Show Me the Ropes

Surface the tacit, built-in knowledge experienced people carry but rarely articulate. Practise active listening on a real process rather than a feelings-based conversation. Give participants a first rough draft of what actually matters for onboarding a new starter, not just the documented steps.

1. Pick a task (3 minutes, individually). Ask everyone to think of one task from their own job: something they do very regularly, something they genuinely enjoy doing, or something they feels is particularly important. It should be specific enough to show or walk through a small slice in a few minutes.Put people into pairs and where possible
2. Form pairs. Put people into pairs and where possible, split up folks who work on the same team or in the same role.
1. If all your trainees have the same role or are on the same team, it can be useful to ask one person in each pair to choose a task with a different framing. IE. One person choose something they do multiple times a week while another picks something they do rarely, but which has a high impact or importance.
3. Demonstrate and listen (5–10 minutes). One person walks the other through the task, talking out loud as they go, describing what they're doing and why, not just the steps. The listener uses active listening only, no interrupting to share their own way of doing it, only clarifying questions ("what made you choose that?", "how do you know when that's gone wrong?"). If the task is physical, actually perform it where possible. If it's desk-based, try bringing a laptop and walk through the task on screen.
4. Reflect back (2–3 minutes). The listener summarises what they saw and heard, then names the one thing they think a brand new starter would most need to know to do this well.
5. Confirm or correct (2 minutes). The demonstrator says whether that's actually the most important thing, and if not, what is. This is usually the part that's hardest to explain: the judgment call, the thing that goes wrong for beginners, the instinct that took years to build.
6. Swap roles. New demonstrator, new task, repeat steps 3–5.
7. Group share-out. Each pair shares the "most important thing" they landed on for each task and any other reflections. Capture these on a flipchart or shared doc as you go; by the end you'll have a rough list of real, practitioner-sourced points for onboarding or induction material.

Facilitator notes

• Works well as a genuine input into onboarding documentation, not just a training exercise. Capture the "most important things" from step 7 and you have the start of material a new starter would actually find useful.
• Equally, you can frame this activity as an opportunity for process improvement, to get to know one another better or share best practices and reflections from outside your immediate role.
• In some training scenarios, it can be helpful to encourage people to pick something they find difficult or which they dread. This can provide great input for process improvement or deeper learning.
• The listener's job is to understand, not to problem-solve or suggest their own technique. If they jump to advice, gently redirect them back to questions.
• For physical or tool-based tasks, bring the real props if you can. For anything on a screen, have the demonstrator share their screen or talk through it as if teaching over someone's shoulder.