Standing up for People

This exercise was run in Glasgow, Scotland in April 2024, with a radical youth education organisation. It was run with a single facilitator and 10 participants.

Problems (i.e. why the exercise was done):

Problem 1: as identified by the group: ‘Quieter or shy-er people aren’t able to stand up for themselves’.

Problem 2: People feel they can stand up for each other when they talk about it abstractly, but struggle in the real situation.

Techniques Deployed:
CCTE Role Play

Modes:
Simulation

Materials used:
Things to do tasks with. When this exercise was run, chairs to be moved around were the main prop.

Participant numbers:
Minimum participants: 4

Maximum participants: Depends on the room size, but probably around 15-20.

Group size: All run in one group.

Age: Can be run with any age group, perhaps works better with teenagers.

How long does it take?
10 minutes to half an hour - a dedicated group could run it over and over to perfect it. But it tends to be a short exercise, to demonstrate some characteristics of the group, rather than anything longer.

~ Instructions ~

Now we’re going to do an exercise to work out how to stand up for each other.

Put your hand up if you tend to be a quieter, shyer person.

Put your hand up if you are a more outspoken or outwardly confident person.

These are the two groups. If you didn’t put your hand up for either, pick the group you think fits you more.

Depending on the group, people might be more or less willing to do this. This exercise was initially run with teenagers. Among them, people found it easy to self-select. Perhaps with adults this would be trickier. Facilitators will need to judge in their own context what category labels participants are likely to honestly self-select under. The important thing to emphasise is that this categorisation is just for ease in the exercise, it’s not super-important.

Now the quietest people will be put in their own special workforce. One person outside the group will be the boss, and they will instruct you to do tasks and such. You are not allowed to speak at all, just carry out the tasks.

The more outspoken people are allowed to speak (they are not working). You are allowed to stand up for the workers by saying whatever you like to the boss.

Ask a co-facilitator or another student to act like the boss, ordering them around with no respect, getting them to do tasks (‘move those chairs’, ‘stack those scissors’). The tasks should be ‘real’, however pointless they may seem. Doing imaginary tasks on a factory floor will result in a kind of play-acting which will not feel like work. When we ran this exercise, the main task ordered was moving chairs. Have the quiet people work for about 3 minutes.

Now the louder people are to be in their own workforce. One person outside the group will act like their boss, and they will instruct you to do tasks and such. You are also not allowed to speak.

This time, the quiet people are allowed to speak (they are not working). They have to stand up for the workers.

Now everyone will be the workforce. When the boss orders them around, people have to stick up for each other.

Now ask the following questions:

How did it feel trying to stand up for the other people?
Who was better at it, the loud group or the quiet group?

What are the barriers to standing up for other people?

Criticism / Results of this exercise

It was an interesting exercise. The ‘loud’ group were much worse at sticking up for the quiet people, and when it came to the quiet peoples’ turn, one ‘quiet’ woman became very vocal with the boss, forcing him into a corner and relieving the ‘workforce’ of their duties.

Afterwards, the ‘loud’ participants said that they were not as confident as they thought they were. They noticed that they were reluctant to challenge authority, and that their outward confidence was a way of masking that. They were all impressed by the actions and words of the woman who had stood up for them.

The exercise was very chaotic. People are moving chairs, there’s someone shouting, and there’s other people shouting at the person who is shouting. It is an exercise with a lot of heightened emotions, and in this instance caused a great deal of hilarity. It requires an exercise following it in which people can calm down. During the exercise itself, the co-facilitator had to instruct the boss to ‘keep going’, keep bossing people around, as they were inclined to stop. The co-facilitator also had to prompt the ‘loud’ group to try to stick up for the quiet group. It therefore took a lot of instruction in quite a chaotic environment. Ideally this exercise is run with two co-facilitators, one is the boss and knows what to do, the other is giving instructions from the outside. In our example there was one facilitator, who was also a part of the ‘quiet group’.

What’s the time?
in Al-Quds -
in Panama and Chicago -
in Burkina Faso -
in Scotland -