Any work setting is suitable for conducting survival simulation activities.  Teams experience first-hand the exciting benefits of group thinking and discussion.  Within the context of a plausible but imaginary situation, group members are free to learn real lessons about how their behavior affects others.  Working together to solve prescribed challenges, participants practice vital group-process skills that are reinforced through focused reflection and discussion.  Survival simulations are excellent tools to demonstrate and teach team synergy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Consensus activities such as survival simulations fall into the category of social-system simulations that focus on interactions among people and the ways that one’s beliefs, assumptions, goals, and actions may be hindered or assisted in interactions with others.  The primary focus of such simulations is for participants to experience some of the dynamic social processes that are part of the fabric of organized social groups.  Group Process is concerned with the dynamics of the group:  group norms, group roles, leadership, communication, and dimensions of group effectiveness.  Use these exciting activities for:

	Consensus decision making
	Synergistic decision making
	General problem solving and decision making
	Comparing individual decisions with team decisions
	Teamwork
	Group behavior

Within the larger context of group process, it is important to examine two distinct dimensions:  (1) Task-Oriented Process that contributes to task accomplishment and includes planning, goal setting, problem solving, decision making, creativity, and risk taking; and (2) Relationship-Oriented Process that explores maintaining good working relationships within the group, including group cohesiveness, collaboration, trust, conflict management, and negotiation.  The components that are developed are (a) a precipitating event, (b) complicating factors, (c) participant roles, (d) context.  All of these components interact with one another to set in motion the interactions among participants that are the core of the simulation.  Outcomes depend for the most part on the interpersonal dynamics that evolve as the simulation progresses. 

The activity can provide a team immediate feedback on how well team members perform.  The debriefing discussion that follows the simulated play is critical to the learning process because its goal is to reflect on the relevant dimensions to real world situations. It stresses the action that produces the insight for learning. 

Human resource professionals, team leaders, and managers will find these refreshing activities to be an interesting, effective and entertaining way to introduce problem solving and decision making to their work teams and other groups.  The leader and participants will have a perfect opportunity to examine the impact of their interpersonal behaviors on one another, on the group's effectiveness, and on the outcome of their adventure.

The facilitator, who does not need to be a training professional, will need a copy of the Leader's Guide that contains instructions about running the simulation.  Each participant needs an individual copy of the activity, the guidebook to these exhilarating adventures.

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