Exercises should be designed to achieve a specific objective When first developing the tabletop exercises, our assumption was that a single exercise could achieve multiple objectives, such as training, relationship building, and evaluation. While these objectives are interrelated and opportunities often exist to achieve them concomitantly in the same exercise, it is critical to define the priority objective for the exercise because different objectives have different implications for exercise design. For example, if exercise participants outlined a response that was flawed or problematic, in an exercise primarily focused around the objective of training it would be appropriate for the facilitator to pause and help the participants re-think their approach. On the other hand, if the objective of the exercise is evaluation, this type of facilitator involvement can lead the participants to choose a different course of action and therefore bias the overall outcome being evaluated. Taken further, in an exercise designed to build relationships and links across disciplines or agencies, a facilitator intervention implying that a participant had made a mistake could be embarrassing or diminish that person's credibility, depending on the level of trust among participants.