Situations

Instructions

Read the situations and answer all the questions individually. Afterwards, you will discuss your results in groups or pairs.

Situation 1

Your friend borrowed your car and promised to return it at noon the next day. You have told your friend that it is important that he/she will be on time, because you need to leave at 12 pm to be on time for a very important meeting. When you arrive at your parking spot, the car is not there. You wait for 10 minutes, and now there is a big risk that you will not be on time for your important meeting. You try to call and send texts, without any answer. Finally, the car appears with your friend behind the wheel. Your friend’s attitude is somewhat flippant. They shrug their shoulders and vaguely says, “I was just going to refuel the car for you”. Then the key is handed over in silence.

• How do you react?
• Thoughts about reliability?

Situation 2

You are working on a group project at school and in your group, there is a boy -Jonas- who you do not know that well. It feels good and you are happy to get a chance to know him a little bit better. You are in the same class and see each other almost every day.

You talk, laugh, and seem to have a lot of common interests, this feels very good! You start to talk about the other classmates and Jonas has a lot of negative things to say about almost every one of them.

• How does it feel when you think about the situation above? What are some of the thoughts and questions that pop up?
• Spontaneously, how would you handle the situation?
• Thoughts about reliability?

Situation 3

You are leaving work one hour early. You promised to come and see when your daughter’s football team play the cup final. You are anxious to be there on time because you already missed the semi-final due to a lot of work, and she scored two goals in that game. After that game, she was very disappointed in you.

Just as you turn off your computer the door opens. It is your boss with a wild look in his eyes telling you that a big problem has turned up and a crisis meeting starts in ten minutes. He says that you are needed at the meeting and closes the door. You are sitting there, staring at your turned off computer before you make your decision.

• What decision will it be?
• Thoughts about reliability?

Situation 4

You feel that one of your participants are feeling extremely depressed and you fear for his/her life. You call the social services at your municipality and make an anonymous notification. The person taking the call recognizes your voice and would really like you and the police to come along and do a home visit at the participant’s apartment that evening. Your children are at home with chickenpox and you are the only adult at home.

• How will you do?
• What made you decide to do it this way?
• Thoughts about reliability?

Collecting and sharing student results

The exercise is used to see how well your participants reflect on the importance of taking and owning responsibility for your actions and choices.

Reflection/self-assessment

• Did it go as planned?
• Was the exercise valuable in working with the specific soft skill?
• Did the participants understand the task?
• Does something need to be changed/explained until next time?

The exercise can be an opening to discussing the importance of reliability.

• Is it important to be reliable? Why/ why not?
• In what situations have they themselves had to make a decision that affect others?
• What is it like to have to make a choice that might affect someone else negatively?