The Four Facts and a Lie

Four facts and a lie is ideal for a team whose members don’t know one another very well. It provides an informal platform for individuals to share personal information and build trust.

This activity to designed to improve communication, build trust, develop listening skills, and enable your people to understand one another better.

It is an interesting exercise that can be applied in groups of any size. In addition, each participant only needs a pencil and paper.

Ask the participants to write down five “facts” about themselves, one of which must be a lie – but a plausible one. For example, “I once swam with dolphins.”

Allow participants enough time to write down their facts. Give them about 20 minutes to complete.

Once they are finished, go around the group and ask each participant to read out their five facts. As a group, guess which facts about each person are true and which is the lie.

Ask the rest of the group which of the speaker’s facts they think is false and why.

When each person has revealed their truths and lie, discuss the outcomes. Were any surprising? If so, were the truths more surprising than the lie?

The topics of this publication: interactions, integration, foster relationships