Helpful exercise, but found the group debate/decision making process is better if people have longer to rank the jobs in the first place and are then asked to give some thoughts to why they ranked the jobs as they did.

I have even experimented with doing the exercises the other way around and briefing one member of the group to have a ‘secret’ hidden agenda in one group. The debrief discussion afterwards then enabled me to ask questions about which group were more successful (usually the one where people were all being honest).

All in all a neat little exercise that the majority of people could find an opinion about.

I used this activity in a workshop on negotiation with a cohort of about 10 people that I split into 2 groups. It worked really well in encouraging delegates to ask questions, listen to each other and try to understand each others' perspectives, rather than making assumptions or trying to 'force' their values/beliefs onto the rest of the group. It worked particularly well in highlighting the need to identify principles on which to agree. Both groups did this and came up with different principles which worked for their particular group. Also, the need to build rapport was emphasised. Once they had finished the negotiation and reflected on it as a group, they completed the self reflection form which really encouraged them to focus on their personal learning points and their next steps in terms of development. One thing I perceived was that I think the groups were expecting me to expect them to 'fail' in this activity. I think this comes from them having done a lot of training before in which some activities almost set them up to fail, to learn from their mistakes! Or possibly the way I set it up? This is something to consider for next time as this activity was geared for them to succeed and learn from their successes, as well as identify any possible improvements. Later in the session, delegates did a negotiation role play and applied what they had learnt here (as well as from the rest of the workshop) and I believe the Jobs! exercise helped them with their role plays in that it demonstrated that negotiation isn't necessarily about win/lose but about trying to reach a win/win outcome, through understanding each other. I will definitely use this again! Thanks.