The Numbers Shake Activity

Numbers Shake is a very simple and energizing team building exercise to develop planning and cooperation skills.

In advance, prepare a set of large printed numbers 0 to 9 on individual sheets of paper. Gather your group and form a team of ten people.

Distribute one large printed number to each person and explain that each person will hang onto this number for the duration of the game. Announce that over the course of the next few minutes, you will announce a series of small and large numbers to the group.

Resist the temptation to make this task easy by writing the announced number for all to see and call it out aloud only. Challenge your group to re-arrange their individual positions so that when you are looking at them as a whole, the number is accurately displayed before you.

For example, if the number is 18,324, the five people (holding these five numbers) will shuffle their positions to represent the number 1 – 8 – 3 – 2 – 4 while the rest of the group steps back and looks on.

Continue to announce more numbers, bouncing between small and large numbers regularly. Of course, accuracy is the key, but so is speed.

Finally, reflect with your group on topics such as planning, cooperation and perspective.

Moment of Reflection

• Did your process evolve and get better over time?
• What strategies did you implement to improve your performance? What helped? What did not help?
• Where else in our lives do cooperation and perspective help us?

The topics of this publication: teamwork, collaboration, cooperation, interactions, planning, perspective