Uncommon Commonalities
Participatory Methods Uncommon Commonalities Uncommon Commonalities is a collaborative activity where participants work in teams to discover habits, traits, or experiences they have in common-but the goal is to find unusual or unexpected ones.
How to run it
- Explain that the goal is to find unusual commonalities among team members.
- Give examples of common traits (e.g., “we all like chocolate”) and contrast them with more unexpected ones (“we all organize our books by color”).
- Divide participants into small groups (3-5 people).
- Each group receives a sheet of paper or access to a digital board to record their findings.
- For 10-15 minutes, teams must identify as many commonalities as possible , eliminating the obvious ones.
- Guiding questions can be used to facilitate the search.
- Each team presents their most surprising commonalities to the rest of the group.
- The most unexpected or creative commonalities can be highlighted or rewarded.
- For 10-15 minutes, teams must identify as many commonalities as possible, eliminating the obvious ones.
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Prompts to use +
Explain that the goal is to find unusual commonalities among team members.
Give examples of common traits (e.g., “we all like chocolate”) and contrast them with more unexpected ones (“we all organize our books by color”).
Each group receives a sheet of paper or access to a digital board to record their findings.
For 10-15 minutes, teams must identify as many commonalities as possible , eliminating the obvious ones.
For 10-15 minutes, teams must identify as many commonalities as possible, eliminating the obvious ones.
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: Uncommon Commonalities. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: Explain that the goal is to find unusual commonalities among team members.; Give examples of common traits (e.g., “we all like chocolate”) and contrast them with more unexpected ones (“we all organize our books by color”).; Each group receives a sheet of paper or access to a digital board to record their findings.; For 10-15 minutes, teams must identify as many commonalities as possible , eliminating the obvious ones.. Return a concise facilitator script with timing, wording, safety notes, and remote/in-person adjustments.
Origin unverified
- Where we observed it: The strongest current observations come from Participatory Methods; aggregators are listed as additional observations, not origin proof. (1 source observed, including Participatory Methods.)
- 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.