Cooperative Teamwork Exercise: Sort the Cards

May 9, 2011

By Skills Converged

Cooperative Teamwork Exercise: Sort the Cards

Purpose

You can use this exercise to explore teamwork, leadership and the ability to work under pressure and cooperatively to solve a problem.

Objective

Sort a deck of cards cooperatively as quickly as you can.

What You Need

2 or 3 decks of playing cards for each group of 3.
Prize

Setup

Divide the delegates to groups of 3.
Distribute 2 or 3 decks of cards to each group.
Ask teams to shuffle all their cards together as well as they can.
Explain that the objective is to sort the cards by placing them face up on the table as quickly as they can. You can use Poker rules for sorting the cards based on their value or simply sort them based on the image shown above.
The team who finishes first without any mistakes is the winner.
Give the prize to the winning group and ask them to explain the secret to their success. A winning team usually exhibits good teamwork. The team might nominate a leader which would then assign tasks and coordinates the activities of the team. Better communication among the team also significantly helps the outcome.
If most teams performed poorly, you can repeat the exercise after briefing them about leadership and improved communication. This time you can expect them to sort the cards faster and more efficiently.
Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes

Activity: 15 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

Did you do well as a team? Did you nominate a leader, or a leader emerged in your team? What techniques did you use to improve your performance? What was the effect of group moral and acceptance of leadership to the outcome of your task? What did you learn about teamwork in this exercise and how would you plan to apply it to your world?

Variations

Instead of cards you can give other types of equally challenging tasks. For example you can give the teams a jigsaw puzzle to complete together.

Comments

By V.S. Johney @ Tuesday, May 17, 2011 1:56 PM

I have found some useful training materials.

Than you so much

By D.Hunter @ Wednesday, July 18, 2012 3:23 AM

Cooperative team work sort the cards. Instructions say for each group to shuffle 3 decks of cards together then sort them. Are they sorted by decks and card suit/number or just card number/suit. Do you end up with 12 rows of 13 cards or 3 rows of 13 piles of 3 cards?

By Ehsan Honary @ Wednesday, July 18, 2012 9:56 AM

Good question. You end up with 12 rows of 13 cards. In general the choice for the target pattern is open and up to you as your aim is simply to challenge a group to complete a task quickly and with teamwork. You can choose a more complicated pattern should you wish to make the task more difficult and observe how teams deal with frustration.

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