Sticks Activity

In Short

Simple physical exercise to surface team coordination dynamics
Best for: Team experiential exercise
Sticks Activity is a structured tool for coaching and facilitation. Simple physical exercise to surface team coordination dynamics. It provides a repeatable framework that can be adapted to individual, team, and leadership development contexts.
Type of tool: Team experiential exercise
Expected outcomes:
- Improved ability to simple physical exercise to surface team coordination dynamics
- Improved capacity to what happened to the communication? Who took the lead? What was the impact of fr
- A concrete action or development plan to take forward from the Sticks Activity process

In Detail

Sticks Activity is an experiential exercise designed to help coaches, leaders, and facilitators simple physical exercise to surface team coordination dynamics. It sits within the category of Team experiential exercise, making it particularly useful for practitioners working on capability development, team performance, and individual growth in organisational settings.

In practice, Sticks Activity is delivered as a 4-step process. The process begins by brief the team: lower a lightweight stick to the ground using only index fingers, with all fingers remaining in contact. The session closes by debrief: what happened to the communication? Who took the lead? What was the impact of frustration? 4. The structured approach ensures that participants move through a consistent experience while leaving room for the facilitator to adapt pacing and depth to the group's needs.

Sticks Activity is most effective when used to break existing patterns of thinking or interaction. The experiential format creates a low-stakes environment where participants can experiment, make mistakes, and draw direct parallels to real workplace dynamics through the debrief process.

How to Use

1. Brief the team: lower a lightweight stick to the ground using only index fingers, with all fingers remaining in contact with the stick at all times. 2. What typically happens: the stick rises rather than falls because of coordination difficulty. 3. Debrief: what happened to the communication? Who took the lead? What was the impact of frustration? 4. Link to the team's real coordination challenges.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Creates immediate, memorable experiences that accelerate learning compared to instruction alone Low-stakes environment allows participants to experiment with new behaviours safely Generates rich debrief material directly relevant to real workplace dynamics	Effectiveness depends heavily on the quality of the debrief — poor facilitation wastes the investment Some participants resist "games" as lacking seriousness, requiring careful framing Time investment in setup and debrief limits how many tools can be used in a single session

Created by Various (experiential learning tradition)

When to Use

This tool is suited to the following coaching and facilitation contexts:

Context	Relevant
Individual Coaching
Team Coaching	✓
Leadership Development
Facilitation / Workshop	✓
Online / Virtual

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