Video Transcript for Crosstown Connections
presented by Mark Collard
Everyone got themselves just one partner? Fantastic, I’d like you now to start with this exercise is to simply give your partner a quick high five.
(Group high fives their partner.)
Beautiful! Alright, so I would like you now to always remember as best as you can that this person is your high five partner. Now it’s going to have jog the memories here, but I’m actually going to use this as an anchor during the rest of the program.
So when I invite you to go find your high five partner, this is the person that you need to find. So quickly eyeball that person so you don’t have to forget them.
Alright, so just quickly remind yourself high five partner, give them a quick high five. Alright, and now I’d like you to go find yourself a new partner, remembering each time you find a partner it’s just you and one other. Find yourself a new partner, someone with a similar colour top to what you’re wearing right now. Go!
(Everyone is walking around trying to find a partner.)
So if your last partner was your high five partner, this person is your low five partner. So it’s simply a low five.
(Group low fives their partner.)
Alright, a quick recap, just to jog the memory of ourselves, quickly go find your high five partner. When you find them high five and then come back to your low five partner.
(Partners high five and then low five.)
Alright, good, good, good? You’re probably going to guess what’s about to happen now. I’m going to invite you to find a new partner and it’ll be associated with a new greeting, but to find this new partner I’d like you know to identify any part of the jewellery or adornment that you may be presently wearing. I’ve got only two things, my wedding ring and I have a watch. That’s it. Nothing else other than my clothing that I’m wearing.
I want you to just to go find one other person who’s wearing at least one item similar to you in terms of jewellery or adornment. Find someone new. Go!
(Group finds new partners.)
We’ve got a high five partner, we got a low five partner. This partner, again anchoring for future reference, is now going to be your fist bump partner.
Now there’s a particular way that I would like you to fist bump, and that my son in particular at three and a half years of age prefers this form of fist bumping. And that is you come in you do hit, you’re not looking to hurt them, you’re just going to simply touch and then when you do that you do the jellyfish pull back. Where it’s like, like that.
So this is how it looks. Here we go. You ready, here we go? Alright, fist bump with your partner now.
(Partners fist bump.)
Here we go. Right, good job.
Quick recap, high five, low five, fist bump, go!
(Partners find each other to high five, low five, and fist bump.)
You’re about to find one new partner. This time it’ll be related to the last digit of your mobile number. Mine is a three, so I’m going to go find another person whose last digit is a three. Go!
(Groups tries to find partners.)
Georgie and I will now be partners, but earlier when we introduced the high five what is the country or the cultural that we often identify perhaps having established the high five greeting?
(Americans.)
America or the United States. Some would say it’s the American high five. It may or may not be, but in fact the very first culture to have introduced the high five was actually not America. It was many many eons ago, and it was actually the ancient Babylonians. But they got just one thing wrong, which is why it didn’t take off. They would face one another. I’ve already forgotten your name…
(Georgie.)
Georgie, hasn’t changed. Thank you Georgie. Alright, so we go in for the high five except we don’t make contact. That’s where they wrong. Like they were all going to get really very busy up to this point, but they pass each other, they keep following through, they lift up each other’s leg on the inside, and you grab the ankle of the other person and shake the ankle. This is the ancient Babylonian handshake that looks like this. Here we go.
Alright, do that with your partners now. Here we go Georgie, woo hoo.
(Partner complete the ancient Babylonian shake.)
High five, low five, fist bump, come back to your Babylonian partner, go.
(The group finds each of their partners to complete each one.)
This has become a popular favourite of mine to start many of my programs, especially those involving large groups.
With your group gathered before you, ask everyone to find one other person to form a partner. Ideally, form pairs according to some random criteria you nominate, such as similar length of hair or eye colour. Take a look at Getting into Pairs for many more ideas.
By way of demonstration, perform a ‘High-5‘ with a willing volunteer and then ask each pair to engage in the same greeting. Once the initial clamour has died down, ask everyone to note who their ‘High-5” partner is, ie they will need to remember this person later.
Next, ask everyone to find a new (second) partner, again, by way of a random partner-matching criteria. This time, invite each person to engage in a ‘Low-5’ – the same as a ‘High-5’ but your hands make contact below your waist. Naturally, ask everyone to note who this particular partner is.
And by now, you’ve probably got the idea.
Continue to introduce new greetings, such as those described in Five Handshakes in Five Minutes, or ask your group to offer a few ideas. Four or five is a good number of unique greetings, six at the very most.
This is the basic set-up for the exercise, but the most fun and value is found in the Variations tab listed below.
For example, during the course of the greetings and occasional sharing, I will invite everyone to find and greet an earlier-formed partner as quickly as possible.
Or, to repeat all of the greetings with the relevant partners – from first to last – as quickly as possible. Simply fabulous for ramping up the energy of a group.
Like the ability to go back to various partners at anytime past the activity. The ability for the facilitator to easily mix the groups up can prove handy and can reduce clicks or isolating of people as you can constantly change up the pairs.