This three-part exercise focuses on collaboration and team building. It highlights the importance of communication and teamwork in groups. The three parts of the activity incrementally add more partnership between individuals helping participants to compare their performance as more collaboration is introduced.

To reduce learner passivity and increase interaction and reflection, a technique known as the “Three Minutes Pause” is very useful. The idea is that after covering a topic or a complex concept, you pause and let the participants ponder over what has been discussed in a systematic way. This allows participants to clarify areas they may not have understood well and prepares them for the next part. The interaction and expression of ideas also helps memorisation of the content.

This technique is particularly useful for lectures since they are usually very passive and encourage non-participation. The Three Minutes Pause allows you to bring interactivity into a lecture without much time cost while significantly helping the audience to understand and memorise the content. It also allows you to monitor participants and receive feedback about areas that you may need to expand on more.

This entertaining exercise enables delegates to practice their creativity and problem solving in a team. It can also be used as a game or competition between different groups with a prize at the end.

Sometimes a little action can lead to a lot of change as the actions are amplified. This exercise helps delegates see this effect in a symbolic exercise on what is famously known as the “butterfly effect”. It is ideal for courses on team building, communication skills, change management and leadership skills.

Reciprocal teaching is a technique used by trainers and teachers to facilitate understanding a piece of text. It is designed to promote comprehension by looking at a text from several different angles.

The technique was developed by Palinscar (1986) with an aim to facilitate collaborative investigation. The four comprehension strategies used in this technique are:

• Summarising
• Questioning
• Clarifying
• Predicting

By alternating between these roles, group members can share their analysis with each other systematically while focusing on many aspects of a piece of information or text.

This technique can also be used as a brainstorming technique to prepare for negotiations, making critical decisions and problem solving.

This exercise is suitable for children as it allows them to express themselves artistically and reveal significant character traits which are important in team building. They will get to analyse their T-Shirt designs and also come up with new designs that best capture the message they like to convey or the way they see themselves.

This is a physical exercise ideal for physical training as well as concentration and focus. This exercise touches on many areas with the aim to make an individual more agile and precise while under pressure. In particular, participant will cover the following:

• Think strategically to plan ahead and determine your moves
• Execute moves perfectly based on a strategy
• Move quickly with maximum speed and minimum error
• Concentrate without making mistakes
• Compete with others both physically and mentally

You can run this exercise as a competitive game and offer a prize to the winner.

This activity helps delegates to improve their teamwork and communication skills while going through a specific task. The task is fairly simple. To succeed at their task, the team must be able to self-organise, communicate well, and work together to resolve issues. Optionally, if you have a large group, you can divide them to several teams where they can go through the exercise in parallel and at the end compare their performance.

This exercise helps delegates to memorise physical moves and also improve reaction times when a command is heard. The basic concept is very simple and can be easily applied to a variety of exercises, especially sport exercises. This activity is ideal for memorising specific moves or allowing participants to focus and concentrate.

This exercise is useful in showing people how resourceful they already are. People who suffer from lack of self-esteem tend to focus on their weaknesses or to blame others for their problems. This lack of belief in their abilities makes them less confident which in turn confirms their negative beliefs. Most of their energy is then spent figuring out who did wrong and who is to blame.

This exercise helps to break this cycle by highlighting that everyone has certain resources and strengths that they can tap into. When a person doesn’t see his strengths, he starts to develop a defeatist personality. This exercise helps bring positive strengths and qualities to surface, kick starting a more positive view of life.

The following powerful techniques known as Carousel Brainstorming and Graffiti Brainstorming can be used to brainstorm, refresh learners’ minds about a particular topic or to brainstorm on a new concept for new creative ideas. The two types of exercises are structurally the same with only minor execution differences described below.