Leadership Inspirations Activities
Farmer’s Riddle
Group members act out a logic and decision making activity
Duration
20-30 minutes
Team Stage
Norming, Performing
Type Of Activity
Experiential Activity
Materials
Rope, Items/Name tags To Represent Roles
SUMMARY
This activity has the group focus on planning and decision making. It is ideal for smaller groups.
SET UP
- Designate a place in the room to be a river (a rope may be used to designate the river).
- Gather items to represent/distinguish chickens, foxes, bags of grain, and farmers. For example: garbage bags, handkerchiefs, leis etc.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Put all characters in a bag and have each team member pick out a character.
- There will be 2 chickens, 2 foxes, 2 bags of grain, and 2 farmers.
- Each person must take on the characteristics of his/her new identity, for example, the chickens can only cluck, the bags of grain can only lay around until the farmers move them, etc.
- The farmers must move the chickens, foxes, and bags of grain across the river. They can’t take more than one person each with them across the river.
- Rules
- The farmers must travel together.
- The foxes cannot be unsupervised with the chickens or they will eat them
- The chickens cannot be left unattended with the grain or they will eat it.
VARIATIONS
- If you have a large group, have 8 people play the roles and the rest of group complete the activity.
SAMPLE DEBRIEFING QUESTIONS
What?
- What was the goal of this activity?
- Did your group do well? What could have improved?
- How did your group make decisions? Was it effective or ineffective?
- How did your group manage conflict that arose?
So What?
Alignment
- Are we the only ones that define our purpose? What or who influences our purpose?
- How do we communicate our purpose to new members or people outside of our group?
- Why is it important that we all understand the purpose of our group/activity/etc.?
Group Dynamics
- What are the traits that make someone successful on this team? What are the traits that make someone unsuccessful on this team?
- What motivates our group??
- How does our group dynamic affect the way we get work done
Teambuilding
- When has your group worked well together in the past? When have they not worked well together?
- When has (something that happened in the activity) happened in the past with your group?
- What habits or actions make a successful or effective team? What does your group do well as a team? What are your group’s opportunities for growth when working together?
Now What?
- What does this activity tell you about the strengths of your group? The areas for improvement?
- What’s one commitment each person can make?
- What are three lessons the group has learned that they can continue to work on?
- How can we implement these lessons in our school/organization?
- What can you do differently moving forward?
