Hidden treasures

I promise, we’re not going to talk about Yamashita’s hidden loot or Marcos’ “golden Buddha.” We’re going to talk about even more valuable treasures.

It all started with the new president of the University of the Philippines, Danilo Concepcion, calling for a strategic planning workshop to help him chart his next six years of governance. It meant bringing together UP’s six vice presidents and the chancellors of eight constituent universities.

For the workshop, the organizers assigned icebreakers to pairs of chancellors. If you’re operating on stereotypes, you’re probably laughing now, wondering if chancellors and vice presidents can do some of the wacky things icebreakers require.

Well, we did—fairly light aerobic-type stretching exercises, chosen not to tax the senior citizens among us.

But one icebreaker proved to be tough, at least mentally. It was designed by no less than UP Manila Chancellor Carmencita Padilla, with the assistance of UP Visayas Chancellor Rommel Espinosa (or Menchit and Rommel), carrying on the informal atmosphere of our workshop.

Human Bingo Plus

The icebreaker, Menchit explained, takes off from Human Bingo, an old group dynamics exercise where participants are given a card similar to that used in the original bingo. The card has squares, but instead of an alphabet letter and number, it has a description of people who you’re supposed to look for from among the other workshop participants. The winners are the ones with the most squares filled up.

You can find many sample cards on the internet but you can make your own. The squares may name a demographic characteristic (someone older or younger than you), an experience (someone who has been to Batanes), a physical characteristic (someone with maroon hair… we have lots of them in UP), a special skill (someone who plays guitar), hobbies, likes and dislikes. The sky’s the limit here, and the objective is to just get everyone to know each other.

Menchit thought of building on this Human Bingo to come up with something more substantive, starting us off at breakfast with sheets of paper where we had to “list two things or aspects of your life which you want to share with the group.” She said this could be something people don’t usually know about us, a kind of hidden life or secret.

This was certainly going to be more personal than Human Bingo, I thought, and was intended to help us get to know one another better, even if some of us have worked together for years.

Menchit and Rommel picked out one answer from what each of us submitted and put these into a matrix that was distributed to everyone. We were then told to guess who was behind each of the “secrets.”

The answers themselves were intriguing—for example, the first one “needs a human alarm clock,” meaning someone who has difficulty waking up in the morning. Others seemed easy, but because they seemed so common, they actually stumped us—for example, “I love pancit” or “I hate watermelon.”

Like dutiful students taking the UPCAT (UP College Admissions Test), we tried to answer as many of the items as possible.

Menchit and Rommel did an initial check for correct answers together with the participants. The first item, “needs a human alarm clock,” seemed difficult, but several of the chancellors and vice presidents knew immediately who it was because they had traveled with that chancellor, who was always asking people to knock on his door in the morning to make sure he would be on time for breakfast.

Private disclosures

We went down the list, amazed and entertained by the disclosures, which sometimes led to new revelations.

The item “I was a professional dancer” had several of us identifying one of the vice presidents, who admitted that many years ago, when he was 50 pounds lighter, he had indeed been a Vicor dancer (Attention younger readers: That was a disco dancing group that appeared on TV).

But to everyone’s surprise—we could still see the dancer in him—this vice president said it wasn’t he who had divulged that aspect of his past. It turned out to be a chancellor who was once part of the Bayanihan troupe.

Other discoveries: The chancellor who hates eating watermelon said it was because it gave her diarrhea afterwards, and another chancellor chimed in saying she had the same problem. The revelation got our physicians wondering what it might be in watermelon that would cause diarrhea.

A chancellor admitted that he used to do middle-distance running but is now “resigned to long-line fishing.” He gave up the running after reading that joggers have a lower sperm count. Our physicians intervened again, saying it wasn’t the jogging but the tight underwear that was so fatal to sperm, and suggested that we jog wearing old-fashioned, loose-fitting carsuncillo.

Menchit and Rommel later did more processing to see who had the biggest number of correct answers. They then presented a synthesis, with additional comments like “Never give watermelon to…” Most importantly, they gave the takeaways from the ice-breaker: “Don’t be deceived by looks. Throw away misconceptions. Get to know our team.”

I couldn’t agree more. Someone had written “I wanted to be a Benedictine monk” and several participants thought it came from me. I laughed: “Me? A monk? That’s Ambeth Ocampo.” But it made me realize that I do have a monkish image, despite my very unmonkish Jesuit training.

The disclosures did bring the team closer, more observant of each other, and more willing to talk about the personal. Certainly better than Truth or Consequence.

When the chancellor needing a human alarm clock was checking out, we noticed that he had a pillow with him. He laughed, admitting that because his usual human alarm clock wasn’t with him, he was bringing the next best thing: a pillow with her scent.

The exercise also showed that some of what we deem quirks or kinks are probably more common than we think. Who would have known there were several chancellors who couldn’t take watermelon?!

Menchit was so thrilled with the results that she’s going to work more on the exercise and use it in other workshops. I agree that it’s more than an icebreaker, useful in workshops where participants have worked together or are at least acquaintances.

Reflecting on the exercise, I thought a possible name could be “Hidden Treasures.” Not what some of you are thinking of now, although they are treasures, too, even crown jewels. Listen instead to the poet Charlotte Bronte: “The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, whose charms were broken if revealed.”

Sometimes, to people we work and share our lives with, we should reveal our hidden treasures. They might even add to our charm.

mtan@inquirer.com.ph