Intended for:
This free energiser is useful to demonstrate that what you think you know is not always right. This can be useful where you want to demonstrate the idea of a paradigm shift or help people to appreciate that their well-formed opinions on issues might not be serving them as well as they think.
Training course contents:
A set of instructions for the energiser, ‘Half of 8’ can be downloaded for free from the link at the bottom of this page, or you can follow the notes below.
Instructions:
1. Ask participants to what ‘half of 8’ is and be prepared to write their responses on the flipchart.
2. Some participants will say ‘4’, some will spot a trick and say ‘0’ and there may well be other variations, my favourite being ‘3’. The idea is that whatever the participants say, always tell them they are wrong and finally give them your own ‘right’ answer.
3. Of course, none of the answers are right or wrong, but it just gives you the opportunity to demonstrate that what we know as ‘fact’ isn’t always so. For the record, you can make half of 8 a 0 by cutting it in half horizontally and you can make it a 3 by cutting it in half vertically.
4. When you have an answer from everyone, explain the fact as provided above and have a general discussion about how our assumptions are not always correct
Objectives:
This energiser provides an opportunity to demonstrate that there are lots of ways of looking at things and we should be prepared to try out different ideas.
