You can tap a deep well of curiosity and talent by helping a group focus attention on problems they want to solve. A productive pattern of engagement is established if used at the beginning of a working session. Loose yet powerful connections are formed in 20 minutes by asking engaging questions. Everyone contributes to shaping the work, noticing patterns together, and discovering local solutions.
By growing our emotional vocabulary, we can better identify our emotions, and check in with ourselves. Doing so can help bring a level of self-awareness, and a better understanding of others.
Name all the bad ideas to make room for good ones. Coming up with the perfect solution right off the bat can feel paralyzing. So instead of trying to find the right answer, get unstuck by listing all the wrong ones.
When people must tackle a common complex challenge, you can release their inherent creativity and leadership as well as their capacity to self-organize.
Open Space makes it possible to include everybody in constructing agendas and addressing issues that are important to them. Having co-created the agenda and free to follow their passion, people will take responsibility very quickly for solving problems and moving into action. Letting go of central control (i.e., the agenda and assignments) and putting it in the hands of all the participants generates commitment, action, innovation, and follow-through. You can use Open Space with groups as large as a couple of thousand people!
Everyone covers their camera and one person makes a statement that is true about themselves. If it is true for others on the call, they show their face to the camera as well. The initiation for the next prompt is passed to another person in the group.
The Fishbowl game is an effective way to activate attention—to prime our natural listening and observing skills so that a more substantive conversation can take place.
Dot voting is a collective way of prioritizing and converging on a design solution that uses group voting.
To be used when there are more ideas than can be feasible to develop further.
The Team Purpose Canvas is a simple and effective way to design your team purpose.
Light, energising exercise that helps the group to observe the other people on the call.
A team-building activity in which a group is challenged to physically support one another in an endeavour to move from one end of a space to another. It requires working together creatively and strategically in order to solve a practical, physical problem. It tends to emphasize group communication, cooperation, leadership and membership, patience and problem-solving.