Purposes of these exercises:
All of these exercises are aimed at improving person to person communications
Each should give the teams taking part unusual situations in which to expand and hone their communications skills
Exercise 1 - An Age old problem
Exercise 2 - Search and rescue
Exercise 3 - C U C ME
Exercise 4 - Mine Field Rescue
Exercise 5 - Interceptor
Exercise 1 - An Age old problem
Purpose of exercise - Teaches them to improvise and learn to communicate in different ways
Prepertaion - Have all cadets all sat down in no defined order.
Exercise -
The first thing that they need to be told is that until the exercise is over they are now no longer allowed to talk (This is important and must be marshalled strictly by staff)
The exercise itself is really simple. Tell them from the moment you say 'Go' they will have 5 minutes to stand up and organise themselves into a straight line, with the oldest cadet on the right and the youngest on the left!
For Staff - You MUST marshall the "no talking" strictly or it completely spoils the exercise
Alter the time depending on how many cadets you have, but for 30, we find that 5 mins is normally long enough to prove the point.
When Finished -
Start at the right of the line and get them to say their birthdays, and see how many mistakes there are.
This task normally sounds really easy at first, but when they have to start getting down to communicating differences in months and days between birthdays, tempers normally start to frey slightly.
There is no one definate way to acheive this task quickly, i'm always surprised at the solutions they come up with - "The blinking solution was amazing to watch and it worked!"
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Exercise 2 - Search and rescue
Purpose of exercise - Learn to communicate under adverse conditions
Preperation -
Use a darkened room (the main parade hall with lights out works well as the rest of the Sqn can watch through the windows)
Completely mess up the room, scatter chairs, tables and other bits and pieces around the room, although make sure that nothing can fall on anybody
Place a Large cuddly toy somewhere in the room - This is the victim! DO NOT use other people as they will get bangged about too much on the way out
Exercise -
A team of 4 Blindfolded people must enter the area on hands and knees and find and recover the Victom (Cuddly toy), they must stay on hands and knees at all times whilst inside the danger area (room)
There is no time limit -as you will be timing them. But you DO NOT tell them that they were being timed unitl all teams have finished, otherwise they could rush and hurt themselves
Depending on your levels of paranioa about injury, you can also make the team wear protective helmets and thick gloves
For Staff -
For this exercise you MUST keep a close eye on the team using at least two if not three staff members due to the possibility of accidents
Staff must also insist that the teams do take their time - once again to avoid injuries
Noise making devices such as whistles and horns, if used occassionally can completely throw the concentration of the team (and can also be a bit of a laugh for the rest of the people watching)Blacked out Gas Masks make this exercise even better as they add an extra hinderence, and the cadets must really concentrate to hear and be heard
When finished - One of the best parts of the de-brief for this exercise is asking the teams where they thought their route took them, as they normally get dissoriented
After they tell you where they think they went, actually walk through where they did go - normally very funny as they got lost in a small space they they regularlly are in.
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Exercise 3 - C U C ME
Purpose of exercise - Teach the importance of accurate communication of orders
Preperation -
Out of Lego, Mecano, Connex Or whatever other construction type toy you are able to get your hands on, build a fairly simple "Thinggy".
Make sure that it has over 10 parts, and try and use a number of the same part in different situations. e.g. build a simple car!
Exercise -
Split into teams of 3 people.
- Seperate one person from the group and put them in a seperate room (or just out of sight).
- Give this person the "Thinggy" you have built, as well as a box containing enough parts to build a complete replica of the "Thinggy"
- This person is the "Commander" and the only person amonst the group able to give orders to the Runner.
- He MUST NOT, be able to speak directy to the Builder!
- Sit another of the team at a table in another room - He will be called the "Builder". For the duration of the exercise he is not able to speak. And can only listen to orders given by the Runner
- The 3rd person is the Runner.
- He has to go to the Commander, where he will be given ONE piece out of the parts box and some instructions that he must pass onto the Builder, about where this piece must go to make the replica of the "Thinggy"
- For the duration of the exercise he may only speak when he is repeating to the Builder, exactly the instructions the commander has told him. He must not add any of his own comments or say anything else.
Give a 10 minute duration to the exercise
It is possible to run more than 1 team at a time and make them compete against each other to see who finishes first.
For Staff -
Make sure that the no speaking rule is strictly enforced amongst the team when they are not allowed to talk.
Make sure that the Runner is ONLY repeating what the commander has said and isn't adding anything!
If you are running more than one team at a time, makr sure that "Thinggy" for each team contains the same ammount of parts
When finished -
Bring in the Commander with the original "Thinggy" and compare it to what the Builder has actually built.
This exercise can go one of 2 ways.
1. It can run really quickly and the team gets it built correctly really quickly and acts smug
or
2. It can run really quickly, the result is nothing like the original "Thinggy" and huge rows break out.
Normally a bit of Both!
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Exercise 4 - Mine Field Rescue
Purpose of exercise - Learn how accurately control people when THEY are under stress
Preperation -
Get a clear space with well defined borders (we use a long rope to mark out an area about 12 Foot by 12 Foot square) and randomly scatter “Mines” all throughout the area.
