Lost in the Cradle of Gold is a lively simulated activity where the individuals and team members working alone and as a group must make the right decisions that will determine if they can survive a brutal sandstorm in the ?Empty Quarter? in the middle of the Arabian Desert and then go on to locate the fabled mines of King Solomon. As they work their way through the exercise participants, make decisions as to which items are most important for survival in a forbidding climate?such as gasoline, salt tablets, a knife, a tea bag, wool shirt, plastic bags, charcoal, or a hubcap? First they rank the fifteen items in order of importance individually and then repeat the task as a member of a team. Then they compare their choices with what the group selects and determines whether a group performs better than any one individual alone.

Author Biography

Lorraine L. Ukens is the owner of Team-ing with Success, a consulting and training enterprise specializing in team building and leadership development. Her wide range of business experience, spanning more than twenty-five years, is applied in designing, facilitating, and evaluating programs in a variety of human resource development areas. Ukens is the author of more than ten books including the best-selling simulation, Lost in the Amazon, and her most recent collection of activities, The New Encyclopedia of Group Activities from Pfeiffer. She received her M.S. degree from Towson University where she currently is an adjunct faculty member.