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The better reportLeadership, Management, Supervision; Teamwork, Negotiation, Conflict management
Participants experience conflict between loyalty to their team and objective assessment of the relative quality of a product that they have developed.
One hour for the development of a report.
A break to allow the report to be copied
Twenty minutes for the negotiation activity
At least thirty minutes to debrief.
After the participants have built up a sense of team membership over preceding activities.
After activities which have promoted competition between teams.
(Optional) On the previous day, advise that a research project will be conducted tomorrow. Announce the subject. Advise that syndicates will be asked to prepare a report on the subject. There will be a judging process to determine the best report. Preliminary preparation overnight may assist your team in developing the best report. Ask that each brings in 50 cents (or another amount suitable to the group) to pay for the prizes that will be awarded for the best report.
Assign participants to syndicates to prepare a report on a nominated subject. The exercise is enhanced if the participants have worked together as teams previously, and competition between teams has built up.
It is important that there be an even number of teams and that pairs of teams have the same membership. For example for 22 participants, team A & B will each have 5 members, teams C & D will each have 6. Each member of team A will negotiate with a selected member of team B. If this involves minor variations to the teams which have worked together previously, this is OK, because the possible presence of an outsider in the team can increase conflict and raise extra questions of loyalty.
If there is an odd number of participants, select one participant to act as an administrator and adjudicator. This role is filled by the trainer if the numbers are even.
Arrange for photocopying facilities to be available.
Organise a supply of 5, 10 and 20 cent coins.
Arrange for a supply of distinctive paper—one sheet per team is required.
Post the team members names on a flip chart, with names of negotiation partners on the same line and space for a score to be recorded — see sample:
1. Announce that one hour is available to develop the report content. The report itself is to be written on distinctive paper, which will be provided 10 minutes before the end of the allotted hour.
2. Advise that a process has been developed to determine the relative quality of the reports. The winning teams will share in a cash pool. A fifty cent contribution from each team member is required to make up the pool.
3. Collect the 50 cents from each team member.
4. Announce that the allotted one hour has started.
5. At 50 minutes, circulate one sheet of distinctive paper to each team.
6. At 1 hour collect the reports from each team.
7. This is a good time for the participants to take a break.
Trainer: Copy each report, so that there is a copy for each member of the team that prepared it, and one for you or the adjudicator.
Assess each team’s report against the material presented or to be presented in the seminar and give it a score out of 100.
Match the competing teams reports and allocate 100 points between them in proportion to their assessed score—If you scored A at 75 out of 100 and you gave B 65, the total is 140. Divide each of the scores (75 and 65) by the total (140) to give 53.6 and 46.4. As these fall between 45 and 55 (against rule 10 below) assign 55 / 45.
Only announce these assigned scores if there is a failure to reach a negotiated settlement. (see rule 11 below).
8. Announce the names of the negotiating partners. Make up the pairs so that each member of team A will be paired with a member of team B, each from team C will negotiate with team D and so on.
9. The objective of the negotiation is to judge the relative quality of the two reports.
10. Each pair is to assign a total of 100 points to the two reports. If the two reports are of identical value then each would be assigned 50 points. However, as absolute equality is improbable, the closest that they may come is 55 – 45.
11. If there is a failure to achieve an outcome, the money will be forfeited to the trainer, and an adjudicated score will be recorded.
12. After the negotiation, return to their team and report the outcome.
13. Ask each team to add up the points that they scored, and distribute the cash pool accordingly.
1. Seek and post the scores achieved in each negotiation.
2. Different members of the same team will have quite differing scores. The chart shown is an actual result (with the names changed). Ask for feedback on the process. Prompting questions could include:
Did team loyalty overpower objective assessment?
What pressure was there to achieve a result in preference to forfeiture?
How did people who were overruled in the preparation phase score in the negotiation?
What other relationships were there between performance in the preparation and results in the negotiation?
How much time was spent arguing about the process to be followed?
What impact did the money have?
What effect did layout have? Bullet points V paragraphs? Were cartoons or diagrams used? - could they have been?
3. Discuss alternate ways of making an objective comparison. Which of these would improve the process?
Counting the number of distinct points made in each report. Assign the scores according to quantity;
Delete the points common to each report—negotiate only on the relative value of the differences;
Make an agreed model list. Score each against it.
