Serial Selection

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Compare and prioritize leadership principles through successive team and individual filtering.

Use it when: Use during leadership development or team norming when participants need to digest a large list of management ideas and identify immediately actionable practices.

Skip it when: Skip when the group has fewer than 5 participants, when the goal is freeform problem solving rather than text evaluation, or when teams need to draft their own custom principles from scratch.

Group arrangement: Five small teams of 1 to 5 people, followed by independent individual work and whole-room polling.

Timing: Source specifies 20 to 30 minutes; standard run planned for 25 minutes.

Materials and tools

• 5 team handouts (each containing 4 assigned principles from the master list of 20)
• 1 master handout of all 20 principles per participant
• 1 countdown timer
• 1 whistle or chime
• Pens or pencils (1 per participant)

Before participants arrive

1. Print 1 copy of the full 20 Leadership Principles master list for every participant.
2. Print and cut the 5 subset slips: Team 1 (principles 1-4), Team 2 (5-8), Team 3 (9-12), Team 4 (13-16), and Team 5 (17-20). Prepare exactly 1 shared slip per team to encourage shared focus.

Say this to open

There are dozens of leadership rules, and trying to focus on all of them at once leads to inaction. We have divided 20 core leadership principles across five teams. Your team has four principles. Your job is to read your four, discuss them, and agree on the single most useful principle in your set, along with a brief explanation of why. You have 3 minutes.

How to run it

1. Divide into five teams and review subsets 4 minutes

   Divide participants into exactly five teams (1 to 5 members each). Hand each team their single subset slip containing four principles. Deliver the opening script and start the countdown timer. Give time checks at 2 minutes, 1 minute, and 30 seconds.

2. Hear team recommendations 6 minutes

   Signal time with a whistle or chime. Call on each of the five teams in order. Each team takes 1 minute to read their four assigned principles, announce the single principle they selected as most useful, and give one concrete reason for their choice. Write the numbers of the five winning principles visibly on a board.

3. Distribute master lists and vote on the top five 5 minutes

   Hand every participant a copy of the complete master list of 20 principles. Ask them to locate and circle the five team-selected numbers. Give participants 1 minute to review those five silently and choose the single most useful one among them. Call out each of the five candidates and take a show of hands. Announce the principle with the highest vote count.

4. Select personal implementation action 5 minutes

   Instruct participants to review the entire list of 20 principles independently. Ask everyone to pick one principle to implement in their own routine this week and write a short action note on their sheet. For example, if someone chooses principle 9 ('Lead by example'), they might write: 'Arrive 5 minutes before meetings and stop checking email during presentations.' Passing on public sharing is fully permitted.

5. Debrief and close 5 minutes

   Facilitate a brief group reflection using the debrief questions. Collect 2 to 3 volunteer responses for each question within the allotted time.

Debrief questions

• What made your team pick its chosen principle over the other three in your subset?
• Why did the overall top-voted principle stand out compared to the other four finalists?
• What obstacle might make your personal selected principle difficult to practice this week?

Finished output: A group ranking that narrows 20 principles down to a top 5 and an overall group favorite, plus an individual implementation commitment noted on each participant's handout.

Remote

Pre-assign participants into 5 breakout rooms. Paste the 4 assigned principles into each room's private chat or shared document. Give teams 3 minutes to choose their favorite. Return everyone to the main room and have a spokesperson from each breakout share their pick. Paste all 20 principles into a shared document or chat, launch a quick 5-option poll for the finalists, and give everyone 2 minutes to post their personal implementation action in chat or keep it in private notes.

Hybrid

Create 5 mixed or separate co-located and remote groups. Ensure remote teams access their 4 principles via a shared slide deck or chat while in-person teams use paper slips. Have both remote and room spokespersons present. Conduct the 5-way vote using a digital polling tool or simultaneous chat entries and hand raises.

Access and participation choices

• Provide large-print master sheets upon request.
• Allow participants to record their personal action silently on their handout without requiring verbal disclosure.
• Offer the choice to speak, chat, or observe during team selection.

If the session gets stuck

A team cannot reach consensus on one principle within the 3-minute limit.

Instruct them to use a quick majority show of hands or flip a coin so they have a single selection ready when reporting begins.

The room has an uneven number of participants (e.g., 7 or 11 people).

Form five teams within the stated size of 1 to 5 people. For 7 people, use teams of 2, 2, 1, 1 and 1. For 11, use 3, 2, 2, 2 and 2. Solo participants review the 4 principles and select their preference individually.

Terms used here

• Textra Game: A Thiagi training format that combines reading written text with structured game mechanics and peer interaction.