Humans are predictable. Magicians have taken advantage of this predictability for generations. Knowing how to read people helps you significantly in your negotiations, persuasions and overall communications. This ability to predict human behaviour is often related to our evolutionary past. As we have evolved to survive in our environment, we have acquired a lot of “hardwiring” in our brain which now simply dictate our behaviour. We are all too familiar with some of the common behaviours such as seeking water when thirsty or wanting to leave the meeting room when we can no longer hold it.

However, some of these hardwiring and their consequences are more subtle and a careful observation can give the observer a significant advantage in predicting the eventual behaviour.

In this article, a particularly useful body language technique is presented that helps you read people and understand what they are likely to do before they do it and to use this knowledge to your advantage.

This exercise helps delegates to become more aware of what they have and therefor appreciate where they are and how they are living. In our quest to become better and grow, we sometimes forget what we have or what we have achieved that we didn’t have before. Thinking of them periodically helps us to monitor our progress, become more confidence, happy and energetic. This is not a group exercise. Delegates can do this on their own.

In this exercise, delegates practice delivering a quick sales pitch. The structure of the pitch is based on the FAB methodology; Features, Advantages and Benefits. Most people miss the advantage and instead focus too much on features. This exercise helps them to understand the significance of benefits and advantages over features.

Use this exercise to get delegates describe themselves as they like and showcase it to others. There is a lot you can learn when people have to state something about themselves. The choice of words, pictures and diagrams can mean a lot on what their life priorities are which can be surprising at times. This exercise is suitable for team building and helping a group of a people to understand each other better.

The purpose of this exercise is to help delegates examine their non-verbal senses and build their confidence in sensing others. It demonstrates the power of our conscious and unconscious ability to sense other people.

Being assertive is not just about expressing your rights; it is also about increasing the efficiency of your communication with others. There are a number of ways you can express yourself to achieve this aim. This article suggests a few useful sentence formulations to help you express yourself assertively and increase your confidence in dealing with potentially aggressive people.

This is a simple exercise that anyone can use to measure his self-awareness. Simply think about answering a series of questions and through that become more aware of how you feel and how others feel about you.

Good presentation skills and public speaking require multitude of skills; creativity, storytelling, creative slide design, engaging attitude, emotional content and so on. Apart from good slide design, it is also important for presenters to focus on delivery skills to properly showcase what they show in the slides.

The modern practice of delivering presentations strongly encourages the use of images in slides. Hence, a presenter must be capable of showing an image and then deliver a key related message while the image is shown.

This exercise helps delegates to focus on this specific area and practice the skill.

In our competitive world, we need to present ourselves as best as we can to stand out from the crowd. Suppose someone asks you what you do? What would you say? Suppose you have about 30 seconds to say something or to present a pitch? What would your pitch contain? Which areas would you pay attention to most? How long should be your pitch in number of words used?

This exercise is designed to helps delegates to come up with a pitch and refine it several times to make it near perfect.

We all have different levels of trust in different situations. Sometimes the variation is not much and sometimes it is too high. We seem to be defensive and on guard while others feel comfortable. This is usually to do with our previous experiences as we derive our grand rules from our life experience. It pays to know how others feel in certain situations, so you can become aware of your trust level and how you compare with others.

Knowing how we feel is part of our self-awareness. The more we are aware of our feelings, the better we can control our behaviours and understand those of others. This exercise helps delegates to become more aware of their emotions and learn to describe them. It also encourages them to think of ways to get to a target emotion, such as happiness.

In this exercise, delegates get to define their group or personality and formulate their mission statement. Groups get to design a “coat of arms” which represents their value and mission. They can then use this deign much like a logo to remind themselves of what they want and what they stand for. They can decorate their environment with this and show their “coat of arms” to visitors as a way to show what they stand for and commit themselves as much they can to it. Continuously seeing the mission statement can have a significant psychological effect on the team and motivate them to choose wisely when making decisions so they can fulfil their mission.

You can run this exercise for teams who work closely together or get individuals to create a “coat of arms” for themselves.