Supplies: Paper and pencils
Many people don’t realize that 70% of communication comes from non-verbal cues such as tone of voice or facial expression. According to the SunSentinel there are “80 muscles in the face that can create more than 7,000 expressions. Facial expressions are so much a part of our lives that it is easy to overlook the fact that the need for them is not immediately obvious.”
In this exercise, participants will learn to recognize different facial expressions and the difficulty in determining the true meaning of some people’s expressions. This can be a fun team building exercise for your next meeting that will get everyone thinking and paying closer attention to expression throughout the meeting.
Each participant will choose one emotion that can easily be expressed silently. Write the emotion on a piece of paper to be put into a box on the table.
Have each participant choose one piece of paper and act out the emotion. The other participants must come to a group decision on which emotion is being portrayed.
