Follow the leader

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How to play

  • Ask all the participants to form a circle
  • Pick one volunteer who will be the first person who will have to guess who the leader is
  • Ask that person to exit the room for a minute
  • Elect a leader from the circle
  • Everyone should mimic the leader's current physical posture
  • Call the volunteer back in the room and have her/him stand in the middle of the circle
  • The leader starts making small changes in her/his posture
  • Everyone in the circle follows the leader changes
  • The goal for the person in the middle is to find out who is the leader
  • She/He can make as many guesses as necessary
  • If it takes time, the leader should exaggerate the changes in posture so that it becomes more obvious to see
  • Once the volunteer finds who the leader is, the leader exists the room and will be the next person to guess
  • Elect a new leader and continue the game

Debriefing

  • Ask the guessers what quality was needed to be able to find the leader
  • Ask about what they felt while in the middle
  • Ask the people how it felt to be the leader
  • Ask them how it felt to become the guesser
  • Ask the people around the circle about their empathy towards the one in the middle

Take aways

  • You need to have a good sense of observation to spot who the leader is
  • The circle becomes a system that is frequently changing and adapting, in a subtle manner
  • It's hard to see everything at once when you stand in the middle of the circle
  • In a system, it's a good thing to take some distance to observe how the system works