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Red-Blue Team Building Activity

This Team building activity is very useful to demonstrate the importance of trust and how easily people use self protection and self promotion as strategies in work and life.

Benefits of this Team Building Activity

People experience the importance of trust.
People realize how fragile a trust relationship can be.
It shows how self protection and self promotion only creates a lose-lose situation.
It shows the importance of working together instead of against one another.
Participants get to practice negotiation skills
They experience the importance of honesty and reliability.
They experience how powerful peer pressure can be in the working environment.

Time Needed

One hour

Number of Participants

6 to 30. If there are more participants, you can play two games simultaneously

Materials Needed

Flip chart paper
Flip chart pens
Stopwatch

Set Up

Divide the group or team into two. This can either be functional work groups or you can just divide them randomly.
Each group need to be at a different location close to one another, where they can’t hear or see the other group. I usually keep one group in the room and send the other group out to stand just outside the room.
Put a Score Clarifying Sheet and a Score Sheet on the wall at each group’s location.

Process

The objective for each group is to finish this team building activity with a POSITIVE score.
This team building activity is played over 10 rounds.
Each round is 2 minutes.
During every round each team need to pick either red or blue.
The significance of each choice is in the way they score points. To explain, let’s first have a look at the Score Clarifying Sheet to see how each group score points.

Score Clarifying Sheet

If team A play	And Team B play	Team A scores	And Team B scores
Red	Red	+ 3	+ 3
Red	Blue	- 6	+ 6
Blue	Red	+ 6	- 6
Blue	Blue	- 3	- 3

As you can see each group score points according to the relationship of the choices of both groups.
Rounds 9 and 10 will score double
During each round, the different groups will not know what the other group have played until they have both made their choices.
After both teams have made their choice on each round the facilitator will tell each group what has been played and what the scores are
There will be an opportunity for an inter-group conference, involving two representatives from each group after round 4 and again after round 8. This conference should not exceed 3 minutes. Be very strict on this.
HOWEVER, A CONFERENCE CAN ONLY TAKE PLACE AT THE REQUEST OF BOTH GROUPS. I.E. BOTH GROUPS NEED TO AGREE TO A CONFERENCE.
The conference takes place at a “neutral” venue where the rest of both groups can’t hear or see them.

Score Sheet.

	Team A Played	Team A Scored	Team B Played	Team B scored
Round 1	?	?	?	?
Round 2	?	?	?	?
Round 3	?	?	?	?
Round 4	?	?	?	?
Sub Total	?	?	?	?
Conference
Round 5	?	?	?	?
Round 6	?	?	?	?
Round 7	?	?	?	?
Round 8	?	?	?	?
Sub Total	?	?	?	?
Conference
Round 9	?	?	?	?
Round 10	?	?	?	?
Total	?	?	?	?

Caveat

The only way to end up with a positive score is if BOTH groups choose red every time. However, just like in real life, it is a risk to trust. If you choose red, you run the risk that the other group might choose blue. Then you end up with minus 6 and they with plus 6.

The perceived safe option is to choose blue. Then you can’t be “beaten” by the other group and if they choose red in the process, you get plus 6. This is just a PERCEIVED safe choice however.

In reality, it often happens that group A decides to take the risk and trust group B and choose red. Then group B choose blue and group A end up with a minus 6. At that moment, group A decide, “Stuff that, from now on we take the “safe” option and choose blue, because we don’t trust group B anymore.”

Group B are then very chuffed with themselves, because they have a lead. And so both groups keep on choosing blue and very soon, both are in the negative. So both teams end up with NOT achieving their goal of finishing with a POSITIVE score.

During the first conference after round 4, they normally decide to collaborate and go for red. The challenge is then to restore the trust. What sometimes happens after a conference is that, because one group think the other group will go for Red, they go for Blue…and just breaking the trust relationship even further.

Having said all of this, sometimes it don’t work out this way, so be open for any scenario.

Debriefing the Red/Blue Team Building Activity

I have found the following questions to be useful after this exercise. However, feel free to add your own questions.

What strategy did you use?
Did you made your decisions from a position of collaboration or from a position of wanting to “beat” the other group?
What was your original strategy with regard to the first rounds?
How do you feel about the other group’s strategy
How did the first negotiation go and was an agreement reached?
Did the team bid as agreed in the negotiation for rounds 5 to 8? If not, why not?
How did your decision affect the trust relationship with the other team?
How did the second negotiation go and was an agreement reached?
What was the impact of group pressure on your final decisions?
Where there consensus in your group about your strategy?
If you could do this team building activity again, what would you do different?
What are the similarities between the way you played this team building activity and the way you do things at work?
Did you see any behaviors during this team building activity that you also see at work? In other words, did any habits played itself out during this activity?
Based on what you have learned during this team building activity, what changes do we need to make about the way we work together?

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