Defining goals and priorities can be quite challenging. Especially if this needs to happen together with other people. Still, being able to do this frequently and easily creates a huge difference…
Duration:
everywhere between half an hour and 1 hour.
Preferred location:
outside, preferably on a grass field, so that you have enough space for your participants to run around.
Working method:
individual work and teamwork, strategic planning (groups of minimum 5 people).
Materials:
a whole bag of various items with different shapes and colours, and a long rope (in case you have more groups, have a long rope for each).
Purpose:
training the decision making skills and abilities of the participants; finding ways how to set up priorities and how to arrange tasks according to these.
Instructions
on the field of your choice, create circles with your ropes according to the number of groups that you would like to have. Make sure that the circles are big enough so that each member of the small groups can easily fit in. This means that if you have 3 circles, you also have 3 small groups. Divide the groups and tell them to choose a circle and step into that. In the meantime, spread around the items that you collected in such a way that they are all accessible for each circle, some are further away and harder to get, and the others are closer to the circles. Afterward, tell the rules of the game to your participants and give them some minutes in order to create a plan.
The rules are the following:
- each group needs to collect as many items as possible;
- the items that are further away value more points (you can come up with a way how to create a point system);
- the members of the groups need to hold hands and create a spiral shape inside the circle;
- when you say “go”, the groups can start running towards the item they agreed to pick up in that round (it is going to be different for each group), still, they have to do this in such a way that they are not allowed to let go of their hands, and the last person needs to stay in the circle;
- as soon as they picked up the item, they all need to get back into the circle, in a spiral shape, without letting go of the hands, and they need to put the item inside the circle;
- then they have time to choose another item and when the second round starts, they repeat it all again.
At the end of the rounds, you collect the points and items and you check who is the winner, who got the most items, and the items with the highest score.
In case they don’t put the item into the circle or it falls out for any reason, that item is disqualified.
Also, if they let go of their hands or the last person steps out of the circle, their action is not counted in that round. The same happens if by the end of the round they don’t all return to their own circles and they don’t place the item on the ground.
Debriefing
you can lead a conversation at the end of the activity using the following questions:
- how did it go; what was the strategy that you used?
- was it easy or hard to make priorities and decisions; how come?
- how can you relate this to your daily life; is there anything that you can take with you as a good practice?
Possible alternatives
depending on your group, you can also add further challenges. You can decide how long each round is going to last and gradually make this period shorter and shorter. You can also add limitations to each participant or you can place some of the objects really far and give them a higher score. Also, you can gradually make the circles smaller, so that the participants have less and less space to create their spiral and to fit everyone in. Feel free to play around…