No-Hollywood Reaction

Description of the tool

Give small groups a stack of covered cards with harsh statements. (You might want to ask people to collect them in advance in order to have real life examples.)

One in the group starts pulling the card, reading it silently and then exclaiming the accusation to someone in the group. The adressed person has a task to formulate an appropriate reaction, which does not lead to an escalation of the conflict, but smoothes the situation. The reaction should be given according to the rules of giving feedback: 1. telling the person about how you feel hearing that, starting your sentence with "I feel..", 2. giving your observations and not judgments and 3. asking for the needs. Ask people firmly to try not to act the usual way, but to try to put the reaction in this scheme. Most of the times it would be very difficult, because we are very into spontatious similar reactions.

After the exercise debrief, what were the difficulties, and why people find it difficult to share feelings being attacked. You might come to an insight, that how words are being perceived and used depend a lot on the social culture. Ask people to reflect upon, where we learn our reaction patterns. Ask, why would one feel more hurt hearing harsh words than someone else.

I created this method for a training about the Peer Education in cultural diversity projects. For me it was important to have a method, where it would possible to practice feedback for real and realise, that cultural diversity is not only about different national, but very much about our social backgrounds.