| Game |  Opener |
 Team-building |
| Categories: | Energizer |
Review |
| Communication |
Topical |
Purpose: To sensitize participants to the impact of differing personalities on groups.
Time Required: 10 minutes.
Size of Group: Unlimited, but participants should work in small groups of four or five.
Materials Required: Baseball caps, customized in advance by the trainer (number depends on size of group).
The Exercise in Action: To teach participants the value of recognizing and addressing the sensitive issue of group dynamics in the workplace, Samantha Doly breaks the class into groups of four or five and assigns each a problem that must be solved by consensus. She tells the groups that while they work on the problem, she will place customized baseball caps on the heads of three participants in each group. The hats are labeled:
• Know It All—Ignore Me
• Expert—Listen to Me
• Insecure—Encourage Me
Doly, staff training officer for the AMP Society, Brisbane, Australia, then instructs group members to treat the people wearing the hats according to the labels, although each person wearing a cap is unaware of what the cap says.
When forced to deal with those dynamics, Doly says, groups rarely reach consensus within the 10-minute time limit she sets. The point of the exercise, she says, is to teach participants to constantly be on the lookout for differing personalities that might affect a group.