My name is Vernon Parent.
I work for Utah State University Extension,
and I live here in St George down in southern Utah.
I'd like to share with you an activity that
focuses on decision making, coming to a consensus,
and communication skills.
It's a really fun activity to work
with a group who sometimes has problems working together
as a team.
It's very, very simple premise.
It's taking a rope, making some kind of design out of it.
And when I pull it, will it become a knot or will it not?
The decision is in the group.
This is how it works.
While the group is doing something else,
quickly design this knot that I'll show you here in a moment.
When the group comes back, you're
going to give them 10-second option of will this
be, when I pull the two ends, turn into a knot,
or will it not?
Those of you who believe it will become a knot,
stand to this side.
Those of you who do not believe, stand on this side.
Do not give them a lot of times.
You're teaching them, this is a first impression moment.
Give them just those 10 seconds, they
will divide into the two groups.
Then you're going to give them the option.
What I would like one group to do-- and pick the group
that seems to be the smaller group.
All of you are going to go and link arms
with somebody of this other group,
and I'm going to give you two minutes to discuss this.
Link arms, grab their shirt, somehow connect yourself
with them.
Come over here and discuss this.
You can follow the knot-- you may not touch it,
but you may look at it as much as you'd like.
The two of you must come to a consensus and decide,
is it a knot or is it not?
They will then go to the appropriate side of the room.
Now, this is going to be hard, because there
are some that are going to really firmly believe
that it won't be, and some that are going to firmly believe
that it will be.
And they need to come to that consensus and talk about that.
Once the two groups have been formed again, you will discuss.
All right.
How do you feel about this?
Do you really believe it?
No, I don't believe it, but that he or this person
talked to me really effectively and convinced me
that this would occur.
You're going to have some discussion.
Open it up once again and say, all right,
anybody who would like to change sides may change.
You will have people change sides.
It's really interesting how this occurs.
At this final moment, what you'll do is say, all right,
I'm now going to pull the rope apart.
This is the line, this is those who
believe that it will be a knot, this
is those who believe it will not be a knot.
You may change at any time.
Once you begin to pull the rope apart,
you will have people changing sides,
whether they believe it will be a knot or not.
It's really, really interesting.
Once this is completely done, there won't be a knot.
It will be a straight rope.
And those that believed it was going
to be a knot, a lot of times will move over.
But you will find that some don't.
Why is that?
You can discuss that in your group.
You can discuss about pride.
You can discuss about not admitting they're wrong.
You can discuss about the group who
was correct making fun of those people
and therefore ostracizing them.
There's a lot of things that you can talk about with this thing
as far as group dynamics and what
they need to do to help come to that consensus as a group.
What are the barriers you face when working as a group
and coming to a decision?
And the simple fact is we're all human.
We will all make mistakes.
It's what you do after making that mistake and how as a group
you function and help each other that you really
find that unity.
At this time, I'll now show you how to make the knot
and how to create it so you can effectively run this activity.
All right, at this time I'm going to show you
how to tie the knot.
It's really important that you have a good piece of rope.
You want it kind of heavy so it's easy to work with.
I like to use a horse halter rope.
It's got a good thickness, it's made out of nylon,
so it slides and moves around easily.
You want your rope to be about six to eight feet long.
Anything shorter, and you won't be able to tie your knot,
anything longer and you'll just be dealing with excess.
First thing you want to do is to loop your rope.
It'll kind of look like the letter E
to you when you're looking at it.
It's really simple.
You're going to always take from the middle and bring it over.
So the middle is going to come over.
You're then going to take your middle and take it over.
And then the last step, you're going to take your middle
and bring it over.
You're going to have to play with it a little bit
to make sure that it looks like the knot you want it to be.
Make sure you don't have a lot of excess in your loops
or it'll come to bite you back later on.
Practice this before you do this event.
At the end when it's time for you to go and show the target
audience if it is a knot or not, you're
going to take the two ends, pull it slowly,
allowing the different target audience to move
back and forth if they so wish.
As you pull it, the knot comes apart.