Desert Survival Situation

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

What is the Desert Survival Situation?

The Desert Survival Situation, one of the original group process simulations, is also one of the most widely used training tools in the world. Developed by Dr. J. Clayton Lafferty, the Desert Survival Situation places participants in the Sonora Desert, on a hot August day, where their plane has just crash landed.

What It’s Best Used For

• Building and Onboarding New Teams: Serving as an interactive icebreaker during onboarding or shifting personnel into newly formed work groups to quickly establish communication habits.
• Corporate Team Development: Auditing and training existing employees to enhance their interpersonal dynamics, trust, and cooperative efficiency in a risk-free environment.
• Honing Decision-Making and Problem-Solving: Coaching staff on how to dissect complex situations, debate priorities logically, and navigate group think or conflicting opinions to arrive at the best solution.
• Remote and Work-from-Home Workforce Alignment: Utilizing the specialized Virtual Desert Survival Simulation™ framework to build team unity and grade meeting quality across distributed, remote networks.
• Kickstarting Corporate Offsites and Meetings: Launching extended corporate retreats, strategic planning meetings, or group problem-solving syncs with an engaging, interactive exercise.
• Analyzing Team Behavioral Styles: Pairing the exercise with the optional Group Styles Inventory™ (GSI) to measure the exact constructive or defensive behaviors a team used during their meeting.

How does the Desert Survival Situation work?

Participants are challenged to rank 15 items salvaged from the crash in order of their relative importance to their survival in the situation described by the simulation. Solutions to the Desert Survival Situation are developed first on an individual basis and then by groups. Scores are generated by comparing individual and team answers to those provided by Alonzo W. Pond, M.A., former chief of the Desert Branch of the Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center of the Air Force University at Maxwell Air Force Base and author of several books on survival raining. 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.

The Desert Survival Situation takes approximately 1½ to 2½ hours to complete, including scoring and debriefing.

Applications

The Desert 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

Virtual (Online) Desert Survival Simulation

The Virtual Desert Survival Simulation™ allows teams that meet remotely to test their communications, interpersonal relations, and group problem-solving skills in a safe environment.  Comparing their responses to the objective expert’s rankings, teams can determine if their meeting was a success or not.

HOW DOES VDS WORK?

The online situation is exactly the same as the hard copy.  Participants are “placed” in a plane crash situation over the Sonora Desert, with 15 “rescued” items that they now must rank in order of importance to their survival.

Once administrators/facilitators are set up, participants are ready to begin their program. After determining their teams, they send site links to all of the participants, along with instructions.

Participants review the situation and then individually rank the items. Once completed they meet with their team and decide on a group ranking, which is then compared to the expert’s answers to determine the quality of their team’s responses.

UNIQUE FEATURES OF THE VIRTUAL DESERT SURVIVAL SIMULATION

 Not only can facilitators customize their programs with unique approaches, monitoring, and follow-up, there are a number of system options which allow the facilitator to adapt to various situations and learning objectives.

For example, facilitators can observe the group in action by joining their meeting and taking proactive notes, using the Simulation Observers’ Guide.

Conversely, they can casually monitor the team’s progress and send them occasional communications. Or, simply leave them alone to solve the problem at their own pace. Participants have access to the Desert Survival video, as well as other information about the Sonora Desert and synergistic problem-solving.

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.

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