Does anyone have any links or material they are willing to share, of role plays demonstrating communication barriers?
Thanking you in advance!
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Here is a fun and kinaesthetic version of Ady's drawing exercise (which I also love!)
http://www.mftrou.com/communication-skills-game.html
I haven't tried it but I am going to at the next chance.
Another variation of Ady's game is to get the mouthiest person in the group (usually me!) to stand at the front of the class and describe their own basic drawing to the group. It makes them reflect on their own communication as well as instigating discussion.
In both versions of the drawing game, I usually do one version with the 'explainer' only is allowed to speak and describe the picture, then another round where they repeat the exercise and this time the 'receiver' is allowed to ask questions for clarification. (Just make sure you don't let the receiver see the picture in between or use another picture. They draw the second picture on a clean sheet so they can compare the two attempts. This also leads nicely to talk about assumptions when sales training. So many ways to take the discussion after. A great suggestion and low resource.
I hope that makes sense! Good luck!
You can't go wrong with a little Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers to highlight some barriers to communication :)
This ones below are great to use as examples of communication 'challenges'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcliR8kAbzc
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0578586/
Enjoy!
Good evening Mike, I hope all is well with you and yours! I actually laughed out loud, as I for one, am old enough to remember this first time around. What a fantastic example. Thank you!
HI Lisa,
I've done one that's usually quite amusing. The group are divided into pairs. Each pair sits back to back. One has a picture of a drawing (fairly simple, matchstick men, drawing of house etc) and the other has a blank piece of paper. Without showing the other person the drawing, the one with the drawing describes to the one without what the picture is whilst they attempt to draw it from the description they're hearing. All sorts of learnings come out of this. It's interesting how people describe things in completely different ways!
Thank you Emma - Jane and Liisa for taking time out and giving me some ideas! Its great to be able to tap into other trainers resources.
Kind regards, Lisa
Hey Lisa, I hope you are well. I recently did a similar thing with a small group of twelve people. I put them into pairs, each 'partner' was blindfolded. They were given two plastic cups, both filled with Skittles (sweets). There was a plastic spoon in each cup also. No touching was allowed; each person had to 'communicate' instructions to the 'feeder', in order to get the sweets into their mouth. This was then reversed and repeated. It was a lot of fun actually, however, it did prove that we often forget about our 'listening sense' as part of communication. I am unsure if this is of any help, however, if it doesn't work, at least you will get to eat lots of sweets. Have fun!
Hi Lisa!
My favourite is Colourblind communication game. It demonstrates concretely what can go wrong in communications - especially when you don't communicate face to face. In this game, the delegates are blindfolded (make sure everyone's OK to wear a blindfold) and they need to find a common language to complete a task. The task is to figure out what two shapes and colours are missing from a set of 30 abstract, coloured shapes. You can see the game sold here: https://shop.rsvpdesign.co.uk/colourblind. It's not cheap, but I've made my own shapes out of foam shapes I found in a poundshop!
Let me know if you need any more info. Good luck!
Best regards
Liisa
We've also used this game and it can work really well. Sometimes highlighting problems in team communication!