The Magic of Discovery in Learning & Development

I recently discovered Geocaching.

Geocaching is a fun outdoor activity that uses GPS. People will hide small containers, which they call “geocaches”, and using GPS and other navigational tools, people will have to try to locate them. The area of play is the entire world.

As of writing this blog post, there are over 3 million geocaches, located in 191 countries. The first recorded geocache was on May 3rd, 2000. I guess I’m a little late to the game, but better late than never!

The fact that you can hide a geocache literally anywhere in the world makes the whole game extremely magical, and I believe the magic comes from the wonderous sense of discovery that the participants experience when hunting down the cache they are trying to find.

We have all been to workshops, be it team development or leadership development workshops, where there was no sense of discovery for the learner. I’m referring to those workshops where the learner is spoon fed the entire content or curriculum.

No activities, no room for play, no sense of discovering the content.

Please don’t do that to your learners. Give them that magical experience of discovery. If you are a facilitator, an instructional designer, or just working in a L&D team, I ask you to take a minute and think about it. How often do you let your participants feel lost, only to discover a path to their learning? There is truly magic in those a-ha moments!

We can all learn a great deal from the game of Geocaching.