Duct Tape
Duct Tape is a relationship mapping exercise that helps participants build useful connections and understand how people, roles, or ideas relate.
How to run it
- This energiser is useful when you want to demonstrate that sometimes being restricted in choices can actual provide us with a chance to be more creative in solving problems.
- Ask participants to spend 5 minutes coming up with as many problems as they can. These problems should then be written on a flipchart.
- Once participants have several problems. Advise them that they have to come up with solutions to those problems. However, the participants can only use Duct Tape as a solution to the problem. They can use it in any way that they want, but it must be a ‘Duct Tape’ solution.
- Review, the solutions provided by the participants and discuss how limiting their options to only using Duct Tape made them feel and whether it helped or hindered their creative problem solving skills.
- No-one reads the staff handbook - Duct tape the pages to their laptops (This expanded into providing an online version).
- . Ask participants to spend 5 minutes coming up with as many problems as they can. These problems should then be written on a flipchart.
- . Once participants have several problems. Advise them that they have to come up with solutions to those problems. However, the participants can only use Duct Tape as a solution to the problem. They can use it in any way that they want, but it must be a ‘Duct Tape’ solution.
- . Review, the solutions provided by the participants and discuss how limiting their options to only using Duct Tape made them feel and whether it helped or hindered their creative problem solving skills.
Run this exercise live
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What participants need now
Materials:
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Prompts to use +
This energiser is useful when you want to demonstrate that sometimes being restricted in choices can actual provide us with a chance to be more creative in solving problems.
Ask participants to spend 5 minutes coming up with as many problems as they can. These problems should then be written on a flipchart.
Once participants have several problems. Advise them that they have to come up with solutions to those problems. However, the participants can only use Duct Tape as a solution to the problem. They can use it in any way that they want, but it must be a ‘Duct Tape’ solution.
Review, the solutions provided by the participants and discuss how limiting their options to only using Duct Tape made them feel and whether it helped or hindered their creative problem solving skills.
. Ask participants to spend 5 minutes coming up with as many problems as they can. These problems should then be written on a flipchart.
. Once participants have several problems. Advise them that they have to come up with solutions to those problems. However, the participants can only use Duct Tape as a solution to the problem. They can use it in any way that they want, but it must be a ‘Duct Tape’ solution.
Run this with your AI assistant +
Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or your own local model: paste this prompt and your AI will co-facilitate this exercise with you.
Adapt this exercise for my exact room. Exercise: Duct Tape. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: This energiser is useful when you want to demonstrate that sometimes being restricted in choices can actual provide us with a chance to be more creative in solving problems.; Ask participants to spend 5 minutes coming up with as many problems as they can. These problems should then be written on a flipchart.; Once participants have several problems. Advise them that they have to come up with solutions to those problems. However, the participants can only use Duct Tape as a solution to the problem. They can use it in any way that they want, but it must be a ‘Duct Tape’ solution.; Review, the solutions provided by the participants and discuss how limiting their options to only using Duct Tape made them feel and whether it helped or hindered their creative problem solving skills.. Return a concise facilitator script with timing, wording, safety notes, and remote/in-person adjustments.
Origin unverified
- Where we observed it: The current corpus has one observed source organization: TrainerBubble. (1 source observed, including TrainerBubble.)
- What that means: we track where an exercise has been observed in public sources. We do not claim to know who created it, or how popular it is.
- No efficacy claims: appearing in this library is not a claim that the exercise is proven effective. Facilitator judgment and context decide whether it works for a given room.
- Corrections: if you have evidence of an earlier or more accurate source, read our methodology and trust boundary and tell us.