Paper Tearing

Molly Aaronson

Instructions: Begin by telling participants that they’re going to play a game that will reveal a lot about communication and that no questions are tolerated. Have each participant pick up their piece of paper and close their eyes. Then give the following directions, carrying them out yourself with your own piece of paper: first, fold your sheet of paper in half. Second, tear off the upper left corner. Fold it in half again and tear off the upper right hand corner of the sheet. Fold it in half again, now tear off the lower right hand corner of the sheet. After participants finish tearing their papers, say, “Open your eyes and compare papers. If I did a good job communicating and you did a good job listening, all of our sheets should be identical”. Observe the differences and discuss why no one’s paper matched. End with a discussion on the importance of two-way communication.

This team building exercise is important because it highlights the problems that groups often face when working together on projects. In order to achieve our goals, we must foster thoughtful communication. Without communicating with each other about our thoughts, problems and ideas, we won’t be able to make a meaningful impact on our project as we will not have shared goals.

Proposed results: Different looking papers

Results: Our papers!

Conclusions: While there were some noticeable similarities, the papers did not end up resembling each other much. The activity would have been better if the participants had been able to ask questions and allowed communication to flow both ways.