EXERCISE 11.3
Reality Testing
Visit Their Reality
Purpose
To increase reality testing skills by learning how to view a situation through another person’s eyes.
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40 to 45 minutes
Participants consider disagreements they are having with others in their lives (preferably something current) and explore how reality looks and works for the other person until they understand it well enough to argue the other person’s side.
Outcomes
- Learn how to take someone else’s point of view in order to test reality by looking at it from a different perspective
- Increase one’s own empathy and negotiation skills at the same time
Audience
- Intact team
- Unaffiliated group
- Individual working with a coach
Facilitator Competencies 
Easy
Materials
- Visit Their Reality Handout
- Paper and pens
Time Matrix
| Activity | Estimated Time |
| Complete worksheet | 20 minutes |
| Practice with a partner being in the other person’s shoes | 10–15 minutes |
| Have the full group debrief the experience | 10 minutes |
| Total | 40 to 45 minutes |
Instructions
1. Distribute the Visit Their Reality Handout and paper and pens.
2. Instruct participants to take up to twenty minutes completing the handout.
3. Have the group join in pairs and take turns so that each partner role plays being the other person in the disagreement.
4. Bring the whole group together to debrief the experience. Sample questions you might begin with include:
- Has this process helped you expand your awareness of other perspectives?
- Where else might this process be useful?
- How will you help yourself remember to expand your understanding of other people’s reality?
5. Illustrate the difference between positions and interests by describing the situation in which two people both want the same orange. That is their position. One wants it to eat, the other wants the rind to bake cookies. Those are their interests.a
Think of a disagreement you have with someone in your life. It can be at work or with friends or family, but it should be something that you are currently experiencing. It might be longstanding and not very active now, but ready to flare up if the topic is raised. By now, something has probably already come to mind.
Make a list of the reasons that you are right about your position and a list of the reasons that the other person is wrong. Be as specific as possible.
Now make a list of why he or she would say that you are wrong and he or she is right. Be as accurate and thorough as possible.
Do your best to identify the interests, goals, desires, and perceived needs that motivate the other person. Interests are distinctly different from positions. Positions are the obvious solutions we insist we must have to be happy, while interests are the deeper needs that must be met in order to really resolve the core of the problem. People usually focus on their positions and may never truly understand their interests. However, people usually can recognize their interests with some work, although that often takes someone with an impartial point of view providing assistance.
Once you have identified the other person’s interests and figured out what makes him or her “tick,” take the other side of the disagreement and develop the best strategy for that position. Write down the best arguments you can construct against your own position and describe why they are valid, important, and merit your consideration.
Now go back and consider your own interests. There is probably a very direct but not necessarily obvious connection between the other person’s interests and your own. What are the goals, desires, and perceived needs that are motivating you? Compare the list from your point of view with the list from the other person’s point of view. Where is there common ground? Where is he or she being unrealistic? Where are you being unrealistic? How would a neutral third party observing this from the “outside” perceive the situation? How have you upgraded your perception of reality by doing this exercise?
aThis is adapted from Getting to Yes. Fisher and Ury (1981).