THE PROCESS -- IS LIFE
Our lives often give the appearance of being independent of one another. Are we all alone, dancing in the dark, moving in different circles or marching to different drummers, passing like ships in the night, charting courses to remote destinations? Are we, in fact, responsible only for ourselves?
Or are we "The I That is We" moving around and within the ONE great cycle of life, being held in nature’s dispassionate embrace, interdependent, one upon the other? Do actions of individuals really have an impact on the lives of team members, friends, family and co-workers in a way that helps them see, feel, measure, evaluate actions which might prove to be mutually beneficial? What is the measure of our emotional intelligence? What about privacy issues? When we see a better way of acting, are we willing to try it? And what about people we've never met? Do their choices touch us by impacting the way we live our lives?
These are but a few of the questions that C Squares ® will provoke and strive to answer during team building games virtually analogous to life itself.
The content of our days differ from person to person, occupation to occupation, profession to profession, and from one circumstance to another, but life is a constant and engaging process of birth and renewal. Easily distracted by appearances, it's life itself that engages us here. Today is the greatest gift of all. It comes to us wrapped in our present containing past and future. Do we receive, open, and share its content of jigsaw puzzle pieces only with those we say we trust?
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Our patterns are as unique to us as the footprints that differentiated us as individuals the day we were born. Behavior, like personal fingerprints, leaves a mark on whomever it touches. Fingerprints accompany us through life. Patterns of speech, dental records and facial features do likewise. Iridology marks us as individuals through the patterns of our eyes' iris in a way that makes us uniquely recognizable among members of the human race. The sounds of our own voice and patterns of behavior will do exactly the same.
To oversimplify, let's define behavior as a learned response to individual and group experience. The habitual patterns of behavior to which some conform may be acted out with minimal awareness of the power habit has to control response and restrict free choice among many options. "When life gives you a hammer," Abraham Maslow observed, "everything becomes a nail."
Sculptors sculpt. Engineers build. Teachers teach. Performers entertain. What we see --perceive -- is oftentimes what we get. We've learned that the brain is a pattern-making organ whose function is to connect and configure experience in ways that define what’s real. Our minds create images and construct maps of what we see faster and more efficiently than the most modern computers. It's what they've been designed by nature to do in order to ensure the survival of our species.
C Squares ® belongs to a class of team building games, yet also serves as an effective example of ice breaker games where verbalizing follows a non-verbal introduction. It's important to underscore why. We live in what has been called The Age of Information and we've been witness to a mapping and media revolution that's taking place around us. Approximately eighty-five percent of all information available to us today is non-verbal (spatial/visual) in nature. If "one picture is worth a thousand words," it’s well to remember that it takes words to say that. It will still come as no surprise to anyone reading this sentence that given the world today, when it comes to words, it’s a wonder we communicate at all.
C Squares ® Facilitator's Handbook: The Seven-Step Process
1. Five participants are required for each group. One observer for each team is recommended. Facilitators may become roving observers when circumstances require.
2. The activity area must be able to accommodate five people sitting equidistant and comfortably on the floor or at tables or desks with a clear work surface.
3. Instruction Booklets contain information about Observer Responsibilities. During the verbal or second part of the activity, Observers share with the group whatever they see or hear during the non-verbal part of the experience. Hand out Observer Instruction Booklets before beginning the activity. Answer any questions.
4. Once the groups are seated, place five large C Squares ® gift boxes in the middle of each team. Ask that they be left intact and untouched until the team is instructed to begin.
5. Introduce the process. Say something like: "We have been given everything we need today to be successful in life right now. Nothing is missing and nothing is extra. Each of us is different, but in other ways we are all the same." Read the Task, Mission, and Three Rules aloud.
6. Invite and answer all questions. Ask one member of each team to take responsibility for distributing the five small gift boxes in each of the large gift boxes. Rules go immediately into effect and continue in effect until the non-verbal part of the activity is finished.
7. Say: "Begin".
| "The vertical thinker says 'I know what I am looking for.' The lateral thinker says 'I am looking, but I won't know what I am looking for until I have found it.'" - Edward de Bono |