(For Mines we use old copies of AirCadet magazine, although anything of a similar size will do. You need to make sure that they are not too closely packed so that there are a few paths through it.
At one side of the minefield you place your team, at the other we place 1 or more objects that need recovering.
Exercise -
the team members can only move when told to by the team leader.
The leader must give precise orders to his team members describing exactly where he wants them to move.
The leader CANNOT move into, over or around the minefield themself.
The exercise is over when all objects are successfully recovered from the otherside of the minefield
If at any time a member of the team touches a mine - THEY ARE DEAD and must lay down where they are. They now become another object that needs manovering over
For Staff -
Try running this exercise with all the team members (apart from the leader) blindfolded. This adds an element of trust into the exercise and means that their orders HAVEto be accurate
Then run the exercise with the team members not blindfolded. Now the team members will try and avoid mines themselves no matter what the order was.
Under this scenario the Staff have to keep a very close eye on what is being said and done and make sure that no cheating takes place.
This "Cheating" highlights to the leader that their team members have a will of thier own and will 'alter' orders that may get them into possiblly dangerous situations. They learn a number of things from this such as, think their orders thorugh if they want them to be completed to the letter. and more importantly, not to give silly orders.
If run leaderless then it must be done blindfolded. All members get blindfolded and must cross the area on hands and knees. In this scenario they are allowed to touch mines with thier hands, but not move them.
Leaderless, this exercise can rapidly turn into a chaotic 3 blind mice exercise, so make sure you have enough controlling staff to keep it safe!
When finished -
Debrief, if done blindfolded then discuss what orders were given compared to what the team members actually did. Cover how accurate and precise the orders were and what the team members thought of them.
If done without bindfolds then cover any problems in control that may have arrisen during the exercise. Try and cover how accuratley the team members translated the orders and what they actually did.
Make sure that you cover the topic of team members having (or not in some cases) individual will, that may have made them alter or slighly ignore the worse of the orders.
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Exercise 5 - Interceptor
Purpose of exercise - Advanced communications skills, with a bit of map reading thrown in for good measure
Preperation -
You will need 3 Maps (Ordnance survey type are best) but all 3 need to be the same map!.
Split into 3 teams. 2 Good teams, 1 bad team. For this exercise you REALLY need to spread the skill-set evenlly amongst teams.
Give the 2 good teams each a wad of post-it notes or similar sized pieces of paper and something to write with.
Give each team 3 markers, each one the same size as 1 grid square on the map.
Now position each team so that they cannot see each other's maps. (in 3 different rooms is best).
From this point on their is NO verbal communication between the teams at all! This must be strictly marshalled.
Exercise -
Nominate 1 of the good teams to be the downed air crew.
The other good team are the search team
The bad team are the interceptors
1 Member of staff acts now needs to be 'volunteered' to act as a go-between
Now the exercise starts, give each team a note with their current grid co-ordinates on it. You need to have decided previouslly where each team starts, but a rough guide is a good team at opposite sides of the map with the interceptors somewhere in the middle. The teams can use one of the counters on the map to show their location and the other 2 markers can be used as and if required to mark where they 'think' the other 2 teams' locations are
The purpose of the exercise is for the 2 good teams to communicate with each other and try to meet up, whilst knowing that their messages are being intercepted by the bad team. It is the bad team's purpose to try and get to the aircrew before the search team.
The aircrew may write any message they want and pass it to go-between, who will take it to the search team, but the go-between MUST show it to the interceptors on the way.
The search team can then send a reply message (once again it is seen by the interceptors on the way through).
After both good teams have sent messages, all 3 teams make their moves (one at a time is easiest to marshall) using the following scales:
Aircrew - can move 2 squares
Search Team - can move 4 Squares
Interceptors - can move 3 squares
Repeat this process until either the 2 good teams manage to meet up or the interceptors capture one of the good teams.
For Staff -
The first thing the good teams will say is something along the lines of -"awww sir, but how are we meant to make a code when they can read it!" and that's the point of the exercise. It's upto them to try and solve the problem.
As the exercise progresses it may be necessary to, drop hints, to either the good or bad teams in order to even things up. You don't want any 1 team to run away with it.
You should also allow some leaway when getting close to a capture, i.e. if the teams are within a square or 2 on the map and the features mean that they could see each other in real life, call a kill.
This exercise sounds more complicated than it is, but the teams soon get into the swing of things. Just keep an eye on thier moves to make sure no cheating takes place.
When we have run this exercise previouslly we have had a 4th team made up of staff, that monitors all 3 teams actual locations to eliminate cheating and allow the directing staff to issue on-the-fly orders.
When finished -
Get all 3 teams together and run through how they communicated, evaluate any codes that were used between the good teams and see if the bad team cracked them. Find out if the people they were talking with managed to "get" the code correctly or went completely wrong!
Also ask them to show where they thought the other teams went during the ex and then show them where they actually went! Sometimes they're not far out. Othertimes..... well you'll see.
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Exercise
Purpose of exercise -
Preperation -
Exercise -
For Staff -
When finished -
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