May 2010 , The Envelope 
Welcome back for another team building activity. This particular challenge once again uses a rope to form a shape. When you are facilitating a team building day for a group, it can be an advantage to sometimes have several activities/challenges that utilize the same props. You can combine these similar activities back-to-back for ease and efficiency of facilitation, or you may choose to spread them out over the day so that you can provoke the team to think about using past experience and learning as they tackle new assignments and problems.
This activity, as an example, can use the sampe prop (the long rope) that you might have used for other activities we have described in past months on this blog:
- The Blind Polygon
- The Star
This is another great activity that can be done with a rope. Many activities such as Blind Polygon, require that participants be blindfolded. For this particular challenge, blindfolds are not necessary.
The challenge is for the group to create the above shape, which looks like the underside of an envelope with the flap open, with the rope. The rope can never retrace the same line. In other words, it is like one of those puzzles with a pencil and paper, where you must draw the shape without lifting your pencil or re-tracing a line.
Equipment: 50 ft. or greater, soft nylon rope.
Setup: Have the team line up along the rope, and all grasp the rope. Instruct the team about their objective. (I’ll usually show them an index card with the shape.) Tell them that they must each keep their same location on the rope. They can slide up and down the rope, but they cannot hand the rope back and forth to each other. In other words, the rope and the people must move to create the shape. Also advise them that they cannot retrace any line, or double the rope back on a line.
Some groups take quite a bit of time to solve this. Others get very innovative, such as drawing out a sketch on the ground, etc., to create a plan of action.
Debriefing:
Ask the team how they began.
Have them describe their planning efforts. Did they plan, or just proceed with trying ideas?
Did leadership emerge? If so, have the team discuss how this occurred, and the importance of it.
How was cooperation during the activity?
Did everyone share a vision about how to complete the task? How did they arrive at this shared understanding? Or, what would have helped them arrive at a shared understanding?
Did the team apply "lessons learned" from previous exercises? How important is it in the real work of the group, to be able to apply the collective learning and experience of the team to new problems and challenges that confront them?
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