(this exercise was co-created as part of a collaboration day between myself and Geoff Watts, credit to Paul Z Jackson from his book)
Timings:
5 mins exercises, 5 min debrief
Materials:
An even number of participants, usually run at the start of the class/event as an introductory exercise
Instructions:
People stand in two lines, opposite their partner.
Each person gives three statements about their partner, starting with:
“It’s obvious that…”
“I notice that…”
“My intuition tells me that…”
The partner then responds on how accurate those statements were. Switch around and repeat for partners.
Learning Points:
People may be surprised at how good their intuition is. Despite being a great warmup activity to get people talking, intution itself is something which a coach or ScrumMaster needs to rely on. The three statements encourage people to observe their partners more closely which can actually help us make more informed intuitive decisions and statements.
Even if your intuition is off, it’s a good laugh for the group!
Paul is the founder of Agilify, has been an active Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) since 2006, and also became only the fourth UK-based Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) in 2011.
From developer to ScrumMaster, and from ScrumMaster to Agile Coach he has been working with agile development teams since 2000.
Paul was part of the coaching team which took on one of the largest agile transformations to date in a major UK telecoms company in 2003 and since then has been training and coaching other organizations, teams and individuals across the UK and Europe.