Two truths and a lie: ideas that actually work

The difference between a round that lands and one that dies is decided before anyone speaks: whether people had two minutes to write, whether the statements are concrete, and whether anyone was allowed to sit it out.

What actually makes this work

• Specificity. "I like travelling" is unguessable and boring. "I have been in three countries in one day" is guessable and interesting. Numbers, places and objects beat adjectives.
• A plausible lie. The best lie is a near-miss of a truth: change the number, the country, the year. Inventing something wild makes it obvious and makes the round short.
• A real opt-out. Anyone may pass, or make all three statements about their weekend. Compulsory participation is compliance, and it costs more trust than the game builds.
• Honest expectations. This is a warm-up, not a programme. Guessing does not build a team. It buys you a slightly warmer room for the work that follows.

Pick a set

How to run a round

1. Give everyone two minutes and something to write on. Improvised statements are vague statements.
2. Model it yourself second or third, not first. If you are the manager, your turn sets the level of personal disclosure everyone else assumes is expected.
3. One person reads all three in a flat voice, in any order, with no commentary. Commentary is a tell.
4. Everyone votes at once, hands or chat, on a count of three. Sequential voting measures who is willing to disagree with the room.
5. Reveal, take one follow-up question about a true statement, move on. The follow-up is where the interesting part lives, and it is the bit people skip.
6. Over twelve people, split into parallel groups of five or six. Thirty people in one circle takes forty minutes and loses the room by minute twelve.

Skills and hidden talents

• I can name every country on a blank map of one continent.
• I taught myself to juggle three balls in a single wet weekend.
• I can solve a Rubik's cube in under two minutes.
• I hold a licence for something unexpected: a forklift, a boat, a motorbike.
• I passed a music exam on an instrument I no longer own.
• I once won a quiz night on the tiebreaker question, alone.
• I can get by in a third language well enough to order food and ask directions.

Places and travel

• I have set foot in three countries in a single day.
• I have visited more airports than cities.
• I once missed a connection and ended up somewhere better than the destination.
• I have driven the full length of a country in one journey.
• I have been somewhere I could not read a single sign.
• I have never been on a boat larger than a ferry.

Firsts and early jobs

• My first paid job came with a uniform I was embarrassed to be seen in.
• I have been paid to wear a mascot costume.
• I worked night shifts for six months in a row.
• My first email address is one I would not read out in this meeting.
• I have been interviewed on local radio.
• I once had a job that no longer exists as a job.

Near misses and odd encounters

• I have been an extra in a film or an advert.
• I sat next to someone famous on a flight and did not recognise them.
• I have been visible in the crowd on televised sport.
• I once got locked inside a building after closing time.
• I have found something valuable in the street and handed it in.
• I have been evacuated from a building for a reason that turned out to be toast.

Food and everyday habits

• I have eaten the same breakfast every weekday for over three years.
• I cannot stand the smell of a food almost everyone here likes.
• I keep a sourdough starter alive and have named it.
• I have eaten an insect on purpose.
• I own more than ten of the same item of clothing.
• I never learned to make the dish my home region is known for.

Learning and side projects

• I have read the same book more than five times.
• I keep a spreadsheet about something that does not need a spreadsheet.
• I have completed a qualification with no connection to my job.
• I have built a piece of furniture that is still standing.
• I have started learning the same instrument three separate times.
• I have taught a class in something I am not formally qualified in.

Work life

• I have worked in four different industries.
• I applied for this job on the last day applications were open.
• I have presented to a room of more than two hundred people.
• I wrote something still in use here and my name is not on it.
• I spent my first week here posting in the wrong internal channel.
• I have never worked anywhere with fewer than a hundred people.

The low-disclosure set

For new starters, reluctant groups and video calls where people barely know each other. Nothing here requires anyone to reveal anything about their life outside work, which is exactly why it gets full participation.

