The Tallest Tower

Objectives

Communication | Collaboration | Team Strategy

• Illustrate the importance of collaboration and communication.

Group Size

Medium

Materials

For this activity you need some building supplies such as:

• Paper Cups, plates, bowls
• Popsicle Sticks or coffee stirrers
• Cheap pens or pencils
• Construction Paper or cardboard
• and you must have some tape (masking tape works best)
• a bag of candy or another similar prize with enough for everyone (alternatively you can just use bragging rights as the prize)

Set Up

Before the activity, you need to make a packet of supplies for each group. You should aim for at least 3 groups with about 4 people in each group. If you have less than 12 people, this is probably not the right activity for you. The key here is to divide the supplies unevenly, but put them in a closed bag or box, so that participants can't see that each group is getting a different set of supplies. Each group should have a a lot of one supply and some of each of the others.

For example:

Packet #1 -

• 1 roll of Masking Tape
• 10 Paper Cups
• 5 Popsicle Sticks
• 4 sheets of construction paper

Packet #2

• a 12” strip of Masking Tape (wound around a pen)
• 25 Paper Cups
• 5 Popsicle Sticks
• 8 sheets of construction paper

Packet #3

• a really small piece of Masking Tape
• 10 Paper Cups
• 35 Popsicle Sticks
• 1 sheets of construction paper

Directions

Big picture: The participants work to build the tallest free-standing tower they can with the supplies given.

Begin by randomly dividing participants into small groups and organizing the groups in different areas of the room. Pass out one bag of supplies to each group.

You should then introduce them to the activity by simply saying "This is an activity to work on communication and collaboration, and the goal is to build the tallest free standing tower you can with the supplies given. There will be prizes for the winners."

You should be careful to introduce it without giving too much context. Again the key here is that each group will have a different set of supplies but the facilitators should make sure this is not immediately obvious, and once it becomes more obvious, the facilitators should neither discourage or encourage collaboration and sharing. The vast majority of participants when divided up in groups, will assume they they should be competing against the other groups but you should not specifically say it is a competition. You will address this in the debrief questions based on the groups choice to collaborate or compete.

Answer any questions at this point, and then announce that the representatives will return to the groups, and once they return, the facilitators will not answer any questions.

[The facilitators should not answer any questions so that the groups are forced to figure out how to build their tower on their own. If the groups figure out they need to collaborate, the facilitators should neither encourage or discourage them (this will come up in the debrief).]

Announce that they have 20 min to build, and let the building begin.

Some groups will spend time strategizing, others will just dive right in. Some may start to notice, they don't have much tape, or that the other groups have more popsicle sticks.

After a few minutes of building you have a few choices.

• You can ask for representatives to come to the center of the room and report to the other representatives one thing they are doing well and one challenge they are having.
• You can have everyone form a circle and walk around and see other people's progress so far

Again, the facilitators should not answer any questions, encourage or discourage collaboration!

It is important to try to deflect... so if they ask, "How come they have so much more tape?" you might say "Sorry, I can't really answer any questions at this point, but it looks like you are making good progress."

As they start to see that other groups have different supplies, some will respond by questioning, some will try to beg, barter, or steal supplies, and some will just resign themselves to the fact that its not fair, and they will continue to focus on working with what they have.

Debrief

Because of the unequal distribution of supplies, in order to build the tallest tower possible, the groups really have to all merge and share supplies. But becuase you divided them into groups, and that implies competition to most people, very few participants will try to suggest that the groups collaborate or share supplies. Even if someone in the group suggests it, it is not likely that everyone will agree to it.

The facilitators should ask the following questions of the entire group.

• Raise your hand if you helped built a tower!
• What worked well?
• What challenges did you encounter and how did you overcome them?
• Did you build the tallest tower you could? Why or why not?

Add the following questions if the groups did not collaborate or share supplies:

• Did you assume that you were only supposed to collaborate with those in your small group?
• What would have been possible if you had decided to share resources with the whole group?
• Would you have had a taller tower?
• Why didn't you?

Add the following questions if the groups collaborate:

• How did you come to the decision to collaborate?
• What became possible once you made the decision to share resources?
• What was challenging?

And then to make this really impactful, you need to tie it back to collaboration and communication on your specific team or group:

• How does building the tower in this activity compare to your daily work? or the way our group is organized?
• How does this activity relate to being part of the larger company, organization, or group?
• How can we encourage collaboration, communication, and sharing among the whole group?