The First Five
Arrival activities for the first five minutes of any session.
Your session starts on time. Their attention arrives late. The First Five is a pull-from set of short activities, each one runs in five minutes or less, that helps a group land in the room before the work begins. Pick one, run it, start.
The name means what it says: these belong in the first five minutes of a session. Nothing here requires prep, printouts, or debriefing.
Quick Pick
Read the room, pick the row, run the number.
| The room is… | Reach for | Activities |
|---|
| Scattered, mid-switch | Clear | 1 One Word In · 2 Leave It at the Door · 9 Arriving Energy |
| Heavy, tired | Settle | 3 The Quiet Minute · 4 Three Breaths, One Question |
| Flat, stiff | Lighten | 6 Weather Report · 8 The Sixty-Second Sketch |
| Ready to work | Aim | 5 What’s Different Today · 7 Rose or Radar · 10 Bring It In |
| In a KNOW Core or Exploration session | KNOW-primed | 11–14, never in Team Session Collection engagements |
Why It Works
Nobody walks into your session from nowhere. They walk in from a budget call, a hard conversation, an inbox. Research by Gloria Mark and colleagues found that knowledge workers switch tasks or get interrupted roughly every three minutes, so the person sitting down in front of you is likely mid-switch when they arrive.
And the switch is not clean. Sophie Leroy's research on what she calls attention residue found that when we move from one task to the next, part of our attention stays behind with the prior task, and performance on the new task suffers for it. The residue is strongest when the prior task was unfinished or time-pressured, which describes most of what people leave to come to a workshop.
A brief arrival activity gives that residue somewhere to go. It marks a clear transition, gets one early moment of participation from everyone, and points the room's attention at what is ahead instead of what was just left behind. Meeting science backs the instinct: researchers who study meetings identify them first as a platform for voice and participation, and how a session opens is where that platform gets built.
Sources
Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181.
Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., & Harris, J. (2005). No task left behind? Examining the nature of fragmented work. Proceedings of CHI 2005.
Rogelberg, S. G. (2019). The Surprising Science of Meetings. Oxford University Press.
How to Use This Resource
1. Pick one activity. One is enough.
2. Match it to your context. Use Anywhere activities work alongside anything. KNOW Contexts Only activities are for KNOW Core and Exploration contexts.
3. Run it inside the first five minutes, then move to your content. These activities are openers, not modules. None of them gets a debrief.
Every activity lists its time and any group-size notes. Times assume in-person or virtual delivery; virtual adaptations appear in the How-To Guide.
Use Anywhere
Usable alongside any session: Team Session Collection engagements, Core Collection work, Exploration Collection work, or standalone workshops.
1. One Word In ⏲ 1–2 min Clear
Ask: “In one word, how are you arriving?” Go around the room. No follow-up questions, no explanations required. The word is the whole contribution.
Why it earns its minute: everyone speaks once before the content starts, at the lowest possible cost.
2. Leave It at the Door ⏲ 2–3 min Clear
Hand out scrap paper or ask for a notes app. Prompt: “Write down the one thing from earlier today that is still pulling at your attention. Fold it. Set it aside. It will still be there when we finish.” Nobody shares what they wrote.
Why it earns its minutes: this is the attention-residue finding made physical. Writing the unfinished thing down gives the mind permission to release it.
3. The Quiet Minute ⏲ 1 min Settle
Frame it plainly: “Before we start, we are going to take one quiet minute to arrive. No task. When the minute is up, we begin.” Time it visibly. Start on the dot.
Why it earns its minute: some rooms need silence more than they need another prompt. Works especially well after back-to-back meeting days.
4. Three Breaths, One Question ⏲ 2 min Settle
Three unhurried breaths together, then one question each person answers silently: “What would make this time worth it for you?” No sharing unless someone volunteers.
Why it earns its minutes: it points attention forward without asking anyone to perform.
5. What’s Different Today ⏲ 2 min Aim
Ask each person to notice one thing that is different: about the room, the group, the week, or themselves. A few people share aloud.
Why it earns its minutes: noticing requires being here. You cannot spot what is different while your attention is in your inbox.
6. Weather Report ⏲ 2–4 min Lighten
Each person describes how they are arriving as weather. “Partly cloudy, clearing.” “Fog with a chance of coffee.” Round-robin, keep it moving.
Why it earns its minutes: the metaphor gives people an honest way to say how they are doing without a feelings conversation. Expect at least one laugh.
7. Rose or Radar ⏲ 3–4 min Best under 10 people Aim
Each person shares either one good thing from their week or one thing on their radar for the session ahead. Their choice.
Why it earns its minutes: the either/or structure lets private people stay light and open people go real. Above ten participants, switch to pairs or pick a shorter activity.
8. The Sixty-Second Sketch ⏲ 2–3 min Lighten
Sixty seconds to draw your current headspace. Stick figures welcome. Artistic standards explicitly banned. Hold sketches up, no explanations required.
Why it earns its minutes: drawing routes around the verbal autopilot people arrive with. The bad art is the point; it resets the room’s seriousness to a workable level.
9. Arriving Energy ⏲ 2–3 min Energy-aware Clear
For groups who know their Insights Discovery® color energies. Ask: “Of the four color energies, Cool Blue, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, and Earth Green, which feels closest to how you are arriving right now? Not which one you lead with. Which one showed up with you today.” Quick round.
Why it earns its minutes: it separates today’s arrival from the profile, which is a useful distinction to plant early. How someone arrives is information about the moment, not a fact about the person.
10. Bring It In ⏲ 2 min Energy-aware Aim
For groups who know their color energies. Ask: “Which color energy do you want to bring more of into this session, and why that one?” A few volunteers share.
Why it earns its minutes: it turns arrival into intention. People name what the session may need from them before the content asks for it.
KNOW Contexts Only
⚠ Not for Team Session Collection engagements. These four activities use KNOW Model© language and belong only alongside KNOW Core Collection and Exploration Collection contexts, where that vocabulary is already in the room. For every other setting, the Use Anywhere activities have you covered.
11. What Are You Carrying? ⏲ 2 min Knowing
Ask each person to notice, silently, what they walked in with: tight shoulders, a rehearsed reply to an email, relief, momentum. Frame it precisely: “Whatever you notice is proof you are responding to something. It is not proof of what is real. You do not need to do anything with it yet. Just clock it.”
Primes: Knowing. The session’s first act is noticing a signal without obeying it.
12. Name the Residue ⏲ 2–3 min Naming
One written sentence, kept private: “The thing still holding part of my attention is ___.” Then the frame: “That sentence is provisional. It is your first draft of what is going on, not the final word. Set it down; we may get better language for it by the end.”
Primes: Naming. A precise, provisional articulation, held lightly.
13. First Read of the Room ⏲ 2 min Observing
Thirty silent seconds to take in how the group is arriving: pace, volume, posture, who is already talking and who is not. Then the frame: “Treat what you noticed as data about how this room is landing today. It is not a verdict on anyone in it.”
Primes: Observing. Reading responses as data, never as judgment of a person.
14. One Choice for This Hour ⏲ 1–2 min Willing
Each person makes one committed choice, silently or aloud, about how they will show up in this session. One sentence: “For this hour, I choose to ___.” Frame the standard honestly: “Your choice is aimed, not guaranteed. Making it is the complete first step.”
Primes: Willing. The inner choice, complete when made.
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