What If We Brought More Play Into Training? I Part 2 — Where Do We Start?

Bringing Training to Life with a Deck of Cards: Bingo and Taboo

You don’t need to redesign an entire training session to make it more interactive.

Sometimes, a few cards are enough.

By slightly adapting the rules of two familiar games, we can turn them into simple tools for use in training:

Bingo and Taboo.

1. Training Bingo

The idea behind Bingo is simple.

Participants receive cards containing concepts related to the training topic. As the session progresses, they mark the concepts they hear on their cards.

The first person or team to complete the designated pattern calls out “Bingo!” and the game ends.

This time, participants have something to do as well.

They cannot simply follow the trainer. They need to notice the concepts being discussed and mark them on their cards.

For example, in a Lean training session, the cards might include:

Kaizen – Muda – Gemba – 5S – Kanban – Poka-Yoke

As the trainer covers each topic, participants mark the concepts they hear. A previously passive listening process becomes a small task that keeps participants engaged.

And Bingo doesn’t have to be limited to Lean training.

In a leadership session, the cards might include:

Feedback – Delegation – Trust – Empathy – Active Listening

In a sales training:

Needs – Value – Objection – Question – Proposal

The game stays the same.

The content changes.

That is one of the useful aspects of gamification: a familiar game mechanic can be adapted to very different learning topics.

2. Training Taboo

Taboo makes things a little more challenging.

This time, participants are not simply asked to recognize a concept. They have to explain it in their own words.

The basic mechanic is the Taboo game we already know:

There is a target concept.

There are words that cannot be used while explaining it.

There is a time limit.

Team members try to guess the correct answer.

And, of course, there is a little competition.

Yalın Network’s Lean Taboo training game is built around this same mechanic.

Let’s say the target concept is MUDA.

The forbidden words might include:

Waste – Trash – Value – Unnecessary – 7 Types

Now the narrator has a problem.

They cannot say “waste.”

They cannot say “value.”

They cannot rely on the most obvious associations with the concept.

So they have to think about what the concept actually means and find another way to explain it.

The participant is not simply trying to remember the concept.

They are trying to understand it, make sense of it, and express it in their own words.

The same Taboo mechanic can also be adapted to other training topics.

In a leadership session:

Target: Delegation
Forbidden words: Task – Authority – Responsibility – Manager

In a sales session:

Target: Objection
Forbidden words: Customer – No – Price – Answer

In a communication session, participants could be asked to explain active listening without using words such as:

Listen – Talk – Understand – Question

The difficulty can also be adjusted. We can shorten the time, increase the number of forbidden words, or introduce an advanced round where the concept has to be explained in a single sentence.

The current Lean Taboo design, for example, includes a 60-second round, limited passes, and a one-sentence challenge for the advanced level.

The Training Shouldn’t End When the Game Ends

At the end of a game, it is easy to identify the winner.

But from a learning perspective, something else matters more:

What do we talk about after the game?

After playing Taboo, for example, we can ask:

• Which concepts were easier to explain?
• Which ones were more difficult?
• Why did the forbidden words make the task harder?

We can even take it one step further and ask participants to create their own cards.

They can choose a problem they frequently encounter at work and turn it into a Taboo card.

This connects the game directly to their own workplace. The Lean Taboo design also encourages participants to create Taboo cards based on problems from their own companies.

This is where the game becomes more than a fun break in the training.

It becomes part of the learning experience.

A good training game doesn’t have to be complicated.

Sometimes, a few cards, a little time pressure, some friendly competition, and the right questions are enough.

If you could turn one topic from your own training into a Taboo game, what would you choose?