Follow the leader

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