Communication Tool

I found an exercise from Ideafit Health and Fitness Association’s article, “Tools for Teaching Effective Communication” by Marci Clark. It included having a group of people blindfolded and then given a set of instructions on folding a piece of paper. I decided to include my family of four sisters and three brothers. In order from oldest to youngest, the participants included Tommy, Judy, Bobbi, Brenda, Harold, Randy, and Sandy. I gave them each a piece of paper.

I blindfolded them to make sure they couldn’t see each other and could only feel the piece of paper I gave them. I had a set of seven instructions. The first instruction was to hold the paper in both hands. Of course this was easily done by all except Brenda who decided to hold it with only one of her hands. I docked her 1 point for this. The next instruction was to fold the paper in half. Everyone did this step. After, I told them to tear the lower left hand side of the paper. After a couple of moments, everyone had also completed this step. Next, I told the group to fold the paper in half again. Everyone also listened and folded it in half. I then told them to tear off the upper right hand side of the paper. This time Sandy, Randy, and Brenda did not follow in the instructions. Sandy decided to tear off the upper left hand side. Randy and Brenda tore off the lower right hand side. I deducted 1 point from all three people. After, I instructed them to fold it again. They all did fold it again. Lastly, I told them to tear off the lower right hand side of the paper. Randy and Brenda did not do this step correctly. Brenda tore off the lower left hand side. I could tell Randy realized after receiving this last instruction that she had done a previous step wrong. She then decided to tear off the lower left hand side that she had missed in an earlier step. I deducted a point from each sibling.

When everyone opened their eyes, all of their pieces of paper did not