Conflict Activity: Four Words

Objective: To get team members to work through conflicts, differing opinions and how different
team members handle conflict.

Task:

Step 1: Each team member has a pen and a piece of paper. Ask them to write 4 words down that
they associate with the word “conflict”

Step 2: Ask them to pair up and between the two of them they must decide on the best 4 words out
of the 8 they have written down between them. So the pair will have 4 words at the end.

Step 3: Each pair will pair up with another pair and the process goes on again. Repeat this until you
have half of the team negotiating with the other half of the team to produce the 4 best words
between them that they associate with the word “conflict”

Debrief: Ask the group:

 How did they feel during the exercise?

 Did anyone feel uncomfortable? Why?
 Did anyone take control and overtake?
 Was there any conflict?
 Would you do anything differently?
 What techniques did you use to come up with the 4 words?
 What did you learn during this exercise?

Conflict Activity: Divide the Loot

Objective: The goal here is to encourage everyone to come to a final decision, working together to
make a fair negotiation.

While we often suggest playing this game with real money, you can take some sort of play money to
use instead.

Step 1: Divide your team into two groups so that one can be the “management” and the other can
represent “employees.”

Step 2:Each group will start it’s own “pot” of money. Each person will pay a different amount into
the pot but no one will know how much anyone else put into the pot.

Step 3:After a set amount of time, the activity leader will take both pots, combine them into one,
and then add their own contribution totalling the pot and telling everyone how much is in the pot.

Step 4: Everyone will know how much he contributed individually but no one will know how much
anyone else, from their own team or the other, contributed. No one knows how much the activity
leader contributed either.

Step 5:The teams will each have 10 minutes to decide how to fairly split the total of the pot amongst
everyone in the room. After 10 minutes the managers and employees must come together and
negotiate a final