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Test one
In two weeks time the participants will leave for their first mission in Africa.

The main worry of the Agency was our working relationships with colleagues from another culture, with different habits, different emotions, a different language, different body messages.

So they were trying to make us understand that much of what we took for granted, was not that obvious.

And behind all that training, was the constant hidden message:

You are not the good people you believe you are

See how you behave when under pressure.

Here is a very simple exercise;

So simple that the participants are confused. What is the point?

An oval table.


Four chairs around it.

The participants are invited to sit around the table

The Observer notes how they select their chair, their neighbor.

A pack of card in the middle.

The Observer asks the participants to spread the cards on the table, face up.

The Observer looks at who is going to do the task, how the participants through non verbal communication, either decide that one of them will shuffle the cards or accept that one takes it upon himself, without any authorization.

The cards are now in the middle of the table, face upwards.

The observer gives the unique instruction:

Without speaking, at any time you need to, rearrange the cards into logical equal groups.

Sounds easy to you?

Here are some of the questions the Observer is looking for an answer to:

Are they going to make one grouping of the cards, or are some participants appropriate cards for themselves?

If a card is in a set they need, are they going to take it away from the set?

If some participants group the cards by colors and others group them according to face value, and some group them according to odd and even or some group them according to figures and numbers, how is the group going to agree without speaking.

In some variants of this exercise you make it difficult by taking away one card from the pack.

Another variant of this exercise is to have four participants and four Observers and One Coordinator.