Communication Exercise: Unusual Greetings

Purpose

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.

Objective

Delegates to greet each other using innovative questions and sentences.

What You Need

• A flipchart or white board
• An index card for each delegate
• Marker pens

Setup

• Write down the following on the flipchart or whiteboard:
  • Good morning
  • Good afternoon
  • Good evening
  • Good night
  • Good day
  • How are you?
  • How do you do?
  • Are you all right?
  • Nice to meet you
  • Nice to see you again
  • Good to see you again
  • What’s new?
  • What’s happening?
• Explain to delegates that they have 3 minutes to come up with 3 sentences or questions that they could use in greeting others. Explain that they can’t use any of the sentences or questions written on the board/ flipchart. An example is:
  • “I am happy that we have this chance to talk again, I wanted to ask you a question about your latest article?”
• After 3 minutes, ask delegate to share their writings with others in the group.

Timing

Explaining the Test: 5 minutes.

Activity: 3 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes.

Discussion

How did you find this exercise? Did you learn any new greeting questions or sentence that you would use in the future? Did these new sentences sounded more genuine than the common greeting methods?