Communication Workshop Activities

In Grief Walking, participants offer or receive social support by sharing a loss or walking with the person sharing. This structure is not therapy or an effort to fix something broken.

Instead, it allows us to share gifts of empathy and caring to support each other through a loss or difficult transition.

Grief Walking embodies LS Principle #3, Build Trust as You Go.

• Frame: Famously utilized by AirB&B to get at the heart of some of their culture issues. The idea is that there are three things that move the needle on psychological safety and team effectiveness:

• • Elephants - The "elephants in the room" or things people are avoiding and not talking about. These tend to create a sense of ambiguity and helplessness. Elephants must die.
  • Dead Fish - These are the "old tapes" that people refuse to let go of. They've been around so long that they're beginning to stink up the place. These tend to sour people on each other by undermining trust and creating fictions. Dead Fish must disappear.
  • Vomit - This is our ability to speak freely, directly, and openly with another person without fear of reprisal. If we're not listened to in this way, it can build up over time and bad things can happen. Vomit has to happen.

• Outcomes: Creates more honesty and psychological safety; Surfaces crucial issues on the team
  

• Demo: Leader shares an example of an old tape or story they've been carrying around and are ready to let go of
• Process/Steps:
• Facilitator introduces the framework by drawing three columns on a flipchart (or a flipchart for each)
• Facilitator asks the group for an example of either an Elephant or a Dead Fish
• Team members affirm, clarify, or provide additional context
• Group decides how to appropriately address or let go of the issue (usually by naming some hard, next steps)
• Facilitator captures on flipchart
• Group is invited to add to the flipcharts over the course of the day
• Facilitator reviews additions at the end of the day

I was using this approach when facilitating workshop on Continuous Improvement within my organisation. I saw another approach using this method and continuous with this sharing as I feel it was bringing across different message.

Establish pattern to pass in a circle. Create a category that each person has a contribution (ie. breakfast cereals). Add another category. 

This is a game about organizational skills.

In this interactive, teams will come together to become a human version of the device listed on their index card. This activity is a means to build team dynamics and also a way to address any challenges a team might be working through as this activity is completely dependent on everyone coming together as a group and playing a part.

Pairs draw a customer-meeting scenario and a short customer profile, then act it out live: one person plays the customer, the other plays themselves meeting that customer for real. After a short scene they reflect on what worked, then swap roles so everyone practises both sides of the conversation.

Robo Word Finder sits your team around a giant letter board where little robots walk the tiles, hunting hidden words together. Everyone draws from a single shared pool of letter picks, so nobody can sweep the board alone — someone spots a word, someone walks it, and the team decides together whether it's worth the picks. Quick to teach and easy to drop in, it's a short, collaborative break for a remote team, with boards in nine languages.

Sync Squad is a cooperative puzzle that only rewards a group that talks. Each player drives one colour-coded robot through a shared chamber, and the exit opens only when every robot stands on its matching goal at the same moment. The catch: each hazard is keyed to a colour, and the thing that's lethal to your teammate is completely harmless to you — so you can never just play your own robot.

Holloway is a cooperative maze that only opens for a team that talks. Your group steps into a shifting labyrinth to find glowing sigils, none of which will lift for a single pair of hands — so you split up, call to each other across the walls, and describe what you see. Roughly once a minute the house rearranges itself, wiping the map in your head, and the only way anyone leaves is together.