Table of Contents/Introduction   

Time Checklist   

The Activities

1. A Timely Reminder   

    This activity offers a more effective incentive to implement learning points acquired during the training course. The activity requires some post-course work from the trainer.

2. Actions Speak Louder   

    This activity demonstrates the power of non-verbal communication and body language in any social interaction.

3. Adjectival Alex   

    This light-hearted icebreaker may be used to start a course.

4. Against All Odds   

    This activity helps those new to addressing groups to overcome distractions and to concentrate on content and presentations.

5. Are We Both OK?   

    This activity introduces participants to tow of the fundamental concepts that for the basis of the effective development and use of interpersonal skills.

6. Belonging  

    This activity demonstrates the diversity of teams to which everyone belongs, and demonstrates and individual's strengths and weaknesses as a team member.

7. Circulating  

    This is an icebreaking activity that also enables the trainer to focus participants' attention on the training session content. After introductions, this should be the first activity of a course.

8. Course Contract   

    This activity establishes an interpersonal skills model which should influence the way all participants interact for the rest of a course

9. Crossed Lines   

    This activity uses one of the basic ideas of Transactional Analysis (TA) to consider why communication between people is sometimes more difficult than expected.

10. Crosstalk   

    A very simple way of analyzing the number of interactions between participants of a small group, this activity highlights patterns that can be used to stimulate discussion.

11. Don't Make an ASS of U and Me   

    This activity focuses on assumptions, presumptions and stereotyping, and how they affect interpersonal relationships.

12. Down the Line   

    This activity introduces participants to some basic principles of delegation.

13. Fact or Fiction?   

    This is a simple exercise in logic and inference that enable participants to understand the ease with which assumptions can be made...

14. A Gift from the Group   

    This activity ends any course during which the elements of supportiveness and trust have been developed between course members.

15. Giving Feedback   

    This activity should be conducted toward the end of any course; it identifies the positive advantages of giving and receiving feedback, while recognizing the risks involved.

16. Hole in the Middle  

    This activity provides a focus for looking at issues of power and how they operate in organizations, between groups and between individual.

17. How Shall I Tell Them?  

    Through this activity participants are allowed to explore the relative advantages and disadvantages of the three main types of communication.

18. I Wish You Hadn't Asked Me That!  

    A technique is provided through this activity for dealing effectively with questions and remarks that are perceived as personally intrusive.

19. I fear the Worst.       

    This activity identifies a problem-solving and decision-making technique. It can also be a powerful way for managers and supervisors to reduce stress and feelings of isolation...

20. I'd Like to Know   

    Questioning techniques intended for participants who are, or will be, involved in selection interviewing are reviewed in this activity.

21. Is There Anybody There?  

    This activity shows that listening is a communication skill that should be learned and practiced. It also considers the barriers to listening, and how they can be overcome.

22. It Looks Like This   

    This activity demonstrated the importance of logical thinking in effective communication, and to demonstrate the necessity of mutual participation...

23. Just a Minute  

    This is an activity for those involved with any form of public speaking who would like to improve their ability to concentrate and to "think on their feet"

24. Know Your Audience   

    This activity is designed to improve the confidence of those who have to talk to groups.

25. Let Me Put That Another Way   

    This activity is designed to help participants develop clarity of expression through extended use of vocabulary.

26. Let's Sum Up  

    This is a two-part activity which promotes the skill of summarizing as a very effective aid to clarity and coherence in communication between two people or within a group.

27. Managing Meetings   

    This is an introduction to committee work for people who have had little or no experience of attending meeting in any capacity.

28. Memory  

    This activity identifies motivating and demotivating  factors in the workplace and elsewhere.

29. My Interpersonal Style  

    Through this activity, participants explore and receive feedback on their preferred interpersonal style.

30. Ouch!       

    This activity give participants practice in responding to cruel, critical, humiliating or provocative comments.

31. People and Places   

    This activity is an "icebreaker" that is used at the beginning of a course. It is particularly useful where participants already know one another, either because they are co-workers or because they have undertaken earlier training together as a group.

32. Perceptions   

    This activity enables participants to examine the accuracy of self-perception measured against the perceptions of others.

33. Pictures  

    An "icebreaker" that can be used at the beginning of a course, this is particularly suited to participants who have never met before.

34. Re-entry  

    This is a simple activity to be used at the end of any course involving the development of interpersonal skills...It seeks to help people avoid the "dilution" effect whereby the course, and all the learning it may have produced, can rapidly fade into oblivion.

35.  Receiving Criticism   

    This activity is designed to help participants respond positively to criticism.

36.  Reflections  

    At the conclusion of an event on interpersonal or communication skills this activity is a powerful and highly effective way for course members to give personal feedback to each other.

37. Self-Disclosure  

    This activity is designed to allow participants to experience and identify the benefits of self-disclosure.

38. Simulating a Meeting   

    This activity explains how to set up a mock meeting, using participants as members of the meeting or as observers.

39. Simulating an Interview  

    This activity provides the framework needed to set up simulated interviews between participants. This framework can then be applied to interviews for: selection, sales, research, counseling, discipline, and many others.

40. Skillsquare  

    This is an exercise that is essentially fun but does have a serious purpose. It will help participants to define interpersonal skills.

41. Stick   

    Some of the issues involved in listening, in particular the difficulty of maintaining high levels of concentration are explored.

42. Team Challenge   

    This activity shows the positive and negative effects of competition among teams, and to examine how individual handle being part of a team in which not all of its members are functioning to full capacity.

43. Team Roles  

    Team roles are used to increase participants' awareness of their group or team behavior and that of others.

44. That's Not What I Said at All!  

    This activity enables participants to recognize that subjectivity can introduce bias into the communication process and reduce their effectiveness.

45. Two Heads Are Better  

    This activity demonstrates that teamwork can be more productive than individualism in the workplace.

46. Ups and Downs   

    This activity enable managers and supervisors to test their awareness of motivational techniques and to assess their own attitudes toward a range of common motivational factors.

47. We Haven't Got Enough...   

    This activity is a competitive activity. In order to win a team has to negotiate with other teams. Some of the interpersonal issues which arise in negotiation situations are considered.

48. What's Going to Happen?  

    This activity has two aims: first, to check participants' perceptions of their learning needs; second, to allow some time at the beginning of an interpersonal skills-based course to acknowledge any anxieties about the course, which should be dealt with.

49. Where Am I Now?   

    This is an end-of-course activity designed to allow participants (and trainer) to review the extent to which participants' initial expectations for the course were bother realistic and achieved.

50. Why Don't You Say What You Mean?  

    This activity demonstrates the ambiguity of the English language.