The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Business School
Business School
Academy of Management 2026
Professional Development Workshop
Academy of Management
OB Division

Accepting Offers

Exercise 1 · Three warm-ups that build the container

TipAt a glance
Time 15–30 minutes total (run one, two, or all three)
Group size Varies by warm-up. Name with a movement works up to ~25; the defrost walk and mirror scale to hundreds.
Format Whole group (circle, walk) and pairs (mirror)
Materials Open floor — push desks and chairs to the walls; a bell or clap for the mirror
You will need to Move people from stage to stage only when the room has settled

Why this exercise

The phrase comes from improvisational and playback theatre. An offer is anything a partner puts into the space — a word, a gesture, a story, a feeling — and to accept it is to receive it without deflection or judgment, and build on it. This is the foundational listening move — and it returns in words in Exercise 5, “Yes, and …”.

These three short warm-ups create a visceral experience of being validated by others. As such, they increase psychological safety and help participants move to the verbal exercises with greater openness and curiosity. The mirroring game is likely to create a physical experience of synchronization, which is known to foster cooperation and creativity.1

Run at least one before Inviting Stories. If time is very short, run the Mirror alone.

How to run it

1 · Name with a movement (10–20 min)

Everyone shares a name and a gesture; the whole group echoes it back. This one is best with up to ~25 people — beyond that, the go-around takes too long, so split into smaller circles or use it only in smaller classes. (The defrost walk and the mirror, by contrast, work with hundreds.)

  1. Stand in a circle. Everyone stands, facing the center.
  2. Name + gesture. One at a time, each person says their name with a movement of the whole body — a wave, a jump, a small dance. Anything goes.
  3. The group echoes. The whole group repeats the name and the movement exactly, in one voice. Then the next person goes.

2 · The defrost walk (~5 min)

A four-stage walk that gradually opens attention. Move to the next stage only once the room has settled into the current one.

  1. Eyes down. Walk randomly, eyes on your shoes, unpredictable paths.
  2. Eyes up. Raise your head, keep moving — don’t look at anyone.
  3. Eye contact. When your eyes meet someone’s, acknowledge it with your eyes, and keep walking.
  4. “Thank you.” If you brush against someone by accident, say “thank you,” and keep walking.

3 · The mirror (~10 min)

Create pairs. If you ran the defrost walk, you can say “Freeze! Find the person next to you, they are your partner.” In pairs, palms facing palms — one leads, one follows, then switch, faster and faster.

  • Setup. Stand facing your partner. Raise both palms, about 2 inches / 5 cm from your partner’s. Decide who is 1 and who is 2. After most have decided on the numbers, say Number 2 is the leader. The leader moves — hands up, down, across, high, low — and the follower keeps the gap constant.
  • Two roles for the leader: be as creative as you can, while not breaking the follower. No tricks, no sudden flips.
  • The switch. On a signal (a bell, a clap), roles swap.
    • Phase 1 — switch every 60 seconds
    • Phase 2 — switch every 20 seconds
    • Phase 3 — switch every 5 seconds
    • Phase 4 — no signal; you decide together when to switch

Debrief

These warm-ups are best debriefed at the end of class, alongside the other exercises, rather than one at a time — the threads connect more richly once students have the full arc to reflect on.

When you come back to the mirror, invite students to describe what happened as the switches sped up. Listen especially for the pairs who, somewhere around Phase 3 or 4, lost track of who was leading and who was following — and yet kept moving as one, producing something neither of them could have choreographed alone.

Name that moment: two people, no one in charge, co-creating a single motion. That leaderless synchronization — a small, shared, unique product — is the felt template for a high-quality listening episode. Good listening is not one person steering the other; it is both partners devoted to the same emerging thing.

Teaching adaptations

  • Large lecture (100+): Run the mirror at every pair of adjacent seats — it needs no open floor. Skip the circle and walk if the room is fixed-seat.
  • Sequencing: Use these to open the very first session, before any talking-based exercise. They lower the stakes and build the safety the harder exercises draw on.
NoteWhat the research says

Accepting offers is where listening begins: receiving what the other puts into the space — a word, a gesture, a feeling — rather than deflecting or competing with it. This is the felt core of listening as the extent of one’s devotion to co-exploring the other, with the other and for the other (Kluger & Mizrahi, 2023). The warm-ups are the entry point to the listening-focused pedagogy documented in Lehmann, Kluger, Cojuharenco, & Itzchakov (2025), which draws on experiential, improv-based methods to teach listening as something done, not merely described.

References

  1. The mirror game is Lior Noy’s experimental paradigm for studying two people improvising motion together; players report recurring moments of high synchrony, or “togetherness” (Noy, Dekel, & Alon, 2011). Interpersonal synchrony has, in turn, been shown to foster cooperation (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009).↩︎