Testimonials

Testimonial by Holly Lamar on October 13, 2021:

Zac Jarrard helped our ASQ Kansas City section board design and lead a Board Team Building exercise using Minecraft in July. One of the things we wanted to improve was our board cohesiveness, identify board team members strengths, and have some fun while defining what success looks like now and even more so in the future.

Our exercise was to create our ideal Minecraft ASQ KC Headquarters. Zac was an expert on Minecraft and helped get everyone set up through multiple technical difficulties! The presentation and exercise were designed to understand what our Minecraft section physical location would need to include for a cohesive and successful team. We wanted all team members to feel welcome and be creative. As we built, we brainstormed about current board roles and responsibilities along with identifying who is missing from the team to better collaborate and build more successfully.  One of the things that was a great takeaway was looking at how different team members at varying levels of Minecraft experience built upon each other's experiences and expertise to complete the activity. Another similarity we saw together was the need to draw those less experienced in Minecraft into participating, a similar real-life challenge the board faces throughout the calendar year. This was a fun activity that helped us learn how to delegate tasks and work better as a team.

Testimonial by Douglas C. Wood on June 8, 2021:

Team building with Minecraft

Having heard about Minecraft as a game, I was curious how it could enhance virtual team structure.
James Jarrad set up a pilot event with 4 of us to demonstrate how this can be done. Not all of us were
known to each other. We were mostly strangers, and some (including myself) had not used Minecraft to
any degree.

Under James’ guidance the pilot started smoothly and proceeded to not only introduce us to each other
in a seamless way, but our interactions helped all of us learn about the others. Thanks to James’
excellent facilitation we shared our thinking in ways that helped us get to know and trust each other.
Even as relative strangers we could make plans and carry them out. Learning the interface was not hard,
and became intuitive as the two hour demo continued.

Those not experienced in it may think Minecraft is only for a fun diversion. James has shown that it can
be used as a tool to build rapport and trust quickly, in a virtual environment. And yes, it was fun to work
with others and learn to trust them in this virtual environment.