• There is something within arm's reach of me right now that is older than I am.
• I currently have more than forty browser tabs open.
• I own a physical dictionary.
• My notebook has fewer than five pages used.
• The last photo on my phone is a photo of a screen.
• I have never used the calendar feature everyone here relies on.
• I know the keyboard shortcut for something nobody else here does.

Matching the set to the group

• Brand new team. Skills, places or the low-disclosure set. Guessing is near random when nobody knows anybody, so the value is the follow-up question, not the vote. Keep it short.
• Long-standing team. Work life and firsts. A team that assumes it knows everything about each other needs the surprise, and nothing else here is worth their time.
• Cross-cultural group. Food, habits, places. Avoid anything assuming shared schooling, sport, television or holidays.
• Remote. Written statements, emoji votes, reveal at the end. It removes the airtime problem entirely. More in our virtual team building guide.
• Mixed seniority. Use the low-disclosure set. Junior people read the room before deciding how personal to be, and a senior person's confessional statement quietly raises the price of admission below them.

The debrief, which takes ninety seconds

Most people end the round on the last reveal. That is a game. The learning sits in the two questions after it, and they cost you almost nothing.

• "Which one surprised you, and what had you assumed instead?" This is the real payload. The group has just spent ten minutes forming confident conclusions about colleagues from three sentences each, and getting a fair number of them wrong. That is what they do in meetings too.
• "Whose did we all guess the same way?" Unanimous wrong guesses are the interesting ones. They show a shared assumption about a person, and shared assumptions are how someone gets typecast into a role they never chose.
• "Who did we not know well enough to guess at all?" Useful, gently, in a team that thinks it is close.

Do not turn the debrief into a lecture. Ask, take three answers, stop. The point is that people notice how fast they concluded things, not that you explain it to them.

If you want the underlying skill rather than the warm-up, the thing being practised here is noticing your own assumptions before acting on them. That sits next to active listening and it is what makes the difference between a team that discusses and a team that takes turns talking.

What to avoid

• Framing it as who lies best. In a workplace, "congratulations, you are the most convincing liar here" is a strange prize. Frame it as what we did not know about each other.
• No opt-out. Forced fun reads as a test of compliance. Offer the pass out loud, before you start, so nobody has to be the one who asks.
• Statements that invite disclosure. Rule out family, money, health, relationships, religion and politics when you set the round up. People will otherwise compete on candour, and the person who overshares on Tuesday regrets it on Wednesday.
• Anything checkable in ten seconds. Statements someone can verify on a public profile turn the round into a search exercise.
• Letting the confident performer set the pace. Vote simultaneously, and vary who goes first each round. Sequential hands measure social confidence, not judgement.
• Running it with thirty people in one circle. Split the room. Attention dies at around the twelfth turn regardless of how good the statements are.
• Putting the newest person first. Third or fourth is kinder. They get to hear the level before they set theirs.
• Using it to fix something. A team with real friction will play politely and change nothing. If that is your situation, the round is a warm-up at best, and the actual conversation still has to happen.

Three variations worth using

• Two truths and a wish. The third statement is something you would like to do rather than a lie. Better for groups where trust is still forming, and the wishes give managers more useful information than the lies do.
• Team version. Three statements about the project, the product or last quarter, one false. Run at a kick-off. It surfaces what people believe about the work, and the wrong beliefs are worth finding early.
• Written and asynchronous. Everyone posts three statements in a channel on Monday, votes with emoji through the week, reveals on Friday. Zero meeting time, works across time zones, and quieter people participate at the same rate as everyone else.

Used well, it costs ten minutes and leaves a room slightly more willing to speak. That is a reasonable return. Just do not confuse it with the work of building psychological safety, which takes considerably longer and cannot be done in a circle.

Tour De Force runs this as live, experiential training for teams worldwide — online and in person. Talk to us, or play Gamified learning appsThe Weekly Challenge to see the method in ten minutes.