An unhelpful thinking training activity is a short, trainer-led exercise used in employee resilience workshops to help participants recognize and challenge negative thinking patterns at work.
This ready-to-use activity includes workplace scenarios, group discussion prompts, and facilitator guidance for staff training sessions.
Quick summary: The unhelpful thinking training activity is a 10–15 minute, trainer-led group exercise that is perfect for resilience workshops that help employees spot and challenge common negative thinking patterns at work.
- Format: Small-group discussion (3–4 people)
- Time: 10–15 minutes (5 minutes in groups, followed by 5–10 minutes of group discussion)
- Includes: Choice of 3 workplace scenarios, with question prompts
- Best for: Employee and manager resilience workshops
- Delivery: In-person or online
This activity is part of the Resilience at Work Guides Hub, where you can find exercises and guides on workplace resilience.
How Long Does the Unhelpful Thinking Activity Take?
This unhelpful thinking training activity takes 10–15 minutes to complete, depending on group size and discussion depth.
10 minutes is the perfect amount of time for this activity, but you can make it 15 minutes, depending on the size of the class.
How to Run the Unhelpful Thinking Training Activity
This activity is run as a short, trainer-led group discussion using workplace scenarios to help participants identify unhelpful thinking patterns.
Ask participants to form groups of 3 or 4 people.
Next, give each group a pen and paper.
Ask each group to discuss the 3 scenarios below (or on the slide) and to write down what type of unhelpful thinking is going on in each scenario (you can find the 12 Unhelpful Thinking Types here).
As a trainer, you might also want to combine this with other stress management training activities for more in-depth learning. Explain that there could be more than one type of thinking occurring in each scenario.
If you do not have much time available, you can assign just one scenario per group.
Give groups 5 minutes for the activity. After this time is up, ask the groups to share their answers with the rest of the class.
Allocate about 5 minutes for this.
Once the groups have shared their answers, ask them to think about how the person in each scenario could look at the situation differently. Is there another explanation for what happened? What could the person tell themselves instead?
The 3 Scenarios
This activity uses three short workplace scenarios, each designed to highlight a different type of unhelpful thinking commonly experienced at work.
These unhelpful thinking patterns are often referred to as cognitive distortions in workplace resilience and stress management training.
1. You are giving a presentation, and you forget to say something. You think: “I always make mistakes. I am good for nothing, and I will never get another opportunity like this.”
2. You do not get accepted for a job you applied for. You think: “I can tell that the interviewers did not like me by the way they looked at me. I messed up; I am really useless at interviews anyway. I should not apply for that type of job ever again, as it is way above my abilities.”
3. Your boss walks up and says, “I need to talk to you”. You panic and think that they are going to fire you. You get stressed and think that your boss is useless.
Can This Activity Be Used in Online Training?
Yes, this unhelpful thinking activity works well in online training sessions using breakout rooms and shared digital tools.
Use breakout rooms to separate participants into groups.
Participants can write down their ideas by using an online whiteboard, a chat, or an online tool, such as Lino or Padlet.
Once the group activity is over, bring the participants back to the main room for the whole-class discussion.
What Are the Answers to the Unhelpful Thinking Scenarios?
Below are example answers showing the types of unhelpful thinking patterns participants may identify in each scenario.
Scenario No. 1
This scenario demonstrates overgeneralizing, labeling, and discounting positive evidence.
Overgeneralizing/discounting the positives / mental filter (I always make mistakes); labeling (I am good for nothing); all or nothing/magnifying (I will never get another opportunity like this).
You take one mistake during the presentation and generalize it to everything else you do.
In addition, it may be that you did other good things during the presentation, so you did well overall, but you are choosing to ignore that evidence. Instead, you are focusing on that one mistake and becoming obsessed with it.
You are then labeling yourself a good-for-nothing. Finally, by thinking that you will never get another opportunity like this, you might be blowing things out of proportion and thinking that it is either this opportunity or nothing.
Scenario No. 2
This scenario highlights jumping to conclusions, taking things personally, labeling, and all-or-nothing thinking following a job rejection.
Jumping to conclusions (I can tell that the interviewers did not like me by the way they looked at me); taking things personally (I messed up); labeling (I am really useless); all-or-nothing (I should not apply for that type of job ever again).
You are assuming you know what the interviewers were thinking, and you become paranoid about the way they were looking at you. Maybe they were just concentrating and had nothing against you.
You blame yourself for not getting the job, but maybe it was not your fault. Maybe there simply were better candidates.
As a result, you are labeling yourself as useless, and you are thinking in absolute terms by saying that if you failed this time, there is no point in ever applying for the same type of job ever again.
This means that you might miss out on other future opportunities when you might have gotten the job.
Scenario No. 3
This scenario demonstrates jumping to conclusions and labeling when interpreting ambiguous feedback from a manager.
Jumping to conclusions (You panic and think that they are going to fire you); labeling (think that your boss is useless).
In this case, you try to predict the future and think that you know what your boss is thinking, without evidence. As a result, you label your boss as useless because you do not like what they are doing.
The situation could be different instead. The boss might want to talk to you because they want to praise you. In this case, you would have stressed yourself out without reason, and the boss was not useless after all.
If the boss does want to fire you, stressing out in advance does not help when you should be concentrating on what else you could be doing for your career instead.
Labeling the boss useless in this case is counterproductive. It is understandable, but it does not help.
It is understandable to feel worried in this situation, but jumping to conclusions can make things more stressful. Until you know what the meeting is about, there is no point in assuming the worst.
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