50 Activities & Exercises to Promote Communications Skills

This book is prepared to help participants and learners deal effectively with the many types of communications challenges they face every day. Each activity is designed to help participants better understand some facet of communications and gain expertise in that communications skill or competency.

Contents:
Part I. Communications Principles

1. Communications Is an Art

2. Communicating Time

3. Communications Is the Key

4. I Know You Believe You Understand

5. Communications Model

6. Listening Dilemma

7. Interactive Listening Tips

8. Listening Bad Habits

9. Listening Questionnaire

10. Seven Levels of Listening

11. Silent Messages

12. The Three Levels of Communications

13. Nonverbal Listening Test

14. Laws of Remembering

15. Laws of Forgetting

16. Meaning of Words

17. Communications Circles

18. Attention Spans

19. Meaning of Listening

Part II. Communications Icebreakers

20. Vanity Name Cards

21. Repeating Introductions

22. Circle, Square, Triangle, or Z

23. Introducing Each Other

24. Fantasy Career

25. Name that Participant

26. Story of Your Name

27. Nickname Game

28. Introduction Bingo

29. Card Match

Part III. Communications Exercises

30. Reading Test

31. The Longest Line

32. Color Block

33. Following Directions

34. Train Story

35. Count the Ss

36. Communications Shutdowns

    
    
    

37. Repeat the Question

38. Quick Answers

39. Rephrasing Exercise

40. Wedding Story

41. Who Done It?

42. Picture Puzzle

43. Creative Fairy Tale

44. Rumors

45. The Shoe Store

46. Two Moose Sitting on a Log

47. Communications Styles

48. “Oh”

49. Word Games

50. Trading Cards

Reproduced from 50 Communications Activities, Icebreakers, and Exercises, by Peter R. Garber. Amherst, MA, HRD Press, 2008.