Team Exercise 5: The Characteristic Game for Enhanced Feedback (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Team exercise 5, the characteristic game. During this exercise the team sits in a circle at an equal distance from each other. Everyone gets 5 blank note cards or pieces of paper and writes down 3 positive characteristics and 2 negative ones. Everyone folds the cards and puts them into a head. The total number of characteristics should be 5 times the number of people. Someone from the circle takes a card from the head. He opens it and reads the characteristic out loud. For example, spontaneous. He chooses someone from the circle whom he thinks fits the characteristic most. Then he explains why he chooses him. The person chosen listens to the feedback in silence. When the other person is finished talking he takes the card and puts it in front of him. Then the person who just got the card takes another one from the head and does the same thing. He reads the characteristic out loud, says who he thinks fits it the most, tells the person why and then gives him the card. The person who takes the card places it in front of him. The person who receives it does the same thing again. He takes the card from the head, reads the characteristic out loud, assigns it to the person he thinks fits the characteristic most and tells him why. The person who takes the card places it in front of him. Notice that the person listening to the feedback doesn't reply. It's not a discussion. This process continues until all cards are taken from the head and are laying on the ground. Most likely each person will have a different number of cards. This too could say something about each person. Some people may have more opinions given to them than others. Now everyone has cards in front of them that were given to them by other team members. They can literally see what others think about them. The next step is for team members to trade their cards. Let's say that someone has a card that says insecure in front of him and he wishes to be less insecure. He chooses someone from the team whom he feels could use a bit more insecurity. He gives the insecure card to that person and trades it for a card that has a characteristic he wishes to have more, for example arrogant. The insecure person trades the insecure card for the arrogant card. This way the team learns that a characteristic can be wanted and unwanted at the same time. If someone wants less of a characteristic curt and more of a characteristic generous, he trades the card and explains to the person why he traded the characteristic with him. The rest of the group listens in silence. Moving clockwise everyone has the chance to trade a card with another person. The trainer guides the team and gives them feedback. Read the description below this video on YouTube for more information on how to give the best feedback to a team. And please subscribe to our channel to see more team exercises to improve cooperation and communication.