Sit, Stand, Chaos: What Chairs Reveal About Team Dynamics

I recently had the privilege of attending an Applied Improvisation Network southern California regional gathering. Facilitator Katherine Kasmir of BRITE introduced participants to novel uses of chairs as training tools.

Chairs might seem like the most ordinary objects in a room… but in applied improvisation, they become powerful tools for exploring how groups handle uncertainty, adjust strategy, and collaborate under changing conditions. Two deceptively simple chair-based exercises reveal a lot about real-world teamwork and adaptability.

Tired Zombie

In Tired Zombie, chairs are scattered in the space with participants seated in all but one empty seat. A designated “zombie” lurches around the room, trying to sit down. Everyone else attempts to keep the zombie from finding a seat by slipping into the empty one. The only rule is that no one can return to the seat they just left.

Despite its simplicity, Tired Zombie reliably surfaces three workplace realities:

A. Adaptability Under Pressure

The state of the system changes constantly: the empty seat moves, the zombie adjusts direction, and players must reevaluate their choices in real time. In organizations, shifting constraints—new priorities, unexpected obstacles, sudden opportunities—demand the same skill: micro-adjustments made calmly and continuously.

B. Collective Awareness Over Individual Drive

If one person focuses only on personally “winning,” the group’s coordination breaks down.The exercise demonstrates how success improves when individuals widen their awareness, include peripheral information, and act based on what the team needs rather than what one individual wants.

C. Action Without Overthinking

The moment a player hesitates, the zombie wins. Tired Zombie highlights the value of training instinctual responses—acting with enough information, not perfect information. It encourages trust in one’s judgment and in the structure of the group.

Tired Zombie is fun, frantic, and strangely insightful—an ideal warm-up for exploring how people respond when the environment refuses to stay still.

Chairstorm

In this exercise, the group divides into three subgroups. Each subgroup receives a different neutral, achievable instruction, to place all chairs:

• facing the front wall

• in one half of the room

• on their sides

All groups begin simultaneously, without initial coordination.

Rather than creating conflict, the activity gently exposes how parallel efforts interact—and how clarity, adaptability, and shared awareness transform a room of busy people into a collaborative system.

A. Parallel Goals Still Influence One Another

Even though none of the tasks contradict each other, participants quickly notice that one action affects the conditions for another:

• Moving chairs to one half of the room changes where chairs can be oriented

• Laying chairs on their sides changes how they can be positioned

• Orienting chairs toward the front wall creates patterns others can build from

✴️ This highlights an important real-world principle: independent workstreams are never truly independent. They shape the environment in which others operate.

B. Coordination Emerges Naturally

Groups often begin by quietly doing their own task. Then, almost inevitably, someone notices a pattern:

• “If we put them all on this half, you’ll have space to orient them.”

• “If they’re already on their sides, that helps us finish our task faster.”

The room shifts from parallel activity to emergent coordination—not because anyone was told to collaborate, but because the system rewards alignment.

✴️ This models how collaboration can arise organically once people observe each other’s work with curiosity rather than competition.

C. Creativity Through Constraint Integration

When participants start considering all three instructions at once, creative solutions appear:

• Chairs arranged on their sides in a single half of the room, angled toward the front

• Stacked or tessellated arrangements that satisfy all three conditions elegantly

• Novel configurations no one imagined until the group started building on each other’s choices

  
  

✴️ This reinforces a core applied improvisation insight: Creativity thrives when multiple constraints are acknowledged rather than ignored.

D. A Shared System Beats Three Separate Efforts

Chairstorm demonstrates how people can:

• Observe without judgment

• Adjust their approach based on others’ actions

• Reach a cohesive outcome without competition

• Align across different tasks simply through awareness and experimentation

  
  

✴️ This is a powerful metaphor for cross-functional collaboration: distinct responsibilities, one shared environment.

Why These Exercises Matter

Both Tired Zombie and Chairstorm turn everyday chairs into vehicles for real-world insight:

• They reveal how people behave in pressure systems.

• They model the cost of unclear communication.

• They show how alignment can be achieved quickly once players step out of their individual task focus.

• And importantly, they build psychological flexibility, confidence, and collaborative instincts.

  
  

This is the heart of applied improvisation: simple activities that unlock deep learning about how we work, lead, and adapt. If your team could benefit from structured play that trains practical workplace skills, The Agile Mind offers workshops tailored to organizations of all sizes.

Drafted by AI, edited by a human.