You work at a fruit shop. The owner is away. One shelf space remains.

Three people, three fruits, one winner. Secret incentives are in play.

Your actual title stays at the door, a C-suite leader becomes the apprentice nobody listens to, an intern steps into the manager's seat. Go.

What happens next is never the same twice, and always revealing.

What Actually Happens in the Room

The Fruit Stand™ is Yuan's original role-playing workshop on workplace identity and organizational behavior. It has been played by teams from C-suite to interns at an award-winning AEC firm, and repeatedly at SAWY's public programs, where it is consistently the session people keep talking about long after it ends.

When people from the same company play together, the game becomes a mirror. Real dynamics surface. People say things they wouldn't say in a meeting. When people from different companies play, something else emerges: the realization that the same person behaves completely differently depending on the culture they are in, and that their company's norms have been shaping them in ways they had never noticed.

The game is the trigger. The debrief is where insight actually happens.

What Your Organization Gains

For leaders A window into how their team performs around them, and what that costs · Insight into where psychological safety is real and where it is performed · A session people reference for months afterward

For individuals Clarity on the difference between playing a role well and being consumed by it · Heightened awareness of how organizational culture shapes personal behavior · Language for discussing identity, code-switching, and authenticity with colleagues

For teams A shared experience that opens conversations that don't otherwise happen · Visibility into how culture shapes behavior, for better and worse · A safe container for dynamics that usually stay underground

Best For

Leadership teams wanting honest conversation about culture and communication · Multicultural and cross-functional teams · ERGs, especially Asian, immigrant, and first-generation professional groups · Organizations going through culture change, integration, or restructuring · MBA and executive education programs · Any team where people don't speak up

Format & Logistics

Delivery · In-person strongly preferred. The game requires physical presence and group energy.

Group Size · 8–50 · Ideal: 12-30 · Small groups of 3–4 with full-group debrief

Duration

• 1-1.5 hours · Standard session with debrief

• 2.5-3 hours · Extended version with deeper reflection and discussion

The Eastern Wisdom Connection

Every workplace asks you to play a role. That is not the problem. The problem is forgetting that the role is simply a role and becoming so absorbed in winning, in performing, in protecting your position, that you lose sight of both yourself and the larger goal you are all supposed to be serving.

Eastern wisdom has a practice for this: daily self-reflection. A simple, disciplined habit of asking: who was I today, and was that who I actually want to be?

Paired with the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, the idea becomes even more precise. Hold your role lightly. Play it fully, but don't be consumed by it. Stay connected to something larger than your own position.

The Fruit Stand™ makes this visceral. You feel the moment you crossed the line between strategic and self-abandoned. You notice when the game became more important than the people in the room. And you leave with something no framework document can give you: the memory of what it actually felt like, from both sides.