This is a creative exercise which can be used to explore topics such as communication skills, leadership, problem solving decision making and perspective taking. Effectively, delegates must work together to sort a sequence of images by enquiring from each other and collectively decide on the best outcome.

This is a famous entertaining game were a player must guess the name written on a card by asking closed questions where the answers can be “yes” or “no”. The objective is to find the name as quickly as possible. Many variations can be used to bias the exercise based on your specific training needs. A variation of this exercise can be used to teach the importance of asking open questions as opposed to closed questions to maximise information transfer. See Variations for a guideline on this.

This exercise has become immortally famous by Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

This humorous activity encourages delegates to use unusual sentences for greetings. This exercise aims to demonstrate the effect of honest and genuine greetings which can make communication more effective and helps to build better relationships.

Psychologists have suggested a direct link between the way you recall an event and the way you are questioned about it. The structure of the questions and the wordings are critical. Numerous studies on eyewitness recalls show that witnesses remember differently depending on how they are asked. In this exercise, delegates will get a hands-on experience of differences created as a result of asking different questions. This will encourage them to pay more attention to the way they ask questions and thereby improve their communication skills.

In this creative exercise, participants get to understand the value of confirmations and feedback in communication. Sometimes instructors fail to observe, receive feedbacks and correct the procedure done by a different person under their instruction. This is also a good exercise in practicing questioning techniques, in particular open versus close questions. Of course, you can explore other questioning techniques with variations of this exercise.

This exercise highlights the importance of confirming the information we receive from either our colleagues or clients. This activity is designed for groups of at least 8 delegates or more.

Asking the right type of questions to get the right kind of answers is a critical skill everyone must master. This is not always easy since you need to balance between wanting to get more specific details or getting any information you can. This powerful and entertaining exercise helps the delegates to understand the distinction between open and closed questions and practice their questioning skills.