This is a great exercise that offers insights into the needs that different team members have for information and detail, how people like to work in either a structured or unstructured approach to problem solving and change, and how quickly and slowly people are willing to move ahead with a plan based on how much they know and understand about the solution.

Materials you will need are – one gutter (plastic pipe, possibly halved) per person, one ball (bouncy ball, marble, wooden ball) per team, one timer per group (you can have teams use their mobile phones for this). Finally, each team will need sufficient space to spread and work, if it is a nice day you can do this exercise outdoors.

Here’s how you run the activity –

1. Make a human circle then give each person a gutter (one gutter per person).

2. Hand the bouncy balls to the tallest person in the circle.

3. Assign a timer for the attempts – the timer is allowed to participate in the activity.

4. The objective is to move one bouncy ball around the circle using only the gutters, as quickly as possible.

5. Starting with the tallest person use the gutters (and only the gutters) to transport one bouncy ball to the person to their left then all the way around and back to the tallest person.

6. Tell them to try and send the ball through the process as fast as possible, beginning and ending in the tallest person’s gutter.

7. No one’s gutter can be skipped, the ball must pass through all team members’ gutters.

8. Gutters cannot touch each other.

9. You cannot touch any other gutters besides your own

10. People cannot touch the ball as it travels from beginning through the process and back to the beginning.

11. If the ball falls from the gutter, the process must be restarted.

Once the exercise is done, you can begin your debrief. Here are some processing points you can use –

• What types of communication took place during the activity?

• Which was the most powerful form of communication during the activity? What made them powerful?

• What were some successful communication moments?

• At what points were you having difficulty communicating?

• What might each of you want to remember about communication?

• What were some of the ideas that were generated?

• How receptive was the group to new and different ideas?

• How did you add structure to the ideas?

• What were some of the roles that were proposed for people in this project?

• Describe how the plan was developed and evaluated.

• How do you feel about what was done? Any ideas for improvement?

• What was the key moment in the teams’ success?

• Where do you feel were the gaps in this activity?

• How mindful were you of your preferred team role?

• Describe how that impacted your part in the activity.