Instructor’s Guide

Purpose of Playing
1. To show participants how to use communication in relationships to create connections that achieve a happy fulfilled life.

2. To help participants understand themselves and others through self-awareness.

3. To value each other’s point of view.

4. To be successful and productive in any of life’s endeavors through connective techniques.

5. To be the best person you can be.

Suggestions on Playing
1. Start with explaining how everyone is genetically driven to satisfy Five Basic Needs (survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun) as explained by Dr. William Glasser’s, “Choice Theory®,” as described in his book, “Choice Theory®, A New Psychology of Personal Freedom.”

2. Explain the seven connecting habits (listening, respecting, encouraging, supporting, accepting, trusting and always negotiating disagreements) and the seven disconnecting habits (being critical, threatening, complaining, blaming, nagging, punishing and bribery). Explain the importance of these habits in everyone’s life.

3. Emphasize that a person obtains the Five Basic Needs only
through the connecting habits and not by practicing
disconnecting habits.

4. Explain how to play CONNECTIONS™ and the scoring of points.

5. Play CONNECTIONS™ in groups of two to six and monitor participants’ responses.

6. After playing game ask participants what they learned about each other’s innermost feelings.

7. Request participants to keep a journal for a week detailing times and examples of when they connected or disconnected. (See website for standardized journal.) Participants should use the journal in subsequent games.

8. Play CONNECTIONS™ again one week later. Ask participants if they recognize when they used connecting habits since playing the game.

9. Again, request participants to continue to record in their journals connecting and disconnecting personal situations. They should consciously try to be more connective and less disconnective.

10. Play CONNECTIONS™ the next week and again monitor participants’ responses. (Continue journal entries.)

11. One should be able to see some improvement in behaviors of participants over many weeks of playing CONNECTIONS™.

12. At this point, participants should become mentors to other participants by continually emphasizing connecting habits to assist in the process of positive growth and development.

13. At this point, there may be some participants still not connecting due to a relationship that is not working. The CONNECTIONS™ web site, www.theconnectionsgame.com, contains an individualized ActionPlan™ that provides a guide to help overcome these relationship problems.

14. Continue to play CONNECTIONS™ to help reinforce the learned behaviors needed for success in everyone’s life.

Download the Instructor's Guide