1. In advance, find three coloured objects – red, yellow and green – and place them in three distinct areas.
2. Gather your group, and identify each of the three areas:
   – Red represents things you would like to stop;
   – Green represents things you would like to keep doing; and
   – Yellow represents things you’re not sure about.
3. Pose your question or make a statement, and then ask everyone to stand by one of the three colours according to their individual response.
4. Invite the people standing in each of the areas to discuss why they chose that area.

Video Transcript for Traffic Light Debrief
presented by Mark Collard

When you see the three colours red, green, and yellow what do you immediately think of?

(Stoplights.)

Stoplights, my four year old will also tell you the same thing. He understands that those three colours are involved, and he knows what red means. So generally speaking society thinks of red as what? What do we often use red for?

(Bad)

(Stop)

Bad, stop, danger. Great! So consider for this conversation that represents the thing you don’t want to see continuing. You want to see stop.

Green what does that mean?

(Go)

Go, yeah. These…pardon?

(Healthy)

Healthy, yeah. So these are things that you would consider healthy for the group that you would like to see continue for the group.

And then there’s the yellow. What’s that mean?

(Proceed with caution)

Proceed with caution, be wary, yep. Or it’s in between because depending on the country sometimes the yellow is used in both directions from green, yellow to red, then red, yellow to green. It’s about preparation. Sometimes I’m not sure. So if you only ever saw the yellow you can’t know whether in fact it’s going to green or to red. It’s somewhere between the two.

With that context in mind I would invite you now to make a decision, and it’s not wrong or right. But I’d like you think over that last experience and consider things that, as a group, you would not want to continue to do to help you be successful. For you to be continuing to be productive, for you to be, to accomplish a particular task.

You may have seen something, even very small, you go you know what we could probably eliminate that behaviour, that process, or whatever. You’d be standing there with that thought in mind.

Alternatively, oh wow and there was a lot of things that you mentioned a moment ago that you’d like to see continue. So you’d have in mind one thing you’d like get from now on as a group I’d love to see this process continue because it helps us be healthy, it would be helpful for our productivity, and da da da da da. It helps us get stuff done.

And then there’s stuff that you might not be sure about. You may actually think that sometimes it could be viewed as good, but sometimes could also be viewed as maybe not so good. You got the context?

So things you wouldn’t want to see keep going, things you definitely want to have keep going, and things you’re not so sure about.

With that one or two thoughts in your mind, move now to one of those three colours, and if you move slowly the balloons won’t move away from you.

So move to the red if you’ve got an idea for something to stop, or if it’s the green, or the yellow.

(Group moves to the colour they choose as part of Traffic Ligth Debrief)

As I said there’s no wrong or right. You just have a thought in mind and I’d like you to side…come close to the side of either the red, the green, or the yellow.

Okay great, we’ve got a fair spread and that’s fine too.

Just within your little groups it’s possible that you’re sharing a similar thought, or if not you have an opportunity now to share what that is.

So the reds, you folks chitty chat about the things you saw you would like to see perhaps not continue.

Greens all those things you would love to see continue.

And the yellows have a chat. Maybe there’s some goods and bads that you could actually discuss about, oh yeah actually that’s probably more green or more red that I had thought. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

So again chat within your little groups about what was that thing that you saw as part of your process of working together that perhaps was either yellow, red, or green. Go. Take a moment with that now.

(people continue playing Traffic Light Debrief)

You could integrate Traffic Light Debrief as part of a well-designed SEL program to develop your group’s ability to understand their emotions, thoughts and values and how these influence behaviour in different situations.

Specifically, this activity offers opportunities to explore and practice the following social & interpersonal skills:

Self-Awareness

• Identifying Emotions
• Linking Feelings, Values & Thoughts
• Identifying Personal, Cultural & Linguistic Assets
• Recognising Strengths, Prejudices & Biases
• Demonstrating Self-Confidence, Honesty & Integrity
• Experiencing Self-Efficacy
• Having A Growth Mindset

Self-Management

• Demonstrating Self-Discipline & Self-Motivation
• Setting Personal & Group Goals

Social Awareness

• Demonstrating Empathy & Compassion
• Understanding & Expressing Gratitude
• Appreciating Diversity
• Recognising Strengths In Others

Relationship Skills

• Communicate & Listen Effectively

Responsible Decision-Making

• Making Reasoned Judgements

You can learn more about SEL and how it can support character education here.

There is no specific health & wellness perspective to this activity other than promoting the benefits of self-awareness and sharing with others (see Social-Emotional Learning tab for more.)

In a small way, you could argue that the focus required to share one’s thoughts and beliefs may speak to the benefits of mindfulness and accountability because participants are invited to reflect on one particular topic and then share them in a public forum.

If you can think of more explicit ways in which Traffic Light Debrief could be purposefully integrated into a health and wellness program, please leave a comment at the base of this page.

• Combined Strategies: Employ the Paired-Shares technique to invite individuals to share with others who are standing in the same coloured areas.
• Spectrum of Colour: Introduce the three colours as a Spectrum whereby people can stand in between two colours.
• Multiple Options: Establish multiple (more than three) points of interest to provide many options for your group to choose, eg a rainbow of colours to represent different feelings, or a series of ratings (agree-somewhat agree-neutral-somewhat disagree-disagree,) etc.
• Alternative Criteria: Introduce alternative objects to represent particular processing points. For example, you could use various toys such as Star Wars characters which could represent the good (Luke Skywalker,) the bad (Darth Vader,) and the in-between (Hans Solo.)
• Open the Virtual Adaptation tab to learn how to present this activity online.

• Create a slide with three areas that reflect the traffic light colours of red, yellow and green, or download a generic slide from the Resources tab. Share this slide with your group and then invite them to annotate the screen with their responses depending on the question, eg names, answers, etc.
• If you are working with a large group, create three different slides each representing one of the three colours, to allow more room for participant responses on the screen.

Fun ‘Trust-Building’ Session

What You Need:
8+ people, 45 mins, 3 x coloured objects (red, yellow, green)

• ESP – passive, fun activity which invites partners to think alike
• Human Spring – fun & dynamic balancing exercise for two people
• Keystone – challenging group balance and trust exercise
• Traffic Light Debrief – ideal, interactive strategy to debrief your group’s experience