The Telephone Game

Over the summer I was able to do most of my 7 Habits curriculum planning with a few other counselors.  While washing dishes one afternoon, it came to me to use the game telephone as an illustration for Habit 5: Seek First to Understand and Then to be Understood.  

The game doesn't work unless you first understand what the person was whispering to you and then try to make yourself understood to the next person.  We played it twice: the first time with the rule that you could not ask the person to repeat themselves whether you heard correctly or not.  The second time, we used our other habits to be proactive and set a goal to see if we could make it all the way around the circle correctly.  The class figured out that the only way to make that happen was to allow the other person to repeat themselves as many times as necessary.  Still, some classes were not able to accomplish the goal and it gave us a teachable opportunity to introduce the fact that even when we try, we aren't very good listeners a lot of the time.  The discussion after the game was the best part because the game very clearly illustrated this habit and some of the roadblocks to good listening that Covey talks about in the Teens 7 Habits book.  We were also able to see if the class was Thinking Win-Win and staying quiet and encouraging each other or not.  I used this with 3rd grade and that seemed to be a great age for this game!