The Tallest Tower
The Tallest Tower is a relationship mapping exercise that helps participants build useful connections and understand how people, roles, or ideas relate.
How to run it
- Announce that they have 20 min to build, and let the building begin.
- Some groups will spend time coming up with a detailed strategy, others will just dive right in. Some may start to notice that they don't have much tape, or that the other groups have more popsicle sticks.
- After a few minutes of building you have a few choices.
- You can ask for representatives to come to the center of the room and report to the other reps one thing they are doing well and one challenge they are having.
- You can have everyone stop building for a moment and walk around and see other teams' progress so far
Run this exercise live
The facilitator console stays in this browser. Its QR handoff is a short-lived participant snapshot containing only public exercise instructions, phase, prompt, and timer state.
What participants need now
Materials:
This is a participant-safe snapshot, not a response form. It sends nothing back to the facilitator.
Prompts to use +
Announce that they have 20 min to build, and let the building begin.
Some groups will spend time coming up with a detailed strategy, others will just dive right in. Some may start to notice that they don't have much tape, or that the other groups have more popsicle sticks.
After a few minutes of building you have a few choices.
You can ask for representatives to come to the center of the room and report to the other reps one thing they are doing well and one challenge they are having.
You can have everyone stop building for a moment and walk around and see other teams' progress so far
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: The Tallest Tower. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: Announce that they have 20 min to build, and let the building begin.; Some groups will spend time coming up with a detailed strategy, others will just dive right in. Some may start to notice that they don't have much tape, or that the other groups have more popsicle sticks.; After a few minutes of building you have a few choices.; You can ask for representatives to come to the center of the room and report to the other reps one thing they are doing well and one challenge they are having.. 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: Teampedia. (1 source observed, including Teampedia.)
- 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.