Cascades Survival Situation

The Cascades Survival Situation helps teams to test their communications, interpersonal relations, and group problem-solving skills in a safe environment.

What is the Cascades Survival Situation?

The Cascades Survival Situation is one of our shortest survival simulations and therefore takes the least amount of time to complete. The simulation places participants at the edge of a small clearing high in the Cascades mountain range where their helicopter has just crashed.

How does the Cascades Survival Situation work?

Participants are challenged to rank 12 items salvaged from the crash in order of their relative importance to their survival. Solutions to the exercise are developed first on an individual basis and then by groups. Scores are generated by comparing individual and team solutions to those provided by a team of experts coordinated by Greg Petzke, a mountain rescue and survival educator, wilderness instructor, and ski patroller. Comparisons between individual and team scores indicate whether teams were able to achieve synergy by fully using and building on the knowledge and skills of their members.

What It’s Best Used For

This exercise is best utilized by corporate trainers, HR professionals, and team leaders for internal employee development, leadership workshops, and organizational retreat icebreakers.

• Measuring Team Synergy: Participants first complete the ranking individually and then work as a group to reach a consensus. Final scores are measured against expert guidelines from mountain rescue and wilderness survival educators to objectively prove whether the team successfully built on collective knowledge or collapsed into conflict.
• Versatile Corporate Applications: It functions as a safe, engaging icebreaker to kick off extended offsite gatherings, launch group problem-solving meetings, or establish baseline behaviors for newly formed teams.
• Evaluating Core Interpersonal Habits: It allows observers to watch how group members actively share information, listen, handle competing opinions, and execute high-pressure decision-making workflows.
• Optional Behavioral Integration: The program can be combined with the Group Styles Inventory (GSI)™—which requires practitioner accreditation to purchase—to elevate the exercise into a deep-dive analysis of the specific behavioral styles the team used.

The simulation is offered in a paper format designed for quick manual scoring and is fully legal for use in Canada.

Applications

The Cascades Survival Situation can be used as an icebreaker, central activity, pre-test/post-test, or follow-up activity for programs focusing on:

• Building new teams
• Team development
• Problem solving and decision making
• The simulation can also be used as:
• An icebreaker for an extended offsite gathering (particularly one that is being held in a cold climate)
• A kick-off to a group problem-solving meeting
• A tool for basic survival training

COMBINE SIMULATIONS WITH THE GROUP STYLES INVENTORY™

The use of the GSI is optional, but highly recommended.

Significantly enhance the key learnings of the simulation, by using the real time version of the Group Styles Inventory™.  The GSI enables teams to determine the styles they used to solve the problem. The GSI has been proven to be significantly linked to the team’s meeting quality.  We strongly advise the use of the Group Styles Inventory™ (GSI) as part of your team development program. The GSI allows team members to rate their teams’ attitudes and behaviours along the same twelve styles and three clusters as used in the LSI and OCI. The GSI guide provides strategies that elevates the program from a game to a valuable learning experience.

Certification is mandatory for the GSI

The GSI requires accreditation via the General Certification Workshop before materials can be purchased.

The Cascades Survival Situation assessment is a registered trademark of Human Synergistics®, Inc.