The following activities were designed and facilitated by Mercy Corps staff who attended a training of trainers session in Amman, Jordan. Each activity demonstrates one or more reasons why communication fails.
Secret message: Heba Asaad created a game about seven communication factors. She divided the eight people into four teams: A and B. Team A at each table was given a secret message and told to mold modeling clay to represent the message.
Once the A teams finished, Heba fitted them with clown masks. She told the B teams that they could only ask closed questions to try to figure out the message. Due to the masks, the B teams could not read the body language of the A teams, who could only nod yes or no. He explained the activity by presenting the list of seven factors and asking participants to identify how well each factor came into play.
In each case, communication failed because the factor was not fully understood. For example, the message lacked sufficient clarity to be understood; the non-verbal ones were masked; and feedback was limited by closed questions.
Body confusion: Eman Darabseh had everyone stand up to experience that we pay more attention to non-verbal messages than to verbal ones. She would say “nose” and point to her knee, and most of the group would point to her knees. She would say “arm” and point to her chin, and most of the group would point to her chins, etc.
It was a very powerful demonstration that when our non-verbal (expression on our face, tone of voice, smile) conflict with our verbal message, people believe and react to the non-verbal message.
Story numbers: Abdallah Zarma made everyone stand to one side of the room. He explained that he would tell them a story. Every time they heard him mention a number during the story, they had to form groups of that number. They loved running to be part of a group and not be left out. Since they were listening to the numbers, they did not follow the story at all. This became clear when Abdallah asked them questions about the story and only received blank stares in response.
Communication will fail if listeners have any reason to pay attention to only part of the message, to hear only what they want to hear.
