Cultural Villages - a simulation exercise on communication

Aims of the tool

- to bring reflection about intercultural competences and communicative competences;
- to open discussion about the structure and kinds of communication: perceptual, interactive and communicative; verbal, non-verbal and visual communication;
- to open discussion about the structure (aspects) and kinds of communication: perceptual, communicative and interactive; verbal, non-verbal and visual communication;
- to demonstrate, how perception influences communication process;
- to sharpen the soft-skills, emotional intelligence; develop empathy, active listening, communication and negotiation skills;

Description of the tool

Simulation Phase
Stage 1
Divide the participants into 3 teams (3 cultural villages). Tell the participants that they are going to become someone else for the next 2 hours, they are the inhabitants of the 3 villages that have never communicated before and due to some special events going on in their region, they will soon have to meet each other to see if they want to continue communication or not, as this is crucial for the region’s development, as well as theirs, as villages.
Each group gets their instructions (attached file) and go away from the meeting point together.
Stage 2
After the group gets to know the legend and the instructions, they need to get into the role, to prepare and to practice the way their village communicate. This stage might take from 20 to 40 minutes.
Stage 3
Each village sends their “spies” to the other two villages to observe their behavior and to get an impression of what the others are like. The observers can spend from 5 to 15 minutes in the village they were sent. After that, they go back to their village to describe the other village’s inhabitants and the way they communicate. Facilitator may help by asking the questions to foster reflection about the other villages. This stage takes about 20 minutes.
Stage 4
The group practices their communication strategy to make it as effective as possible. Soon they will meet the other 2 villages at the meeting point. They have about 30 minutes to discuss everything, prepare and practice.
Stage 5
All the inhabitants of the 3 villages meet to see, if they can communicate with each other and how they feel towards each other. Let them speak or do whatever they want, but let them know that there is not much time before the final decision must be taken, so they only have 15 minutes to communicate.
After 15 minutes give them 5 minutes to speak and make decisions within their groups.
Stage 6
Listen to all the representatives and their decision regarding the road construction and their communication process. Finish the meeting with the round of applause. No matter what the result is, the activity brings a lot of things to discuss, so let the participants mix their places and de-role, after that you might start the debriefing process.

Debriefing phase

Debriefing questions:
- How did you feel in your roles?
- How was your communication build?
- What did you take into consideration about the other villages while creating a strategy for the meeting? How reliable was the information from the spy that you’ve got?
- Was your communication strategy effective or not? Why?
- How is this similar to the real life? What conclusions can we make?

Besides that, the facilitator can provide some further information on the structure and kinds of communication as the feedback on the game. This can be done along with the participants in the way of discussion.

More information in the attached document (handouts, info for the debriefing phase, etc.)