| Game |  Opener |
 Team-building |
| Categories: | Energizer |
Review |
| Communication |
Topical |
Purpose: To use a common prop—balloons—to illustrate learning points about team-building and communication skills.
Time Required: 15 minutes.
Size of Group: Unlimited.
Materials Required: A large supply of balloons of all sizes.
The Exercise in Action: The “balloon metaphor” is a favorite closing exercise of Cher Holton, executive director for the Holton Consulting Group, Raleigh, NC. The activity closes out her team-building session on a high note, and ties together key concepts from the source. Holton uses the exercise with groups of all sizes. Here’s how it works:
Holton distributes balloons to everyone and asks them to blow them up and tie knots in them. Their challenge, when she gives the word, is to form groups and begin batting the balloons into the air, keeping them all aloft. There’s only one catch: participants may hit their own balloon only twice consecutively; they have to hit someone else’s before hitting their own again. After about a minute, Holton stops the exercise, and the group discusses what happened.
Holton says the activity can be altered to fit specific topics. The following questions are examples of how she uses the activity to facilitate team-building.
“How are these balloons like the members of your team?” Responses typically include: full of hot air, different sizes/shapes/colors, up and down, hard to control, you lose some of them, takes work to keep them together, etc.
“Did all of the balloons stay up at the same rate?” The point here is that some balloons—just like some people—are easier to control and deal with than others.
“Can one person keep all of the balloons up alone?” Here Holton emphasizes that it takes teamwork. She points out that though the group tended to run into each other and step on one another’s toes, nobody minded because everyone was focused on the balloons—the group goal.