An eternity ago, my uncle gifted me with a set of cards developed by a friend of his, Christine Pauly, who was (still is, I think!) working as a psychotherapist. She’d created the artwork for these 22 cards, and used them in her practice. They are called “Le jeu des 3 mondes” (the 3 worlds game).
Occasionally I use them in workshops, and I did so recently for a round of introductions and icebreakers in a learning session on dialogue and conflict. I put one card face down at random at each place setting, before people arrived. For the icebreaker round, I asked people to briefly state their name and organisation, then say how their card represents conflict.
They are so abstract that there are no right or wrong answers, but they were effective for generating conversation about various aspects of conflict – that we then picked up in the rest of the session. Some participants were hesitant and self-conscious at first, but everyone came up with rich interpretations that eveyone else listened to with interest.
