feel? It can be really powerful because now leadership becomes values-based and not just rule-based. Jumping off of that, values and action, where you connect leadership to camp culture and personal reflection. So how that works is you write core camp values on slips of paper like inclusion, creativity, resilience, kindness, whatever you want. And staff pick a value and act out a 60-second scenario demonstrating it in leadership. And the other staff have to guess which value is being modeled. Now, you can do it in groups or pairs, however you like to do it. But how can these values guide real leadership decisions? Is one of the questions that you want to debrief. And did acting it out change your understanding of the value? And there's an optional twist that if you want to turn it into a friendly competition, you can have award points for creativity or teamwork or clarity. But definitely we always want to keep the focus on learning and not winning. This year I decided that I really, when I was talking about community with a particular staff at the beginning of their training, I really wanted to play the game of telephone, but I mean it's it's very outdated. So I wanted to update it a little bit. So we did it with dancing. So they didn't know what they were going to be doing. I got staff to line up in long lines, again, of about 15 people facing front. I had the last person in line know that they were going to do a four-part dance routine. So if people wanted to switch places, that was fine. So that the person at the end would be that person. I front-loaded that it didn't have to be fancy or amazing, but you're looking for something more than just like a one-move dance, dance move, like, you know, John Travolta pointing his finger in Saturday Night Fever, but something a little more complicated than that. I love it. So this person does it for you to see. And then when you say go, they tap the shoulder of the person in front of them. That next person turns around to see it, and then of course passes it up the line. And you're going to play some very funky dance music. I personally chose Leo Sare. You make me feel like dancing because you know, introducing young staff to 70s music is kind of my thing. And then you debrief how is this like camp community and what should we do about it? So just make sure my last little bit is, and we've talked about this several times, but without reflection, activities are just activities. So, you know, you want to build a huge repertoire of debrief type questions, like what's one thing you want to try this coming week when campers arrive, or what leadership skill do you want to practice during training, or what surprised you today? All kinds of questions like that. It slows the moment down and it helps people to internalize it and process it. And that's where the learning sticks. All right, Gabrielle, I think we're ready for a recap.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Y'all, that my notes. Oh, wait, it's too dark to see, but on YouTube, it is like it. I have pages and pages. My hands or palms are a little sweaty. Okay. All right. All right, everybody, listen up. Should she really set us up well with the beautiful framework when we're planning any session? The session, the day, the entire staff training, we want to look at what skills info that we want to present in our session and how do we want to practice it and how do we want to recall slash debrief that information. Now I know some camp directors are like, I don't have time for debriefing. I don't have time for the activities. And I'm like, I understand, but you have to include debriefing, you have to include experiential activities because this is how they're going to retain their information. And during the summer, you're going to feel less, less frustrated because they are retaining information. So in my what I'm listening here is that when you have that framework, you have three different possibilities when it comes to experiential activities: symbols, sharing, or shimmying. So with symbols, think about balloons, you know, campfires, color themes, et cetera, et cetera. Sharing. Think pair share. Share what your teammates said that was like super smarty pants, and everybody should hear about it. Let's play a Jenga game and everybody let's share what we should be doing during the day. And then shimmying is just getting our bodies moving, which is scientifically proven to make information stick in our brains. So moving from point A to point B with giving your opinion by playing certain activities, by even doing jumping jacks. We want to simp have symbols, share and shimmy when you're looking at your sessions. And Shoshi, you are amazing. You're the fourth S of this. It was what a great session. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. I love being part of your S's.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

As always, a brilliant recap from Gabrielle. So, how can you folks get involved in Camp Code? You can tell us any topics you'd like us to discuss, any guests you recommend that we have on the show, and any great leadership training tips that you have to share. We would love to hear from you. And if you found our podcast to be useful, we'd appreciate a rating and review in your podcasting app. So here's how you can get in touch with each one of us should you wish. So, Shashi, where do they find you?

SPEAKER_01 37:17

You can find my website, intent consulting and facilitation, www.workwithintent.ca. You can find intent on Instagram at workwithintent. And you can find me on LinkedIn at Susanna Rothschild, S-U-S-A-N-N-A.

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Gabrielle. You can check out where I work at warro.com and you can get in touch with me at info at warro.com, o-u-a-re-e-a-u.com.

SPEAKER_03 37:45

Great. You can email me directly, Beth at GoCamp.pro or find me on threads at topaz underscore fay. And for our next podcast, we're going to be talking about how to teach your staff to problem solve under pressure, Gab's favorite topic. And speaking of Gab, she's on best practice this week.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

All right, everybody. So we're talking about experiential learning activities, getting the body moving, the brain moving, et cetera, et cetera. One of the things that I learned when I was deep diving during COVID on try to help my staff out was I learned a lot of learning about neuroplasticity and building those connections. And something that really, really stood out was the importance and value of recalling information. So for example, you could take a textbook and to learn information for an exam the next day, and you could take a highlighter and highlight a bunch of pieces, or you could read that page, close the book, and then try to remember what was on that page and open it back up again. And the second piece is much more effective than the first piece. You could probably combine the first piece with highlighting, closing the book, and looking again, but I digress. So how do we do this with a group of 10, 15, 20, 400 staff members? How do we help them recall information? We have been with great success, have been doing what we call the capsule or capsules, which is where we choose certain sessions where we give information, just like so she suggested, had a had a you know, perhaps scenario-based piece, did a little bit of a debrief. And then approximately 48 hours later, we would do different scenarios based on those that same learning and topics. And they have to recall the information that they learned from those that those days before. And you might be asking me, but my staff training is already full. Like it, I don't, how can I put in these capsues? Well, what we did was we did shorten those sessions by 10, 15 minutes to give us a little bit more space, but we use time such as like meal times for little scenarios and even just re-prioritizing some of our sessions. But I'll tell you that the information that is retained just by doing that little recall piece really, really showed up during the summer. So pick two, three, four things that you really want your staff members to do, teach it to them on a Monday, and then come back to it on a Wednesday where they have to recall that information. And then again, doing a little debrief afterwards really helps.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Thank you, Gabrielle. This episode has been so helpful because it takes leadership training from something that people sit through to something they actually experience. So, Ms. Rothschild, thank you so much for coming back and sharing these practical ideas. Thank you. And if you're planning, oh, it was our pleasure. Absolutely. And if you're planning staff training right now, maybe your takeaway is simple: talk less, practice more. And may remember that the goal of leadership training isn't just information, it's confidence. So that's what we want to make sure we can instill in our staff and empower them to do before training is over. Camp Code is part of the GoCamp Pro Podcast Network, and you can check out all of our other podcasts at gocamp.pro slash podcasts, obviously. Thank you for joining us today. And again, a very special thank. Thank you to you, Shushi, for sharing your experience. And until next time, here's to building camps where staff feel confident, supported, and ready for the moments that matter most. Thanks for the listening, friends.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Please remember, no other industry shares their best practices the way summer camps do. If you use an idea you heard on a GoCamp Pro podcast, please be professional and remember to give credit where credit is due. The Camp Code is brought to you by GoCamp Pro. Thanks for listening, friends.

SPEAKER_03 41:37

Camp Hacker.