GAME #6: Musical Chairs with a Twist

Game	Opener	Team-building
Categories:	Energizer	Review
	Communication	Topical

 Purpose: To use a familiar children’s game as a model for lessons in

change and conflict

 Time Required: 20 minutes.

 Size of Group: 10 to 15.

 Materials Required: Chairs for each participant; a portable CD or audiotape player.

 The Exercise in Action: Believe it or not, the childhood game of musical chairs enables people to feel the effects of change, but in a nonthreatening environment, says Mary Walter, an education coordinator at HBO & Co., Atlanta.

The game is based on the “scarcity premise.” There is always one less chair than there are participants in need of chairs. In the well-known game, music is played while the participants move clockwise around a circle of chairs. When the music stops, everyone scrambles for a chair. The person left standing must leave the game and become an observer. One chair is removed each time the music is stopped. This continues until only one participant remains.

The familiar exercise can take two directions, Walter says. In sessions on change management, her objective is to bring out and address emotional issues that emerge during change. Several rounds into the game, she asks participants to pay particular attention to the feelings they experience during the remaining rounds.

After the exercise, she asks participants to share their thoughts on the emotions they feel and on the behavior they witness in others. The conversation, Walter says, makes people aware of feelings they might not otherwise acknowledge, and shows them that others feel the same stresses.

If the focus of the session is communication and its importance in an environment of change, she begins by making it very obvious when she is going to stop the music. She turns very deliberately toward the tape or record player and reaches for the appropriate control.

Later in the game (or in a second round), she takes the opposite tack, keeping her hand on the controls at all times, making no eye contact, even using music with deceptive pauses to deceive participants.

The conversation following this version of the exercise centers on the different reactions people experience as a result of the two communication styles. Participants can usually offer examples of parallel situations in everyday corporate life.

Walter points out the problems caused by poor or minimal communication, and discusses the ways in which to create an atmosphere of open communication.