exercise · all tools
Mad Tea and Calm Tea
Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation1 — host
Trust · group readiness★any
Disclosure · what is sharedoptional
Two concentric circles face each other; the facilitator fires open sentence-stems ("what I appreciate in this situation is…", "a next step for me is…") and pairs complete them fast before the outer circle rotates. Mad Tea is the louder, energetic in-person version; Calm Tea is the quieter online variant, completed in chat. A whole room's honest snapshot in minutes.
Practical
- Time
- 20-25 min
- Group
- 6–∞ · pairs, large-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Open space for concentric circles; prompts displayed
- Mechanisms
- dialogic-encounter, cognitive-reframing
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Origin & where it lives
Henri Lipmanowicz, Nancy White & Keith McCandless — Liberating Structures
Instructions: open online · CC BY-SA 4.0
In this directory via Liberating Structures
Related: open sentences (variant-of)
status: checked · added 2026-08-25