Communication Exercise: Job Pantomime

Purpose

This fun exercise generates a lot of laugh and is very effective in putting participants in a good mood especially after a long training session. Although designed as a communication exercise, it can easily be used as a team building exercise or energiser.

Objective

Delegates to find people with the same card through non-verbal communication.

What You Need

• Job cards. These are 3-by-5 cards, each containing the name of a job. Ensure that the chosen jobs are fairly easy to demonstrate by participants. Examples include:
  • Gardening
  • Catering
  • Dancing
  • Medicine

Setup

• Each participant is given 3 job cards randomly. They shouldn’t show the cards to other people.
• Ask delegates to sit in a circle.
• Ask for a volunteer and explain that the chosen person will demonstrate the job on one of his cards, using non-verbal communication only for 1 minute.
• Other participants should watch the demonstration in silence and if they think they have the same job card as what is being demonstrated, they should move and sit next to the demonstrator.
• Now move on to the person on the demonstrator’s right and repeat this until everyone has had a go.

Timing

Explaining the Test: 5 minutes.

Activity: 15 minutes