Obstacles - Free Energiser
Obstacles - Free Energiser is a structured group exercise for constructive conflict: it helps participants surface tension or disagreement in a structured way.
How to run it
- Resources Needed - a collection of chairs spread haphazardly around a large space in a room. Some blindfolds.
- . Ask for several volunteers and advise them that you are going to ask them to walk from one side of the room to the other whilst avoiding the chairs. The winner is the first person across without hitting a chair.
- . Give them a good opportunity to assess where the chairs are in the room prior to blindfolding them.
- . Once they are blindfolded, silently remove all of the chairs and place them out of the way of the participants (i.e. at the side of the room) so that there are no chairs in their way.
- . Inform the participants that they can now start walking to the other slide of the room. Watch with humour while they carefully try to negotiate an empty room.
- . Once the first person has made it across the room, ask everyone to remove their blindfolds.
- . The participants will of course be surprised to find that there were no chairs in the way.
- . Hold a review discussion around how the participants felt, what they were looking out for and what this meant. Then go on to discuss their feelings once they realised the obstacles were no longer there.
Run this exercise live
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What participants need now
Materials:
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Prompts to use +
. Ask for several volunteers and advise them that you are going to ask them to walk from one side of the room to the other whilst avoiding the chairs. The winner is the first person across without hitting a chair.
. Give them a good opportunity to assess where the chairs are in the room prior to blindfolding them.
. Once they are blindfolded, silently remove all of the chairs and place them out of the way of the participants (i.e. at the side of the room) so that there are no chairs in their way.
. Inform the participants that they can now start walking to the other slide of the room. Watch with humour while they carefully try to negotiate an empty room.
. Once the first person has made it across the room, ask everyone to remove their blindfolds.
. Hold a review discussion around how the participants felt, what they were looking out for and what this meant. Then go on to discuss their feelings once they realised the obstacles were no longer there.
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: Obstacles - Free Energiser. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: . Ask for several volunteers and advise them that you are going to ask them to walk from one side of the room to the other whilst avoiding the chairs. The winner is the first person across without hitting a chair.; . Give them a good opportunity to assess where the chairs are in the room prior to blindfolding them.; . Once they are blindfolded, silently remove all of the chairs and place them out of the way of the participants (i.e. at the side of the room) so that there are no chairs in their way.; . Inform the participants that they can now start walking to the other slide of the room. Watch with humour while they carefully try to negotiate an empty room.. 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.