Opening Workshop Activities

We live and work in turbulent times, juggling never-ending to-do lists, back-to-back meetings, and constant context switching. When people enter a meeting, they often carry mental clutter – unfinished tasks, lingering thoughts, or stress from the previous discussion.

This simple yet effective exercise helps participants mentally transition into the meeting by externalizing their distractions, physically letting them go, and creating a fresh focus for the discussion ahead. I use this whenever I sense a group (whether virtual or in-person) is distracted, overwhelmed, or coming straight from another meeting. It works well when combined with a check-in question that gets everyone speaking.

The connection between walking and enhanced creativity has a long history. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1889) wrote, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking”. New research has backed up what many have thought for centuries with data, quantifying the effect of walking on human thought. Researchers at Stanford recently found that walking outside led to almost 3 times as many creative ideas as sitting indoors.

Container Building is the process of creating a safe space for a group or a team by establishing both trust and ground rules for engagement.

facilitation short cuts
list of ways to instruct how to pair / group up
quickly decide which partner goes first

Vote with your feet exercise to set up insightful conversations and activities

Use the exercise at, or very near, the start of a course, workshop or meeting where people don't know each other as it helps to learn names of each other

Say your name + a motion, group repeats