Participants sit (or stand) in a circle.

You invite everyone to share something of how they feel right now, using just three words. They don’t have to capture exactly how they feel, just give us idea. Indicate they can use whatever words suit them.

We sometimes give a few examples to indicated possibilities:

confused/happy/caffeinated/anxious/excited/longing-for-tea

One person will start, and we go clockwise round the circle from there for one round. We sometimes encourage people to just say the three words, and turn it into thinking out loud (“Let me see, I think my first word would be…”)

As groups get the hang of this, we find it a simple way to get a bit of a read for the mood in the room. It also usually lets everyone know that people are often in different moods and helps keep a group alive to the variety of what’s going on for people.

You can run the process in other layouts – you may need to provide a little light conducting the order.

Three words is a suggestion buy you can play with other numbers of words. You can also vary the question to make it more focussed.