Three hundred people in Chalmers’ largest lecture hall. Everyone is standing, talking over one another, and laughing. Some are being negative, blocking everything that is said. Deliberately. And they’re doing it well.
I had the privilege of meeting the entire administrative and support staff at Chalmers University of Technology: IT, HR, communications, and all the other functions that keep a major university running.
One of the exercises was about “playing a role.” Each group was given a task, and each participant was assigned a role to play to the fullest. It’s fun. There’s a tremendous amount of energy in the room. But that’s not why we do it.
Once you’ve experienced being the person who deliberately blocks everything for three minutes — and felt just how easy it is — you start recognising the pattern the next time it appears in real life. In others, and sometimes in yourself. That insight stays with you in a way that a PowerPoint slide full of bullet points never could.
That’s the essence of experiential learning: you understand it in your body before you understand it in your mind.
Thank you to everyone at Chalmers for your energy and willingness to embrace the exercise. And a special thank you to the organising team — Anna Engkvist, Ingrid Claesson, Hans Abelius, and Karolina Partheen — for trusting me to lead a half-day training session for all your colleagues.
