Facilitation Techniques and Workshop Activities | Library

Social Virus

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We all know how quickly the cold or flu can spread through the office, but we don't often think about how contagious our emotions can be. This exercise provides a brief simulation of how quickly both negative and positive emotions can be transmitted. One participant is selected to be the Negative Infector General and asked to infect others with a negative emotion. During the next round, you pretend to select another participant to be the Positive Infector General. At the end of the second round, participants are surprised to find out that they became more positive even though no one initiated the emotion.

Sound Ball

energiser icebreaker thiagi team outdoor

This a simple icebreaker activity energising participants, also suitable for debriefing learning points towards spontaneity and teamwork. The activity involves participants standing in a circle and throwing imaginary ball(s) to each other in increasing pace.

Spread the Word

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Asking the participants to summarize the key points from a lecture is an effective way to strengthen their understanding and recall.

Sticks - A Metaphorical Simulation Game

communication team teamwork action

When people interact or communicate with each other, they use certain amount of energy or pressure. Here's an activity that makes participants aware of such energy exchange and helps them explore how to manage this process.

Strength Envelopes

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This activity helps working teams to discover and share individual strengths and to increase their engagement by structuring their jobs around these strengths. Suitable for people who work together (for example, members of an intact work team) organized into playgroups of 5 to 9 members.

Stress Balls

energiser communication teamwork team thiagi action icebreaker

Understanding the importance of communication and teamwork is an important requirement for high performance teams of knowledge workers. This exercise is an effective energizer that requires communication and teamwork. Ask participants to form a circle and throw a ball around to simulate the movement of a message. Change different variables such as speed, quantity, and complexity to create a mess.

Teammates

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Participants work individually, thinking about three teams and the behaviors of desirable teammates and undesirable teammates. Later, they work with a partner (and still later, in teams) to prepare a list of dos and don'ts for being a desirable teammate.

The Anchor Effect

anchoring problem solving thiagi issue analysis

This jolt demonstrates how the natural human tendency of becoming heavily attached to a starting value can influence our decision making.
The participants work with two different versions of the same questionnaire. One version asks a series of questions that provide low anchor values, while the other version provides high anchor values. The debriefing discussion examines how anchoring affects our decision making.

The Creativity Dice

creativity problem solving thiagi issue analysis

Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

The Highest Tower

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This is a game in which participants build “the highest tower”—and explore cooperation and competition.

Thirty-five for Debriefing

debriefing closing thiagi action skills

You might be familiar with Thirty-Five as a structured-sharing activity. Thirty-Five can also be used as an effective debriefing game.

In this version, participants reflect on an earlier experience and identify important lessons they learned. They write one of these lessons as a brief item. The winner in this activity is not the best player, but the best lesson learned.

Triple Nine

thiagi skills analysis

The key to such procedures as need analysis, market research, and evaluation is the ability to find patterns in available information, collect additional information, and come to logical conclusions. We devised a game with a pocket calculator to teach this type of logical thinking.

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